Pedal to the Metal

MT. HOOD RAILROAD’S RAILBIKES TAKE RIDERS ON A TREK LIKE NO OTHER

WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO EXPECT, my birthday-surprise staycation compadres and me. We wait, as travelers do, at a train station for the next train. Or so we think. The tracks are quiet, we are antsy. A beautiful late-spring day, sunny and still. Suddenly our “train” comes rambling into view: some 10 or so tandem cars, open, looking like automobiles with train wheels and no bodies rolling down the rails. Oh, and pedals.

Pedals. Like a bike.

We pick up our jaws off the platform and giggle a little. The giggling would rarely stop over the course of our ensuing two-and-ahalf-hour trek. This is the famed Mt. Hood Railroad Station in downtown Hood River. Rather than a train ride up into the Hood River Valley for a dinner excursion or a winter trek on the railroad’s popular Christmas Train, we are among the early adopters of the company’s newest offering: railbikes. Pedal- and-chain-driven with magically muscular e-power for the less physically motivated, the railbikes will take us on a genteel amble up into the verdant valley for a view few have seen, courtesy of company CEO Scott Webster and his vision.

Off we go and quickly become immersed in the beauty that is Hood River. We cross the bridge over the river, lulled by its flow, and find ourselves deep in scenery not visible from any road. It’s a bit of a shock to the senses at rst, seeing things you don’t normally see. We pedal for a bit, to get the feel, and then try out the throttle for some easy movement at little physical expense, coasting uphill along the riverbank, marveling at the beauty so close to town proper. Waterfalls, evergreens, orchards, vineyards, farms and rough-hewn barns, homes and ranches. It’s pastoral, idyllic, but with bike-pleasant motion. e railroad, according to Columbia Gorge News reporting in January 2022, also “serves the lumber industry and more speci cally, Cascade Forest Products, which has recently expanded operations in Odell. Cascade Forest Products doubled their track availability giving the railroad increased business on the freight side of operations. To assist the increase in business, the Mt. Hood Railroad has leased an additional locomotive from Locomotive Servicing Company.”

And pedals.

Scott Webster comes from hardy stock. He grew up in this area. His grandparents migrated out from the Bronx, New York, to found Webster Orchards, which would grow to some 1,000 acres all together. He and his brother Addison ventured o to college and careers, then came home in the late ‘90s to purchase the operation from their aging parents, and eventually their partners. Running up steep debt, the brothers sought a value-added proposition to propel the business, and thus started a fruit company, focusing on online and gift-shop sales.

Business was brisk through the rst several years with gift sales and guest visits exploding. But in business, there are always headaches and dark clouds. e 2008 downturn and credit crisis in the economy hit them hard. Undaunted, they pressed on, envisioning something akin to a new phenomenon in this unique region: agritourism.

“It took us 14 years to get to a position to try and realize this dream,” Webster says, “to create an environment where customers could come in and experience something like the Tillamook Creamery.” Which, it should be noted, pulls in over one million tourists a year.

His company — with help from two dedicated partners, including longtime general manager Ron Kaufman — had in 2001 begun refurbishing the enormous Diamond Fruit packing building in Pine Grove into an elegant, nationally recognized gift shop featuring local fruit packaged in gourmet gift baskets, towers and boxes, and a heritage museum dedicated to local agriculture.

But their latest acquisition stands to change the company complexion to further embrace the visitor experience. ough the Fruit Company — with its open oor plan where visitors can watch the gifts being made — and museum remain the main draw, Webster’s company, Mt. Hood Capital Investments, LLC, was able to purchase the nance-plagued Mt. Hood Railroad out of receivership in January 2022.

But Webster had an even broader vision. A visit to Joseph, Oregon, led him to Joseph Branch Railriders, where he experienced rsthand the giggling joys of railbikes. “My wife and I were together,” he said of the adventure. “We would just smile, out in nature, no steering, talking and laughing and enjoying the experience.”

Undergoing some serious research, he and the company found one of the few suppliers of the pedal-powered tandem cars in Colorado and made their rst railbike order. ey put them on the Mt. Hood Railroad tracks last year and launched their inaugural season.

“We had some issues with the bikes,” o ers Webster, “like vibration, chains popping o and other little weird things, but we worked out most of the bugs.”