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