Mary Joy Lu remembers watching one of her Korean soap operas and being awestruck when two characters rode a modified bicycle down the railroad tracks.
She turned to her husband, Alex Catchpoole, with whom she ran a boutique advertising firm in Brooklyn, and told him, “This is our next job, our next life. This is what we’re doing.”
Within three months, Lu was in Korea meeting with vehicle manufacturers, and three years later, Catchpoole was riding his first rail bike — en route to their first operating location in the Adirondack Mountains.
Lu and Catchpoole opened Rail Explorers in Boulder City in 2018. “We had to be here,” says Lu. “Rail Explorers Las Vegas Division — how cool is that?”
Since then, they have been guiding locals and tourists alike on the 4-mile track from the Nevada State Railroad Museum to the Railroad Pass picnic area.
“It really lets you experience your environment in a new way,” Catchpoole says. “It’s 360 degrees and you’re low to the ground with wind in your face. You’re not looking out a window. You’re in it.”
Last December, Rail Explorers received Trip Advisor’s Best of the Best and Travelers’ Choice awards for all three of its locations, including Boulder City.
This season, Rail Explorers is launching fireside twilight tours, where groups of two or four can pedal the rails at sunset and then enjoy a quiet bonfire in the desert before riding back to the top of the hill in one of the museum’s historic trains.
Tours run an hour and a half and take visitors through Boulder City’s desert. Vehicles are spaced out by about 200 feet to give groups private experiences. Twilight tours launch at 6:30 p.m. Tours start at $85 for two riders or $150 for four riders. railexplorers.net
