Motorcycles rode the rails in Norway

Norwegian made Tempo motorcycle with Sachs fan-cooled motor, converted to run on railroad tracks.

 My wife and I took a ride this summer down the Flåm Railway in Norway, on the way to a fjord cruise. 

For great scenery the ride on the railroad rivaled the cruise through two famous fjords. 

That's because the railroad is very steep as it descends from the top of a mountain range to sea level. 

Its claim to being Europe's steepest standard railway relies on the fact that its steel wheels run on ordinary rails. No racks or cogs to keep this train from skidding off. 

The train does have back-up braking systems, though, and the freight it carries is limited, to prevent building up too much speed.

Two 180-degree curves help level things out, too. Impressively, one of those big turns is inside a tunnel. No scenery inside there, unfortunately.

Very popular with tourists, the Flåmbana, as it is called, gets its own museum, at the end of the line in Flåm, Norway.

That's where you board a boat (hardly big enough to be called a ship, although cruise ships do visit this port) to carry on your journey through the world-class fjords.

But first, you should visit the railway museum. It's free, and right there on the docks. It houses a 1944 electric railway locomotive and, incredible to me, vintage motorcycles.

Rude and crude. Sachs powered railroad bike, carrying the rider's skis.

Yup, motorcycles. Motorcycles that ran on railroad tracks, with the help of a third wheel on an outrigger, sidecar style.

Dubbed "fireflies" by their riders, the odd devices were used for track maintenance and inspection — weather permitting, I assume.

A video in the museum explains that the obviously crude devices, originally pedaled like bicycles, weren't expected to crawl back up the steep railroad. They only went downhill, being loaded onto trains for the trip back up.

Old photo in museum shows riders on a pedal-powered firefly.

You only have to look at them to realize how dangerous they'd be to ride. Speeds of 60 kmph could be achieved downhill, and even a rock on a rail could mean disaster, according to a worker shown in the video.

There were fatalities, up to 1988. The fireflies were replaced with four-wheeled vehicles that must have been more stable, and even offered weather protection.

Similar three-wheeled handcars were used in other countries, of course. I have never come across any others with motorcycle power, but that seems like a natural step. Their formal name seems to be "draisine."

EL9 locomotive in the museum had five braking systems, including rail brakes. They were the first to have electrical resistance braking.

The Flåmbana is really just a 12-mile spur line off the main railroad from Oslo to Bergen. It has 20 tunnels. A river adjacent to its route was put into water tunnels to reduce the number of railroad bridges necessary. That's engineering.

Building the line, from 1923-1947, was a major expense. It cost lives not just in accidents but, for the miners, the fatal lung disease silicosis.

German occupiers continued the construction project through World War II. The area was strategically important — a ship sunk by the Luftwaffe during the invasion of 1940 remains under water in the fjord at Flåm.

The train stops so passengers can view the Kjosfossen waterfall. Look closely to the left of the ruined building for a sight of the fairy/witch of the valley. Not too close, gentlemen; she's a seducer.

Civilian passenger traffic increased after the war, but the line was always in danger of being closed down as a sort of railroad-to-nowhere, especially after a year-around automobile route to the region opened in the 1990s. 

Investments in facilities and rolling stock, and the creation of branded "Norway in a Nutshell" tourist packages, helped save the line.

The Flåmbana has been called one of Europe's most scenic trains.

In two weeks of riding trains in central Norway, I came to feel that the whole country is curated for attractiveness. Mountains and streams are a given, of course, but those romantic looking farmsteads always in the distance...

View from the Flåmbana.