Phil, Because most riders just had a single bike in the 40s and 50s it had to be a jack of all trades. Most racing bikes of that era have mudguard eyes and lamp brackets for training, getting to an early time trial start in the dark, riding 12s and 24 hour TTs, riding to and from work in winter etc. Also there wasn't quite the obsession with weight in those days. NIgel Land Barton on Humber UK
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:33:16 -0500 From: Phil Sieg <triodelover@comcast.net> To: Fred Rafael Rednor <fred_rednor@yahoo.com> Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: Re: Brit Sizing was:(Re: [CR]A Beauty from Barton on Humber) Message-ID: <436A65FC.1090403@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <20051103191726.13255.qmail@web30610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20051103191726.13255.qmail@web30610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: list Message: 8
My last three acquisitions have all been British frames - a '58 Paragon,
a '58 Rotrax Shirley, and an early '60s Viking for which I'm still trying to pin down the model. Seat tubes on the Rotrax and Viking are 51 cm ctc and the top tubes are both 55cm. The Paragon is slightly bigger with a ~52cm seat tube (again ctc) and 55.5 cm top tube.
Thanks to list member Peter Brown, I have some of the history on the Paragon. It was custom built for the wife of a British club racer - a member of the Lincoln Wheelmen in the post-war era. I also have documentation of the original owner of the Rotrax, a gentleman in Portsmouth according to the 1959 police registration. Dunno about the Viking, other than it was once registered in Minneapolis. All of the frames have fork lamp bosses so I suspect their intended use was not racing per se, but more in a "sport/touring" class (which works for me).
What makes this "trend" fortuitous for me is that my custom off-topic Bike Who Shall Not Speak Its Name has a 51 cm seat tube and 55 cm top tube. Most of the time if I find a frame with a suitably short seat tube length, I'm forced to compensate for the shorter top tube with a longer (than I would prefer) stem.
Phil Sieg
Knoxville, Tennessee