Stunt rider Gunther Schachermayr rides a Vespa down a railway

In the past, Schachermayr has used his Vespa to lap the Red Bull Ring, pull a plane to take-off speed, and even rode one-wheeled down a runway while balancing an egg on a spoon which he held in his mouth. 

For his latest edition of doing things on a Vespa which no one knew they wanted to see a Vespa do, he fitted one with aluminium wheels and rode it down a railway. 

Fans of Top Gear might remember the episode where a Jaguar XJS V12 and an Audi A4 were turned into ‘trains’, and the same concept is true for the latest stunt of Schachermayr. 

For this, the standard wheels of the Vespa were replaced with aluminium ‘slot’ wheels which fit on a railway, including an additional third wheel. While the Vespa itself would move along the left track, the third wheel - which makes the contraption look somewhat sidecar-adjacent - would move along the right track. 

Perhaps the most complicated question of all was that of which piece of railway to use. The point of the run was to achieve a world record amount of time for a motorcycle to be ridden on a railway, and so a piece of railway that would allow for 10 minutes and 25 seconds of riding was required. 

As Moto.it explained, it is not as simple as just picking a random section of your nearest track, because causing a delay to the rail service would have incurred a penalty of up to 70,000 euros per minute. As a result, Schachermayer chose the small Liliputbahn in Vienna, and the record was achieved. 

When considering his back catalogue, it is almost impossible to think of what Schachermayr will do with his Vespa next, mostly because it seems almost anything is possible. However, his website says that the mission is to ride a Vespa to the moon. We know that NASA is open to commercial partnerships for spaceflight, so perhaps they can engineer a Vespa into the SLS before the first Artemis mission. 

Lead image courtesy of Vienna ORF.

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