Winter
Studies
When
it’s cold and frosty there is not much incentive to get out on two
wheels to brave the elements and slippery roads so looking around
there is always something lurking in a magazine to spark the
interest. Sometimes the internet when Silodrome posted something
about the Indian Papoose aka Corgi or from Facebook and some Italian charm.
I have a
wealth of photos to browse through and books to peruse I look for
links between companies about who did what first and this leads me on
to an article that I found about a Military Bike Club from Classic
Bike magazine from June1994 and pick up on the Norton Big 4 outfit
with the side car wheel driving set up.
It did go into limited
production for the army but it was not long before the Jeep came
along and with all the other manufacturers doing something similar it
soon lost favour. The strange straight on character of the sidecar
wheel drive made it a hard machine to master so much so that when
these were sold after World War Two the sidecar wheel drive was
disabled as it was thought to be too dangerous for road use. Harry
Baughan had his sidecar wheel drive trials outfit in the late
thirties that Norton used unofficially. There are striking
similarities in the designs. I came across another article about
single trackers with some imaginative things that had handlebars and
a saddle and could be related to a motorcycle like the German
Kettenkrad.
There is a two wheel drive Raliegh special and a Douglas
single track that would not turn and a twin rear wheel Triumph model
P that had a track running over them like the modern snowmobiles. It also had a feature of leaf spring handlebars that I had only seen previously on a bike at the Old Timer Museum near Ostend.The photo is of an OEC and has a set of those interesting forks.
You
can be assured that even BMW had their version of a Single Tracker.
As for military bikes it seems that all the manufacturers did
something in World War Two with mostly overhead valve engines being
used but what people do think about about is the BSA M20 the main
stay of motorcycling at that time when the Triumph factory was burned
down taking Coventry Cathedral with it endingTriumph production for
quite some time until the Meriden works was built. This leads on to
what happened next and the TRW. I did see one at the Off Road Bike
Show at the beginning of December but thought it unusual to have gold
lining on the tank. Not something I think would be acceptable for the
military use but looked well presented though.
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