Norris Lockley, John Crump, Kevin Sayles, Hilary Stone, and all,
Thanks ever so much to you all for your insights into the various designations of UK dual-purpose bikes and frames. Apparently the term "English path racer" is a purely North American colonial construct, albeit one with understandable origins.
Does the wider R-P or R-T classification include bikes with both track and road rear dropouts, then, or just those with the track dropouts in the rear?
Were road frames freely adapted to fixed-gear use on the track (path) as well as on the road, as long as the brakes were removed (pending local judges' discretion)?
What additional terms would you all recommend that we use to properly and accurately delineate the different sub-varieties of these bikes?
Did anyone mount rear derailleurs on bikes with the track dropouts "back in the day," as was recently posted here in a more recent manifestation?
On a more technical note, are there any purely *technical* reasons (versus aesthetic or historical accuracy/purity ones and other heresies) that an older RTT or RP frame with 115 MM or 110 MM rear OTL spacing could not be spread to accommodate a 120MM OLN rear hub?
Thanks again for the wealth of info you all have to offer us on this topic.
Jon Spangler learning a lot about UK cycling history in Alameda, CA USA (aka "the colonies")
On Oct 26, 2009, at 6:58 AM, <classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org>
wrote:
>
> Message: 11
> Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:18:44 +0000
> From: Norris Lockley <nlockley73@googlemail.com>
> Subject: [CR] Road-Path versus Path Racer
> To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
> Message-ID:
> <29cfc1e00910260618h521241amb4045343df5e0558@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>
> Thanks for the couple of invitations to pitch into this debate with my
> ten-pennyworth of recollection. I hope that Crumpy is reading this
> as I need
> him to edit out my mistakes.
>
> Reading the many contributions on the topic I first of all felt
> alienated
> from the term* Road-Path *as I was more used to the term *Road-
> Track..* as
> this more appropriately described the joint use to which we used to
> put such
> frames.
>
> Then I started to wonder whether the difference in terms reflected
> the north
> v south geographical divide that used to and still exists to this
> day in the
> UK..increasingly so in terms of income ie did southerners from
> London, Kent
> and Surrey ride on paths to the office, while northerners rode on
> roads to
> their factories. But so much for my amateur sociology.
>
> In effect the two terms described the same type and style of bike
> frame, but
> is interseting to note that Harry Rensch the maker of Paris bikes
> in Stoke
> Newington, London described his frames as *Path* models, while Bob
> Jackson,
> up in industrial Leeds described his as *Track *ones. Somewhere in the
> middle of the country Mercian used the term* Track. *There again,
> Condor and
> Hetchin in London preferred the word *Path*, and Hill Special in
> the murky
> nothern textile town of Padiham also, very surprisingly called his
> frames*Path
> *ones.Meanwhile David Rattray up in Scotland called his Flying Scot
> models*Path
> *ones, Buckley Bros in London preferred *Path* too, but Pennine in
> Bradford,
> LH Brookes in Manchester, both up north, used* Track*, as did Bates of
> London and Les Ephgrave, also in London. Sitting on the fence in
> the debate
> was Sandy Holdsworth, also of London who referred to his Zephyr
> frame as
> being..wait for it...*Track, Path and Road.*
>
> No English builder that I know of or any of the thousands of
> cyclits whom I
> have kniown have ever used the term
Jon Spangler Writer/editor Linda Hudson Writing
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