Our railbikes were born on the Redwood Route. In 2019, engineers at the Skunk Train in Fort Bragg set out to solve a problem: how to let visitors experience historic railroad tracks under their own power, safely and quietly, without a locomotive. Off-the-shelf equipment didn’t exist to the specs they wanted, so they designed and built their own.

The result was a patented two-person railbike unlike anything else on the rails. Each bike weighs about 250 pounds, rides on four steel wheels, and pairs traditional pedaling with a silent electric assist, the same battery technology found in modern e-bikes. There’s no steering and no balancing, which frees riders to take in the scenery.

The design proved itself immediately. Railbikes debuted along Pudding Creek in 2019, and by 2021 they were carrying riders 25 miles roundtrip into the old-growth redwoods of the Noyo River canyon, on track a train hadn’t touched in years. The same engineering that opened up this stretch of redwoods now powers every Sunburst railbike, built by the same team, refined by thousands of miles of real-world riding.