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leugim

what if the real train comes?

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Direct quote from the site:

ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND, you should use railbikes ONLY on ABANDONED lines!!

Sounds like the disclaimer they use when selling e-scooters... ("this is not for the road etc.")

From the pictures, it looks like it has plastic guide wheels but if it were conductive to short out the two rails, it would activate the signals and any trains will be stopped before they reach you.

Do not ever rely on this sort of safety mechanism. There are also systems in use that rely on axle counters and bookkeeping - basically, on each block they count the incoming and the outgoing axles. When your draisine now is either too lightweight to trigger an axle counter or you set it on the rails in the middle of a block, the ops central won't know you are there.

Even simpler, there are systems that use a physical token.

To proceed into a section of track, the train driver/guard must physically possess an object, typically handed over at a station just before the section, and returned just after.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_(railway_signalling)

Never knew about axle counters. In the UK, they use a jumper cable to stop trains in an emergency.

While the UK has indeed stuck to almost exclusively using track circuits for a very long time [1], within the last two decades axle counters have become much more common.

[1] With some exceptions – the Severn Tunnel e.g. was switched to axle counters already in 1987 because track circuits proved too unreliable within the (wet) environment of the tunnel.

Or another Railbike travelling in the opposite direction?

Obviously you must stick to the schedule to allow for passing of oncoming or overtaking rail traffic at sidings.

The ones I've rode look like these[0], so in case they are running in different directions, you can easily lift up the one side with just one wheel on both vehicles, and then just push them. Simple and not a heavy lift either.

[0] https://hemomkringvandring.se/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG...

Definitely an issue with personal rail travel, whether from the opposite direction or an unclearable traffic jam in the same direction, and whether two rails or mono.

One of you gets off the track to allow the other to pass.

A normal bicycle can be lifted in one hand. This looks more unwieldy but not too much heavier. It shouldn't be hard.

(If two riders are both so oblivious that neither sees the other coming from at least a quarter-mile off, they deserve to crash.)

If it’s like the ones I’ve been on, you either lift them off the rails, or if you’re just hiring them, sometimes just both turn yours the other way and swap.

Then you stop, take one off the rails and swap positions.

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