My father and I designed a railway sailer similar to the landsailer in the picture. Our design used two bucket seats, 4 railway pumper car wheels, and one homemade airfoil very similar to the airfoil at the front of the land sailer. An airfoil offers higher performance over a standard sail. The pitch of our foil was controlled via a small gearbox and hand crank. We exceeded 40 mph on an abbandon length of track one windy afternoon.

The interesting thing about the landsailer pictured above is the use of 3 connected foils to create one large airfoil. An attempt to maximize effective wind surface area while keeping the thing on its wheels. A noble effort, however a 16 meter power kite would be superior.