My dad used to tell a story about the old days, driving his Ford (model T or A, not sure) on railroad tracks. He said he let most of the air out of the tires, then could drive the car along the RR tracks. Definitively not recommending this idea, Happened in the 1930’s, at a rural location & time where the tracks were guaranteed to be train free of course.
I’ve never been sure whether this is a true story or not. Maybe just made up for conversation. Does it seem possible such a thing could be true? Wheel spacing match up?
I rode dirt bikes on railroad tracks. And then it became much cooler once the RRs in my area went away, and the tracks and ties all got torn up. Way less bumpy ride.
A good friend of mine said he and his buddies did that in high school with his 1970 Dodge Dart.
The width between the tires was the same width as the tracks. They would let some air out of the tires, drive on the tracks at speeds up to 60 mph without the need to hold on to the steering wheel. All while keeping themselves hydrated.
A Model T Ford has a track width of 143 cm. Standard gauge railroads have a rail spacing of 143.5. It is completely plausible to deflate the tires and ride the rails with a Model T.
Similar for a '70 Dodge Dart. The rear track is a bit less and the front track a bit more than the rail spacing but with the wider wheels, that should be plausible as well.
I’d like to know your thoughts about this in more detail.
My thinking is; if you can deflate the skinny 3 and 3.5 inch tires enough to conform to the rails enough to keep the car on the track on the straights, the gentle railroad curves might not be enough to derail the car. All of this would be very hard on the poor tires of the day.
I’d think the Dart with its 6 or 6.5 inch tires at 10 psi would conform more to the rail and hold the rails better.
Back in the day, the only thing a Model T needed for rail travel was solid flanged wheels. Would be far more stable than trying it with deflated tires. But then you’d need to swap them back for road use.
There’s a bicycle made to ride on RR tracks. It has an outrigger wheel to go on the other rail. You can jump off and tip it out of the way in a hurry. I imagined traveling the country that way. I used to hop freight trains: you get to see a lot of the country you don’t otherwise.
Did I tell this before? Billy was a class mate and a little wild. In back of his house were rr tracks seldom used. A couple of us happened to meet up with billy one night and we ended up at his house. He said let’s go for a ride. He had a 53 Chevy he had cut the top off to make a convertible out of it. He drove it on to the tracks and down the tracks we went for about half a mile till the next driveway where he turned it around for the trip back. Said the wheel base was the same as the tracks and had about 15 pounds of air in the tires so the would wrap around the tracks. No steering required. I can’t remember if we were in high school or college at the time.
So yeah, been there done that. Sorry I didn’t read the other comments first. Last I saw him he was still looking for his auquacar that got stolen.
That’s a good thought. Maybe the modifications were to save the tires. Maybe it will work with tires. I went to a train museum once and they had a working Model T railroad car. The tires were replaced with wheels that looked like train wheels. They said they had other modifications, but not sure what they were. Trains ride on the inside lip of the rail with a little overhang on the inside. This keeps the train from going off the tracks. Maybe the Model T doesn’t need that since it’s so light.
A little research exposed that Henry Ford picked the track width to match railroad spacing on purpose so the car could be run on the rails with little modification.
Given how few roads the US had in 1909, that was a good idea.
From the photo, you can see the wheel do have flanges.
I don’t know how far back they go but RR inspection vehicle have retractable flanged wheels, but are propelled by the regular rubber tires. In past cars were used, now what I see are pickups.
I just can’t recall any more but at some point the rail system in the us was standardized. I think Europe had a different width. I seem to recall during Lincoln’s time going through Baltimore before his swearing in, they had to unload from one train to another because the tracks were still different.
I’ve read several train books but not sure where it was discussed. The brother of a classmate wrote a good book on the rock island so maybe that was it. At any rate nothing was standard until maybe the mid 1800s I think.
