Pedals on Rails
Your local bicycle rental & repair shop
**HOURS**
We are currently closed for the season
reopening in the Spring of 2025.
Nestled up against the Appalachian Mountains in the heart of East Tennessee you’ll find Elizabethton. The downtown area offers something for everyone from boutique, antique, and one-of-a-kind shops to restaurants and a taphouse.
By renting a bike you can start exploring the numerous sites in the downtown area from pedaling through the historic covered bridge, riding the Linear Trail along the banks of the Doe & Watauga Rivers to the area’s most visited trail, The Tweetsie Trail. The Tweetsie Trail covers low forests, passes over creeks and bridges, and visits rock formations while traversing from one southern city to another along the old railway of the ET&WNC Railroad. For more information visit rails to trails project:
Pedals on Rails is Elizabethton’s only dedicated bicycle rental business and is conveniently located adjacent to the trail in downtown Elizabethton, TN. Bike Rentals are currently available 3 days a week: Friday, Saturday & Sunday. Come explore downtown Elizabethton and hop on the The Tweetsie Trail and ride to Johnson City. From parks to shops and restaurants, biking is the fastest, most fun, and greenest way to explore Elizabethton.
THE TWEETSIE TRAIL
The Tweetsie Trail is a rails-to-trails project traversing former ET&WNC railroad right-of-way between Johnson City and Elizabethton.
Family Friendly Biking
Gentle Sloping Trails for everyone to enjoy
Tweetsie Railroad
East Tennessee Second Most Famous Railroad
Enjoy The Scenic Beauty?
Plenty of Beautiful Locations Along Trail
Tweetsie Trail History
The original East Tennessee and Western North Carolina (ET&WNC) Railroad was a broad-gauge railway of 5 feet (60 inches) as specified by the State of Tennessee. Work began in Johnson City, Tennessee, in 1868 by the railroad’s president Eliiah Simerly. Two years later, with some funding from the State of Tennessee, rails had been laid 5 miles east towards Elizabethton and 15 miles of roadbed had been graded. By 1872, little progress had been made on the track, causing the railroad to default on loan payments to the state. It was later sold.
ln 1875, Ario Pardee and a group of Pennsylvania industrialists bought an iron ore mine at Cranberry, North Carolina, known as the Cranberry lron and Coal Company, and subsequently acquired the ET&WNC Railroad as a means of transporting smelted ore and timber products to larger railroads in Johnson City.
ln April 1881, work on a narrow gauge (3 ft.) railroad began and, by August, it opened to the public with one train running back and forth daily between Johnson City and Hampton. ln July 1882, the line opened from Johnson City to Cranberry, a distance of 34 track miles. Tennessee’s first major narrow-gauge railroad, the ET&WNC, was officially completed and served the mountain communities and its industries faithfully until its last run in October 1950. The railroad was given the nickname “Tweetsie” by the people who saw — and heard the shrill sound from the whistles of its 10-wheel locomotives — daily from their mountain homes.
