handcar

[ hand-kahr ]

noun

1. a small railroad car or platform on four wheels propelled by a mechanism worked by hand, used on some railroads for inspecting tracks and transporting workers.

Word History and Origins

Origin of handcar¹

An Americanism dating back to 1840–50; hand + car ¹

Example Sentences

Bike-adjacent inventions that roll atop train tracks have been known by many different names — handcar, draisine, kalamazoo and velocipede are just a few — since they first cropped up around the 1860s.

From Los Angeles Times

And between two wooden luggage carts from the late 1800s sits a railway velocipede, a three-wheeled handcar that was operated by pedals.

From Washington Times

Trump tweeted the video on Aug. 12, which featured an animated train with his campaign logo barreling through a town while Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden followed behind slowly on a railroad handcar.

From Salon

In 1962, he published the marvellous “Willowdale Handcar,” in which three young people take off one day on a railroad handcar.

From The New Yorker

But the speeder earned its name, replacing its slower man-powered relative, the iconic railway handcar, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

From Seattle Times