Want to ride the rails? See fall foliage along this abandoned railroad
Revolution Rail’s newest rail biking location has come to Green Lake
One of the three granite mile markers on the route, numbered with the mileage to Portland. Photo by Maizy Weirich.
Oct. 13, 2026
By Steele Hays and Maizy Weirich
DEDHAM - Leaf peepers who want to see the fall foliage can do so for a couple more weeks along an abandoned railway.
Rail biking—a growing recreational and tourist activity in Maine—now has a relatively new location to explore along Green Lake in Dedham. Thye outfit is run by Revolution Rail, a privately owned, Vermont-based company that is just wrapping up its first full season of operation at Green Lake. It’s last day of the season will be Nov. 1.
In peak summer season, guided rail trips are offered four times a day with a maximum of 40 riders on a mix of two-seat and four-seat rail bikes. On many days this summer, every seat on all four runs was filled, according to Revolution Rail guide Josh Hart. Riders cruise south on a 3.5-mile stretch of track along the shores of Green Lake and Little Rocky Pond, take a break for 15 minutes, then reverse course to return to the starting point at Jenkins Beach. The trips take about 90 minutes.
“Most of our complaints are that people wish the trip was longer,” Hart told The Rising Tide during a ride on Oct. 8. “They enjoy it so much, they want more.”
There is a three percent uphill grade on the outbound run, but every bike at Green Lake has “pedal assist”—electric power similar to an e-bike, so moving the rail bike along at 8 to 10 miles an hour is almost effortless. Braking is controlled by whoever is riding in the “conductor” seat on each bike, using a handbrake like on a bicycle.
The track segment traveled is scenic and unspoiled, a mix of wooded lake shore, hillsides studded with granite boulders and a few marshy areas. It’s a historic stretch as well, and was built in the late 1880s by the Maine Shore Line Railroad. The tracks are still flanked by six-foot-tall granite mile markers numbered with the mileage to Portland – 155, 156, 157. And the original telegraph poles and lines are still in place, deeply weathered, but largely intact. Passenger trains operated on the line until 1957.
Now the track is owned by the Maine Department of Transportation, which leases a section to the Downeast Scenic Railroad, from which Revolution Rail subleases the 3.5-mile section.
This section of track was traveled many times by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his family when they visited FDR’s summer home on Campobello Island. The Roosevelts would take the train to a ferry terminal on Hancock Point, then travel by boat to Campobello, according to the guides, who provide a brief history lesson to rail bike riders at the halfway mark.
The Green Lake rail bike track is one of 10 locations operated across the country by Revolution Rail, a company that started in the garage of founder and CEO Rob Harte.
Harte, a former school teacher, had experienced rail biking on a trip to South Korea. When he returned home to Burlington, Vermont, he worked with a mechanic friend of his to build a custom rail bike. He had a section of abandoned railroad track in upstate New York in mind where he thought he could run a rail bike, he said in an interview with The Rising Tide.
He ended up building six of the prototype rail bikes, and his operation caught the attention of a local TV station that did a story on him. Suddenly, he was in business, he said. Today, Revolution Rail still builds all their own bikes.
Guides Emma Blake and Josh Hart ride in the back of a 4-seat rail bike. Photo by Maizy Weirich.
The company’s first location was in North Creek, New York, in the Adirondacks. Now Revolution Rail has 10 locations across the U.S., with Green Lake and another operation in Belfast their two newest locations. Belfast’s track is leased from the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad.
“What really drew me to Green Lake is just how scenic it is,” Harte said. “That’s one of the things we look for, as well as a stretch that doesn’t have many crossings. We didn’t know exactly what to expect in the first year, but it has really succeeded. We like working with the Downeast Scenic Railroad as our partners.”
The guided ride on Oct. 8 included a mix of local residents, a family from Kentucky, a couple from Eastport, and others. Most riders have heard about Revolution Rail through word of mouth, staff members said.
“I wish I had one of these rail bikes; there’s a lot of abandoned track where we live,” Jim Blankman of Eastport said.
The Green Lake rides are offered Thursdays through Sundays through Nov. 1, when they will close for the season. They will resume operations next May, employees said. The price to ride a two-seater railbike is $110 per bike (for either one or two people) and $200 per bike for a four-seater.
