Showing posts with label American LaFrance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American LaFrance. Show all posts
How a JOX model American LaFrance ladder truck was delivered in the 40s
The straight-frame Model JO and JOX was the industry's fist compact, cab forward service aerial. The JO/JOX established the basic configuration of American aerial ladder trucks for many years to come. This pioneering design placed the engine and driver ahead of the front axle. An extremely wide cab enveloped the entire front end of the vehicle. The compact JO/JOX was significantly shorter than a conventional six-wheel tractor-trailer aerial ladder truck. With an overall length of 40 feet, 30 inches, the JO/JOX would fit into any fire station that could house a standard city service ladder truck. Best of all there was no need for a tillerman to steer the rear end of the apparatus.
https://www.trucksplanet.com/catalog/model.php?id=1217
just waiting through the years for a new home and some owner that will appreciate a 1917 American LaFrance firetruck
and I just learned that the co-founder's name was Truckson LaFrance. interesting 1st name
http://jingletruck.com/1917-american-lafrance-fire-17387
some crazy wonderful gearheads took a pair of American LaFrance speedsters to the Paris to Peking Rally
http://www.blackhorseracing.com/building-road-rally-racing-roadster/ all of the drop down menus do NOT link to other pages, they result in downloads of some file. I'm not opening them.
They brought a 1915 and a 1925 American LaFrance speedster on the Peking to Paris Rally http://www.endurorally.com/pages/peking-to-paris-motor-challenge-2016-participants
Tim – owner of Red Car Restorations in Rockwall – and his team of auto craftsmen hand-built a 1915 and 1925 American LaFrance, which he and the owner of the vehicles, Steve Trafton of Whidbey Island, WA, will pilot for the month-long rally.
The project took two years to complete, turning what were once two fire trucks into finely-tuned Speedsters measuring nine and a half feet tall and 20 feet long, with the tires measuring at 40 inches tall and the engine displacement at 900 cubic inches.
Steve Trafton(USA) / Katherine Trafton(USA) 1915 - American La France
Tim Taylor(USA) / Ike Trafton(USA) 1925 - American La France
Below is a 1917 LaFrance Tourer Speedster
http://gerardbrown.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Day-02-Datong-Erenhot/G0000VuESEKlPYDo/I0000nUuhIOL_SBg/C0000ihFK0ADq8ds
a car that can be driven across a continent, and a car you can stand on... I dig that.
http://gerardbrown.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Place-Vendome/G0000AbvLgyIVNSE/I0000Sj7V9olaep0/C0000ihFK0ADq8ds
http://gerardbrown.photoshelter.com/gallery-collection/Peking-to-Paris-2016/C0000ihFK0ADq8ds is a great link to see the cars on the route, or get a gallery of any one particular car based on the number it was registered with at this list of oldest to newest in each class http://www.endurorally.com/pages/peking-to-paris-motor-challenge-2016-participants
33 cars who set out to tour New Zealand in January 1917, to survey the roads to get improvements made, only 10 made it
100 people including MPs, Roads Board members, business managers, telegraph operators, photographers, an ambulance man, three land scouts, a biographer, and a handful of reporters were in 33 cars set out on the tour in January 1917.
Only 10 cars completed the journey, such were the Northland roads and conditions.
Back then the roads North from Auckland were the worst in the country - so when rain began to fall, the dust clouds that had covered everyone were replaced by mud and slush. Cars capsized or became bogged, axles broke and tires burst, making the two week journey arduous and unpleasant.
Many of the cars had to be towed out by teams of ox, and so many became fed up with the conditions they resorted to shipping their cars back.
In spite of these atrocious conditions it was not until 1936 the road became an all weather route through the Waipu Gorge and the main road didn't pass over the Brynderwyns until 1938.
Construction of the coastal road north of Wellington, 1939.
Yesterday they finished a centennial with 100 year old cars, and some people were in period correct costumes, and where possible they took the original route, but avoided areas where they would hold up traffic
this American LaFrance speedster is featured at http://www.driven.co.nz/reviews/classic-cars/some-like-it-hot-1915-lafrance-speedster/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/northland-age/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503402&objectid=11786946
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/257047/318825.html?1351316974
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19170131.2.96
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/centennial-highway
quite bizzare, but true, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has some cool things that were donated, but never went into its museum, and they are finally tired of storing them, so it's auction time in 5 weeks
No, they don't seem to have any one with the motivation to take a single decent photo, even with a cell phone... but they are going to get these sold to go to a good home... so, there's that.
One old steam pumper, and a real 1826 praire schooner. The Consetoga wagon was prevalent in the east for heavy hailing, but the schooner was the choice of pioneers in the west for it's light weight when winching up mountains and crossing rivers... it was nearly a boat on wheels, an they sometimes had to float.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/prairie-schooner
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Conestoga-wagon#ref23895
The pumper is an American LaFrance
http://nortonauctioneers.com/Auctions/Americana/Americana.html
Americana Auction
Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indianapolis, Indiana
Saturday, March 11, 2017 @ 10:30 a.m.
Digging a bit I find that the reason these are coming out of deep long term storage and getting sold is that the museum wants to double in size http://www.indyracingmuseum.org/news/ now that it has a new head honcho exec director who was realized the 1970s era museum that hasn't been ungraded in decades, and has 300 cars that can't get displayed because the museum is too small.
“The lighting, the technology, it’s vintage 1976,” said Betsy Smith, who is in her second year heading the nonprofit foundation that operates the museum. “We’re a racing museum, but nothing in here moves. Except the trophy.”
She nodded toward the Borg-Warner Trophy, the 5-foot tall Indy 500 winner’s trophy, which was rotating slowly on a lazy Susan. “I’d like to get some interactive technology in here and some video so that visitors could really experience racing,” she said.
Now, about 60 cars (1/5th of all their inventory) are displayed in the museum’s 30,000 square feet. The foundation owns 300 additional cars that for lack of space gather dust in the museum’s basement. “You never want to display your entire collection all at once,” Smith said, “but (with the expansion) we could display maybe 150 and rotate them more often.”
Instead of visitors simply inspecting parked cars, she wants to do a better job of telling the stories of the cars, possibly with video tablets placed around the vehicles that show the race cars actually racing or by other high-tech methods. “Like a hologram of Donald Davidson that you could ask questions to,” Smith said. Davidson is the Speedway’s encyclopedic historian who is known for having the most minute detail at his fingertips.
Visitors come from all over the world to see the Speedway’s museum, but total attendance, 127,000 last year, is 1/3rd the Indy Museum of Art and 1/10th of The Children’s Museum (about 1.2 million a year).
Doubling the size of the Speedway museum is a tall order of about $100 million, but unlike other museums, it has no endowment fund, no corporate sponsorship and until recently no members. It has relied on the Hulman-George family, which owns the track and allows the museum to stay in its building rent-free, and on gate receipts that amount to about $1 million a year.
Until now, the museum has never in its history tried to raise any money. Seriously, how does it think it's representing 100 years of innovation in racing with 60 cars? No videos, no interaction, and nothing upgraded from the 70s? Hell, I've done a better job with this blog of telling Indy 500 history!
"The spectacular items in this one-of-a-kind auction tell important stories about life in America in the days of our grandparents and great grandparents, and deserve to be displayed and used in an appropriate setting. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum was never intended to be that setting and it is time they find a home where they can be enjoyed as treasured examples of American life of 75 to 100 years ago, or more" said Betsy Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Indianapolis Motor Speedway Foundation that operates the museum.
