Bicycle vs Train race in Colorado

[DrF]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/24/health/bike-race-iron-horse-fit-nation/index.html

Didn't know that the train was invented before the bike. Who'd of known?

[slugline]

That sounds like a nice and grueling test of your bike legs.

Actually I would have guessed that the train was invented before the bicycle. There was really good economic incentive for coming up with a replacement for horse-drawn long-haul cargo wagons.

[bobechs]

Depends on what you mean by 'bicycle' and what you mean by 'train'.

If by train you mean a steam locomotive pulling cars on rails, then that long preceded the safety bicycle design we know as the near universal bicycle of today.  Even the impractical penny-farthing bicycle came later than commercial cross country railroad, by a couple of human generations.

If you get to enlarge the definition of bicycle to include foot-on-ground straddled wheeled-hobby-horse of ~1810 then the steam railway on iron rails still wins by a human lifetime, but in local mine usage rather than as a public utility.

Heck, if you get to include all human-powered two wheelers, the train, read just as loosely, stretches all the way back to any two sleds in tandem.  And that's a long way back.