The Bicycle Railroad
The long-awaited inauguration of a most improbable conveyance took place on September 13, 1892, when the Mount Holly & Smithville Bicycle Railroad was opened to a skeptical public. It was unique among the railroads of the world. It was nonpolluting, quiet, and very healthful for the patron. It had no cars or engines, and was one of the world’s shortest and most scenic lines, crossing and recrossing the meandering Rancocas Creek ten times in one mile. Riders enjoyed scenery and pure country air as they pedaled to a terminus at the pretty little village of Smithville, with its imposing mansion, millpond, and splashing water wheels.
The M.H.&S. was built as serious transportation, intended to allow the residents of Mount Holly, New Jersey, to commute more conveniently to and from their jobs at the bustling shops of the H. B. Smith Manufacturing Company in Smithville, 1.8 miles away. The railroad opened during the annual Mount Holly fair and became an instant success—as an amusement. The Mount Holly News reported that 3,000 people rode it in its first week.
The line had its shortcomings, including a shortage of bicycles, but the biggest drawback was the tracks themselves. Plans called for double-tracking the entire line, but only half a mile was1 double-tracked by opening day. This meant that a rider had to dismount and lift the heavy contraption off the rail when he encountered someone traveling in the opposite direction.
“Professor” Arthur Hotchkiss, the inventor and promoter of the line, had many inventions to his credit, from clocks to ordnance. A proper New Englander, dashing in his fastidious dress, full, dark beard, and derby hat, he was known for his devoutness. It is said that he refused to sell his bicycle-railway design for use at Coney Island because the proprietors wanted to operate it on Sundays.
Hotchkiss’s railway ran on a track that looked like a wooden farm fence. Posts were set into the ground to a height of about four feet, and stringers were nailed across them. The top rail of the fence served as the track. This was capped by an inverted iron T-rail, upon which the grooved wheels of the vehicles rode. Eventually turntables and switching spurs were installed at strategic points.
The vehicles were quite simple, except for their drive mechanism. A double triangular framework straddled the track. The twenty-inch driving wheel was in front. Next came the handlebars, not for steering but to hold onto. When pushed forward, they rubbed a brake pad against the front wheel. Then came the operator’s saddle and finally the small trailing wheel.
Treadles powered the bicycle and a set of idler wheels ran along either side of the fence to keep the device steady. The vehicles used the drive mechanism of the Star bicycle, which was produced by the H. B. Smith Company (see main article).
The Mount Holly & Smithville line’s initial success interested the promoters of the World’s Columbian Exposition, which was to be held in Chicago the next year. In late 1892 the local papers announced that the professor had been invited to exhibit his railroad there. He and his engineer, W. S. French, made several trips to Chicago and ordered two hundred bicycles for the installation. Histories, guidebooks, and photo books of the fair don’t even mention the bicycle railway there, and only one original ticket for the ride is known to exist today, but it did run, and it was clearly a financial disaster. Records indicate a gross income of $185. This would have been barely enough to pay for three of the two hundred bicycles, let alone construction and operation costs.
Bicycle railroads proved more successful in resort towns along the New Jersey shore. In the two years following the Mount Holly line’s introduction, several were built as amusement devices. One was installed in 1893 in Atlantic City by Alfred and Edward Moore. Since it was the only other line ever built according to Hotchkiss’s original design, it may have used the equipment built for Chicago.
Besides the three fence-type railroads, there were three built with a suspended design, in which riders hung from rails approximately eight feet above the ground. One was built in Atlantic City in 1893; the others were in Ocean City (1893) and Gloucester (1894), New Jersey. The suspended type was much more impressive than the original; with a little imagination it gave the sensation of flight. Even so, it didn’t last.
The bicycle railroad was a good idea that came along too late. In the 1890s regular safety bicycles were becoming more popular and affordable every day. Who would pay to ride on a prescribed course when his own bicycle would take him wherever he fancied?
The Mount Holly & Smithville Bicycle Railroad shut down in the summer of 1898. By then the track had so deteriorated that accidents and injuries were frequent; a slowdown of business at the Smith plant had eliminated commuters; and the novelty value had worn off. There is no record of what became of the equipment, but when the Atlantic City suspended line was sold to pay a debt two years earlier, it brought only $100.
Unsurprisingly, all the bicycle railroads of a century ago have disappeared, but one of the original railroad bicycles is in a museum, at the H. B. Smith mansion in Smithville. The H. B. Smith Manufacturing Company went out of business in the early 1980s, and portions of the complex are being developed as a historical park.
There is one lasting success story in the saga of the bicycle railroad. About 1901 W. G. Bean, an Englishman who had been working in advertising in New York City, returned to his native Blackpool carrying bicycles and plans for a railroad of the original fence type. He installed it on the beach at Blackpool, along with a carousel. The railroad operated until about 1910 and was part of the foundation upon which the Blackpool pleasure beach—once called “Europe’s greatest amusement park”—was built. And Arthur Hotchkiss’s name still lives in Hotchkiss Patents and Investments, Ltd., a subsidiary of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach Company, which runs the amusement park founded by Bean.
