Brooklands visit.

ABC's started out at Brooklands until they were evicted at 24 hours notice when The Unpleasantness began in 1914. As the current museum has one or two bits of APU lying about the place, I asked about library materials and the upshot was that I was invited to visit Brooklands last Friday.

I arrived around lunchtime to be greeted by the Curator & installed in the library. I'd brought with me my laptop, an empty dongle & a flat bed scanner. I spent the next three hours reviewing the material & scanning in some of it. I found some Factory photos I'd not seen before & a couple of useful articles, amounting to 30 jpg's, some of them Quite Large ;o)).

There was nothing of amazing import, but there was this little anecdote that I liked.

The 1915 250 "Firefly" flat twin was very light & well made. One of its uses was to drive a Sirocco fan & this was used to inflate the envelopes of balloons. During a visit by some bigwigs, one was run up to 4,000 rpm & someone asked what it could do. The upshot was that it was left running in the test shop on full throttle with the fan attached. When they returned an hour or so later, the engine had run out of fuel. It had recorded 10,000 rpm for some time (apparently with no ill effects) as the fan had disintegrated, leaving a large hole in the roof!

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Reply to
kimsiddorn
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Could you please elucidate on this event? TIA.

Reply to
David

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WW1 ???

Reply to
Mike.H.

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Ah *that* unpleasantness - it's called British understatement David!

NHH

Reply to
NHH

FWIW, it was apparently also the year of the first international figure skating championships. I'm sure some other stuff happened, too.

Reply to
Jules

Well, it wasn't a good year for the Ferdinand family .....

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Reply to
kimsiddorn

Yes, I know all about that (:-). I had read into Mr Siddorn's message that the unpleasantries had related to Brooklands, somewhere that we had lived in close proximity to back in the mid-70s.

Reply to
David

Oops, sorry David I somehow got it into my head that you were an antipodian and the subtleties of British humour might have been lost. Anyway, I'm sure Kim can give you chapter and verse, but the neccesities of war planning meant the immediate expansion of some businesses operating out of Brooklands while others had to vacate at very short notice.

NHH

Reply to
NHH

Actually I am, but I have also lived and breathed in the northern hemisphere for a time. Long enough for an offspring to have dual nationality and who spent the first three years of his life not too far from Brooklands.

Reply to
David

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