Rail Trails

Not too many generations ago, the best way to see America wasn't from a 747 or through the rolled-down window of an SUV on a crowded highway, it was from the inside of a railcar snaking its way through an often unpeopled countryside. Train-takers would spend hours staring out at sylvan backwoods and acres of cornfields, small towns, and sometimes long stretches of complete nothingness.

Rail trails offer just about every type of scenery.

Everything about rail travel - from the rhythm of the wheels to the colorful advertisements - was cloaked in romance.

But as passenger trains in most parts of the country became obsolete, the routes where they once chugged became overgrown and unexplored. Atlanta bicyclist Ed McBrayer found this a shame. That's why, in 1991, he and two friends began the PATH Foundation, with the goal of transforming Georgia's old train tracks into bike routes.

Support through public funding and private purchases and donations has enabled PATH to oversee the development and maintenance of almost 80 miles of rail trails throughout the state.

McBrayer's favorite of all the paths is the 50-mile Silver Comet Trail, named after the train that ran through Georgia, on its way from Birmingham to New York City, until the late 1960s. With concrete riding ways, an 800-foot-long tunnel, and the added amenity of a maintenance crew, the trail attracts almost 2 million visitors every year.

Similar rail trails can be enjoyed across the country. The Elroy-Sparta State Trail in Wisconsin leads riders through miles of hand-dug train tunnels. Then there's the Katy Trail in Missouri, which, at 225 miles, is the longest rails-to-trails project in the country.

Because these trains ran through big cities, small towns, forests and mountainsides, the trails offer just about every type of scenery, minus the danger of cars or the bumpiness of backwoods. During biking season, McBrayer says he often rides his road bike past the crowded parts of the trail surrounding suburban Atlanta, away from the residential developments and commercial centers, to where it weaves through majestic pine forests and over Pumpkinvine Creek Trestle, an old wooden bridge. "The sensation you get when you're on a bicycle, riding through the forest with concrete beneath you . . . " he says, "it's incomparable."

Posted on April 03, 2006