Electric Rail Bike - 120 mile ride around the Central Coast on Rails and Trails

stranger this is the

bike

I'm going to

ride

on this little adventure. It's the same folding

rail

attachment that I had on my pedal

bike

in my last video. I just made some different fork and swingarm mounts to fit the e. -Bicycle, the only thing that is different is that I added this spring loaded roller on the outside of the track that helps deal with the grounding straps that are on the outside of the

rail

s. This bike has a large five kilowatt pack. I tried the range. battery for 200

mile

s at a constant speed of 20

mile

s per hour, so I guess it should be good for 100 to 120 miles of hard driving here on top of the battery.

I have a drone controller mounted so I can film with a drone while I'm at it. Traveling on this trip should take about six hours, but with filming I'm guessing it will be more than 12 hours, so in addition to the drone and camera, I'll bring my tent and bag in case I need to pass the time. Tonight I rode the entire city on the tracks, but I've never been north or south of the city, so I decided to

ride

the tracks from start to finish. In this case, the end is where the tracks meet. live tracks and on my way I'm also going to hit the t

rails

in the parks that the overseas tracks pass through, so I'll be heading about 20 miles up the

coast

to a little town called Davenport where the tracks start, but it's Serán 40+ miles to get there because I like to take the back roads and stay off the main highway as much as I can.

This is the small, bustling town of Davenport with a population of 400. It was basically built to house workers. which operated at the cement plant that was built in the early 1900s overseas the tracks originate at the cement plant that is now closed the cement plant was built in 1906 to help rebuild San Francisco after the earthquake and to supply cement for the Panama Canal at Pearl Harbor's tracks were built specifically for the plant to transport cement down the

coast

. This location also supplied cement for many well-known California landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge and Candlestick Park. The cement plant closed in 2010, so the tracks are now abandoned.

In my last video people kept asking what happens if a train arrives. The only trains that used these tracks were those from the cement plant and when the cement plant closed 12 years ago there has not been a train on these tracks since the foreigners left. The cement plant crosses the highway and then heads south along the coast, so I'm going to get on the tracks here in Davenport and follow the tracks until they intersect live tracks that I think are somewhere south of Watsonville and north of Salinas. Thanks foreign questions, there are a couple of reasons why I have wanted to ride these tracks north of the city.

The views here are spectacular, but the main reason I want to ride here is because the t

rails

are perfect from Davenport. to Santa Cruz in town the rails are bolted together and there may be a quarter inch mismatch between the two rails, plus you also have the grounding straps, this is what a seamless welded rail looks like, much nicer In the city, the rails here are in very good condition, the problem is that vegetation has been allowed to grow for 12 years, meaning that much of the track here is inaccessible. In addition to filming, I can also use the drone to inspect the road and see. what's on the other side of the blockages like that.

I know if it's worth trying to get around it or if I should just get back out and hit the road in certain sections. I also use the bike-mounted drone as a gimbal camera. a little different perspective than a GoPro because the camera stays level when you lean into the bends this time of year there aren't many people on the beach so I'm going to take the opportunity to do a little spin in the sand . stranger stranger stranger stranger stranger the first park the tracks pass through is a state park called Wilder Ranch, which is a great place for mountain bike hiking.

It is a former dairy farm built in the late 19th century and occupying 7,000 acres. Overseas, this park may not have many technical or advanced singletrack

trails

, but you will have the opportunity to ride some fire roads with great scenery, plus some intermediate overseas singletrack

trails

, and if want to take a trip down memory lane you can check out Discover the old buildings that are still here as a home shop machinist, the best part of Wilder Ranch for me is the shop. This workshop was built in 1897 and all machinery was powered by a Pelton water wheel. The water wheel drove a belt system. to the roof and from there I would go down to the lathe, the sander, the drill and even a generator that powered the

electric

lights, so back to the tracks, you can see here that the tracks here in Wilder are completely overgrown, so I will have to go. backtrack and take a bike path that runs along the overseas tracks, so I can get back on the tracks about a mile out of town.

This is the first railroad crossing, which means we are now entering the city limits. The first building we find. Come here, on the left is the former Wrigley's gum factory, which now houses Santa Cruz mountain bikes. Yes, just before the boardwalk there is a lagoon with floating walkways, so I'll go off the tracks and take a detour around the lagoon. to get off the tracks for a while and see something different, strange on the boardwalk, the tracks go down the middle of the road for a quarter of a mile so I'll have to fold up and ride on the road my rail accessory locates both sides of the rail and because the pavement is butted to the outside of the rail, it makes it difficult to ride the tracks across the pavement.

Thank you. I was hoping to cross the boardwalk. Trestle, but the tracks go through the boardwalk where bikes aren't allowed, so I'll do it. I have to take the bike lane that runs next to the tracks to cross the trestle foreign foreign foreign foreign this next Open Space Reserve is where I want to test my new drones that track an obstacle avoidance system. It has many wide paths with a tree. canopy above, so I guess it will be a good place to see how well the Drone can follow me through the tree branches. Come on, the Drone is a DJI Mini 3 Pro.

It did pretty well through the trees, but I had to go a little slow to do it. in order to keep up when I had to avoid the tree branches foreign foreign foreign foreign this next Trestle that I had never passed before in the past, the authorities have tried to keep people away from this Trestle, but since the trains stopped, I've been seeing more people walking through it, so I figure I'll walk through it and see what happens. I don't want to have to end the trip in the dark foreign foreign foreign I've never been this far south on the tracks before, I'm not sure if I'll have any problems crossing private farmland and I also don't know exactly where the tracks turn.

Live, it was at this point that I started hearing train noises in the distance, so I thought I'd fold up and finish the rest of the trip on the side of the track to make it look like the Bird crossing I saw on Google Maps. The street there is not exactly what I expected. I thought there would be some kind of train station like an Amtrak station or something. All buildings at the old station have been removed. It seems that now this courtyard is just a meeting place between tracks. the only station from the railroad's bygone days still standing is the Watsonville station which is just before Pajaro Junction, this is what it looked like in 1916 and this is what it looks like today, taken from the same foreign angle , so right now you can basically turn left and head to San Francisco or turn right to head to Los Angeles.