There are many ways to experience the extraordinary natural beauty and unique cities of California’s Monterey Bay, whether it’s walking, cycling, driving, or boating. And we recently discovered another way to explore this compelling location – on a rail bike.
Handcar Tours, https://handcar.com/the-experience/ as the tour enterprise of the Museum of Handcar Technology LLC, operates guided excursions along a section of historic railroad, with participants choosing either a rail bicycle or an arm-pumped handcar. Both are electric-assisted, making the journey much easier.
The trip covers six miles and takes about one-and-a-half hours, traveling alongside and through Fort Ord Dunes State Park. With a 100-foot elevation gain, the tracks take you through varied scenery including sand dunes and coastal scrub as well as Monterey Cypress groves and a Monterey Pine forest. The turnaround point provides a spectacular distant view of Monterey Bay and the Monterey Peninsula.
We chose a Saturday in late March to join this new-to-us experience, and had opted for a rail bike when reserving our tour, although handcars are also an option. Our start time was 2:30 pm. The rail bike tour cost was $160 (for the vehicle, not per person). The handcars, which carry up to three people, are $259.
The tours begin and end in the city of Marina, about 15 minutes north of Monterey. It was a cool, breezy, overcast day, but lack of sunshine was apparently no deterrent at all, as our tour was sold out.
The tour began with a short briefing by Mason Clark, one of the co-founders of Handcar Tours, and included a bit about this family-owned and operated business, a quick history of the tracks (see notes below), and safety information about how the rail cars operate.
“Every single car here, every rail car, was custom-built in Southern California,” he said, referring to the manufacturing side of the company. “A car like this weighs about 465 pounds and it contains nearly 2,000 individual parts per car.”
While we waited for the tour to start, we could learn about the history of handcars through videos, pictorial displays, and onsite examples.
As our group was ready to begin, the staff was great about explaining to each rider how the cars operate, including safety features. Then they started us off with a comfortable distance between the cars so we didn’t feel like we were coming up on the car ahead of us or being approached from behind. We were able to maintain a moderate, comfortable pace the entire ride.
The rail bikes are well-designed to be comfortable for pedaling along the tracks and it was easy to get into a rhythm. We needed to pedal, but it didn’t feel strenuous due to the electric-assist capability of the rail bike. It was really very easy, and fun!
It was three miles to the midway point, where everyone on the tour gathered and stopped for about 15 minutes. There was time to have a snack, hydrate, and enjoy the sweeping view of Monterey Bay and the Monterey Peninsula, which was spectacular. Staff members checked in with all of us and offered to take photos with our phones. Throughout the experience, the entire staff was consistently friendly, helpful, and attentive.
After the break, we pedaled north, back to the starting point in Marina. From there, we still had plenty of time to drive the short distance to Monterey and sample some of the fantastic local wines of Monterey County in one of the downtown tasting rooms!
This was a fun and easy ride on historic rails through beautiful and unique scenery. The tours are operated by a company of people who conveyed their passion for the Monterey area and for ensuring their tour participants had a great experience. I highly recommend!
NOTES
History
The rail line that we traveled over is a significant part of local history, even including a reference to Monterey Jack cheese. In his introduction before the tour started, Mason Clark explained that the rail line was built in the 1800s by David Jacks, who was the founder of the Monterey Jack Cheese Company.
“David Jacks actually owned the entire Monterey Peninsula, which he purchased for a thousand dollars,” Clark said, adding that at the time, the only overland travel to the area was by horse or on foot. “So that is how David got into the railroad business. He built this very rail line and he became, as you can imagine, very wealthy, as Monterey grew into a flourishing economy. But I guess the cheese business was more profitable than the railroad business. He sold the railroad in 1879 to Southern Pacific, and between 1879 and about 1995, this was an active rail line. So, well over a century old, this track is still here and in the same position as it was when David Jacks built it.”
Clark continued that in 2021, “That’s when we started to restore this track for this very unique purpose,” after it sat completely unused for about 20 years. “So you’ll see the track in a very unique way, but also a way similar to how they would have seen it when they built and maintained the railroad tracks in the late 1800s.”
Fort Ord Dunes State Park
The rail tour travels through parts of Fort Ord Dunes State Park. https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=580 Located at the site of the former Fort Ord, which was decommissioned in 1994, this state park opened to the public in 2009 after the Army transferred 979 coastal acres to California State Parks. From the rails, you can see remnants of Fort Ord, including the old firing ranges. The park encompasses a portion of the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail for biking and walking, and you can also access the beach.
Gail Gourley Travels 
Gail,Thank you so much for the invitati
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