Trail Facilities: Bikes on Trains

There are many reasons you might want to take a bike on a train -- to cycle when you arrive, to avoid steep terrain, to connect two segments of a tour, to catch up if you've fallen behind. If you can turn the bike into luggage by packing it in a case or a box, it's ordinary baggage. We're interested here in a more convenient option: put the bike on the train without disassembling it (sometimes called roll-on, roll-off).

We've seen two general strategies for storing bikes on trains, either in baggage cars or in a small compartment at the end of a passenger car.

The Wheels-Down Strategy simply rolls the bikes into the car and leans them against each other in rows. A few partitions can help to keep this organized. You also need some space for the long/wide bikes. The cars seem to have an interior width of a bit under 10', maybe 9'. So there's only room for one bike across the width of the car, though the long/wide bikes can probably be lined up lengthwise alongside the row of standard bikes. The advantage is that it's fairly easy to outfit the cars -- you need a few partitions to help organize the bikes, with movers' tie-down loops so the bikes can be tied down for stability.

The Front-Wheel-Up Strategy almost doubles the capacity of the car, but it takes much more outfitting. In this strategy hooks are installed overhead, and bikes are lifted up so they hang from the hooks by their front wheels. The hooks are staggered to pack the bikes closely without interference between handlebars.

Europe

We have taken bikes on trains in Sweden, Austria, Germany, and Finland. The best example of handling large numbers of bikes was the bike train from Vienna to Passau, which serves the very popular Danube route.

Bikes in baggage cars

Here's the bicycle car on the morning train from Vienna to Passau. It provides return transportation for the very popular Passau-Vienna bike trip along the Danube River. In the summer they run multiple cars -- we were there in October.

Here's the long view of the baggage car. A corridor runs along one side, separated from the baggage area by a partition. The baggage area of the car has a bay at each end for wheels-down bikes. They're stacked in, and I don't even think they were tied down. The handlebars more-or-less alternate from side to side, but on this trip I think they didn't try to pack as tightly as possible because there was obviously going to be plenty of room. This bay runs from the outside door to the end of the car. Next to the outside door is a rack for hanging bikes front-wheel-up. In the center of the car there's more space to stack bikes. In this case it's used for a tandem, which was too wide to go sideways in the bay at the end.

Click on any of these images for a larger version of the image.


Long view from near center of car		Close view of bikes stacked in end bay

The front-wheel-up racks hang the bikes from overhead hooks, making better use of the space in the car. Note that the hooks are staggered to pack in more bikes without handlebar interference. In this case the rack is only half-full. A nice touch is that the lower part of the rack, the part that controls the rear wheels, is held up by a chain, and it folds down when it's not in use. If the corridor ran down the center of the car, there would be plenty of room for one of these hanging racks on each side of the car.


Front-wheel-up storage rack		Empty front-wheel-up storage rack

Bikes at the end of passenger cars

Many European trains permit a small number of bikes to be carried at the end of certain passenger cars. The locations for bikes are marked on the outside of the train.


Bike in passenger car		Bike storage at these ends of these cars

Loading bikes

The European custom for loading bikes in the baggage car is for the conductor to open the door of the baggage car and the bicyclists to hand the bikes up. For unloading, the conductor hands the bikes down. Occasionally I think we did it ourselves. Loading and unloading bikes from the passenger cars is the bicyclist's responsibility. Here we see loading in Vienna and unloading in Passau.


Loading in Vienna		Unloading in Passau (note the brown cars behind the one we're unloading -- the bike logo is barely visible)

United States

Here we're not terribly good about roll-on service. Some Amtrak routes have it, but it only serves standard diamond-frame bikes, only a few per train. The bikes roll on with the passengers into the double-decker cars, go around a couple of corners, and get stored on the lower level. I don't have any photos of these.

We've taken bikes on the Western Maryland Scenic RR several times. They usually run a combine car, with half a car's worth of baggage area that will take 20 bikes or so. At Cumberland they have a loading ramp, and at Frostburg the platform is the height of the door -- so there's no problem rolling the bikes on and off.


Loading in Cumberland


Securing the bikes on board		Unloading in Frostburg

We did take a train-up-bike-back trip on the Ohio and Erie trail through the Cuyahoga National Recreation Area south of Cleveland. At one end the platform could have been even with the baggage car door, but the train was too long. At the other end there wasn't even a platform. We just handed the bikes up to the conductor, who put them down on the floor.


Unloading in Akron

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