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Comment by robin_reala | Hacker News Reader

These are pretty common in Sweden: they’re called dressin here, which, as is usual for a lot of Swedish words, comes from the French. In English it’s draisine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draisine

If you’re in Skåne I can recommend Romeleåsens Dressincykling: https://www.dressincykling.se/english/

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The more permanent, tourist ones are also becoming more common in Poland. https://poland.pl/tourism/active-leisure/draisine-trips-thro... Similar name is used.

Ha I rode something like this with 2 stroke motors involved in Colombia. Everyone just jumps off and removes the car when another is coming in the other direction.

I have to wonder, what is the scale of a train in Sweden? here in the states the vast majority of our locomotives are dedicated solely to freight.

Speaking from experience having worked on locomotive engines in the past, the sheer magnitude of US rail is difficult to comprehend. a fully loaded freight train can weigh north of 20,000 tons (18.14 million kilos). They can often times be nearly 2 (3.2km) miles long. and heres the reason "rail bikes" are illegal in the US:

they can take more than a mile (1.6km) to stop.

As far as I know, the heaviest trains in Sweden run on the Iron Ore line[1]: ”68 cars long and weigh 8600 tonnes”.

I would surprised if rail bikes are allowed on any ’live’ track anywhere in the EU.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ore_Line

Railbikes only go on tracks no longer used for regular traffic.

Sorry for the offtopicness but we don't have your email. I just saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26721647. Since your comments have mostly been fine since we banned you (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26649016), I'd be happy to reinstate your account. However, I think the username is a bit too trollish. It's not extreme of course, but the audience here is large enough that even minor trollishness can cause major weirdness. If you want to pick a different username, we can change it for you and unban the account.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Thank you. How do I pick a different username?

It's best to email hn@ycombinator.com but if you really don't want to do that you can just reply here.

Ok dang, please reinstate me. :)

And thanks for going above and beyond.

Happy to reinstate you but we need you to pick a different username first!

I've restored your recent comments which are fine for HN but I don't want to unban you without renaming the account because then I'll forget that we still need to do that.

I doubt it's coming from French since initial invention was made in Germany. It's Draisine in Engligh, French, German, and in many languages it's called similarly, sometimes with little spelling deviations.

Correct. Wikipedia says it was named after the inventor Karl Drais who invented the dandy horse, the predecessor to the bicycle. Interestingly, he did not invent the Draisine on rails, though, just another mode of transport that in some ways is very similar.

I was a bit confused at first since in French, the word "Draisienne" is used for the dandy horse itself. But apparently Draisine is also in use in French (first time I heard about it, native speaker). You learn new things everyday !

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