David,
Thank you for posting the photos of your Le Chemineau. It is a very interesting bike, and beautifully preserved. The rear derailleur indeed is the first commercially successful derailleur, which became available around 1910.
The maker, Joanny Panel, entered the Tour de France several times as a touriste-routier before WW I to showcase his derailleur, but never finished. (Touriste-Routiers were exempt from the derailleur ban.) I am working on a story of his TdF participation for Vintage Bicycle Quarterly.
How does it shift? Do you like the indexing? Some people have told me that it took some getting used to... The Le Chemineau derailleur was missing from the "How classic derailleurs work on the road" article in VBQ, simply because I've never ridden one...
Le Chemineau made quite a few bikes - they were production bikes, not custom. But not many have survived. I have seen Le Chemineau bikes from the 1920s and 1930s - yours must be one of the last, unless it is an earlier bike that was modernized later. But I suspect it would have lost its rear derailleur, if that had been the case. The derailleur did not change at all during the production run, so you basically have a ca. 1910 derailleur on your bike. Other features, such as the shift lever on the top tube, also look more pre-war, but Le Chemineau never was one to follow the latest fads. The Maniplume cranks date from between 1947, when they were introduced, and about 1950, but Le Chemineau could have bought old stocks and used them.
I love the headbadge, modeled after a km stone on the French highways.
Jan Heine Editor/Publisher Vintage Bicycle Quarterly c/o Il Vecchio Bicycles 140 Lakeside Ave, Ste. C Seattle WA 98122 http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com
>--- Festiva 90 LX <festiva90lx@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> I really enjoyed seeing the pictures of Le Cirque du
>> Cyclisme. Was that held in North Carolina? I
>> especially liked the Rene Herse touring bike and the
>> other Randonneurs.
>>
>> I would like to share with you some pictures of my
>> Chemineau. It is about 50 years old and still being
>> used, in fact I rode it today. The Chemineaus were
>> produced in St. Etienne in the French Alps, and the
>> company may have been one of the first to market the
>> derailleur shift system. The pictures are here:
> > http://community.webshots.com/
>> this bicycle used, when I was in high school, in
>> 1955. I also have...[edit]
>>
>> David Lester
>> Hartford, Ct., USA
>
>
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