Portable Wheelchair Lifts for Tourist Railroads

As with almost all historic tourist railroad operations throughout North America, a southern Iowa railroad operation wanted to accommodate the ever-increasing number of wheelchair users wishing to travel on their train.  The railway was using a wheelchair ramp, which resulted in an unsafe loading process. Being non-portable, the ramp took up space on an already busy platform.

Project Constraints:
•The lift needed to be portable to accommodate the train when it stopped in different locations on the platform
• Not all of the historic rail car doors were at the same height.
• It should conform to ADA requirements for portable lifts.
• They did not want to modify either their cars or the platform to accommodate a wheelchair lift.
• The lift had to be portable so it could be stored elsewhere when not in use.
• The lift had to be extremely reliable.

The Solution           
Adaptive provided a standard, ADA compliant Mobilift TX portable, manual wheelchair lift. 

The Outcome
The railroad was now able to board their wheelchair passengers. The portable lift rolled easily along their boarding platform and it did not really matter where the train stopped. The different height doorways no longer presented a problem as the Mobilift TX could stop at any height up to 60”.