YouTuber Spent $10,000 Building a Homemade Rail Truck to Chase an Impossible Idaho DreamPreston Summerrow, the creator behind the YouTube channel PrestonGoes, freely admits that he lacks any formal engineering background or natural aptitude for construction. "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm also not good at building stuff," he told viewers early in his build process. That admission makes what he actually pulled off – converting a 1995 Honda Acti Kei truck into a vehicle capable of riding abandoned railroad tracks – considerably more impressive, even if the dream at the end of those tracks remained just out of reach.The destination was a century-old wooden railroad trestle – the Half Moon Trestle Bridge – standing 141 feet high and stretching approximately 684 feet across Idaho's Lapwai Canyon, constructed in 1908. It sits on the old Camas Prairie Railroad – a line historically nicknamed "The Railroad on Stilts" for the dozens of wooden trestle bridges its engineers constructed instead of tunneling through canyon walls. The Half Moon is the most striking of what remains: 44 of the railroad's original 50-plus bridges still stand, per Library of Congress records, though a 2011 wildfire took out at least one of the approach trestles. That last detail turned out to matter a great deal.The Build That Made It PossibleCommercial high-rail wheel systems, which allow road vehicles to deploy retractable gear and travel along steel railroad tracks, typically cost around $28,000. After stumbling across a reference in an obscure YouTube video, Summerrow dedicated three months to figuring out how to build his own version from scratch, ultimately constructing a hinged axle system that lowers onto the rails and secures itself using a boat winch.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe whole project, including the $7,500 Kei truck itself, cleared $10,000 out of his own pocket. The result looked improvised because it was. "Not only is the build working, but it's like withstanding beatdown after beatdown," Summerrow said during the journey – which it did, through warped rails, constant derailments, and sections of track buried under rockfall.Reaching the Half Moon Trestle required traveling several miles through an overgrown canyon rail corridor, manually removing debris from the tracks along the way, and finding a path around roughly a mile's worth of abandoned, out-of-service rail cars that completely obstructed the direct route. One of the 11 smaller trestle bridges along the route had been destroyed by a wildfire. A detour through a town called Reubens looked promising until the truck stalled mid-approach and a dirt path that once carried trains turned into something the winch couldn't solve alone.Why the Bridge Stayed Out of ReachThe finale ended not with a triumphant crossing but with a walk. Once the truck bogged down short of the bridge on the alternate approach, Summerrow and his friend Mo kept hiking toward it on foot – and discovered why the road was blocked: a succession of avalanche slides had buried the path entirely. The obstacle that stopped them wasn't bad luck or poor planning. It was the mountain."A perfect plan makes a great trip but a terrible adventure," Summerrow said on camera, sounding like someone who'd just talked himself back from the edge of real frustration. "I just really wanted to drive that stupid truck across the Half Moon Trestle Bridge here in Idaho." He didn't. The three-part series racked up a million views in its first day online, according to The Publish Press, and a feature-length documentary version became available on December 26, 2025, for viewers who prefer watching the complete story in a single session.AdvertisementAdvertisementThere's a version of this story where the truck crosses the bridge and everyone goes home satisfied. The version that actually happened – two guys, a cobbled-together rail truck, and an Idaho canyon that simply refused – is probably the better one.