about Father Brown's time travelling bicycles

[Si]

They must be reading this thread....there was a bike with rod brakes on FB yesterday!

[LiveFree]

I, too, had noticed the modern pash being used instead of an age-appropriate bike. Thing is though, only those of us who are really interested in bicycles would notice this- I think this is what they bank on. As to why a modern bike is used instead of an old one (it's kind of interesting when you think that all the cars and other motorised vehicles in the show ARE age appropriate, AFAICT. I guess they are big enough that most folks would notice! It sort of reflects the modern era's fascination with the motorcar, rather than the bicycle as well, don't you think?) I think though that a modern pash was used simply because it is easier to acquire than an old one, delivered to your door and all- time is money with prop buying- and the way Mark Williams treats it, more than one might be needed for all the multitude of series!!

As an aside, someone said something about Kembleford- the programme is actually filmed in a small village called Blockley and the surrounding areas, in the Cotswolds. In actual fact my Dear old Mother featured in one (actually maybe more than one?!) of the episodes- I think the very first one from memory! She still gets paid royalties whenever it is shown again on TV, so please- don't let the modern bike put you off- keep watching and you will keep my Mother in cups of tea for a while yet!!

Happy Cycling

[iandusud]

I've just s noticed this thread and my wife will be amused as I'm forever pointing out anachronisms, particularly with bicycles, motorcycles and cars. I've not watched Father Brown but that would have had me pulling my hair out! I did recently watch "The Windermere Children" on BBC2, which was excellent. Set just after WW2 there was a scene where some of the local youths arrived on bikes. All period correct roadsters with rod brakes but all fitted with reflector pedals. At the end of the film one of the refugees has his brother, also a refugee and thought to be dead, turn up on a motorbike. Now bearing in mind that he was a young German Jewish refugee in the UK just after the war when motorcycles were scarce the likelihood of him having a motorbike would unlikely, and if he did it would probably have been a small capacity two-stroke or an older sidevalve model. So what does he turn up on? A Velocette KSS - an OHC engined bike which was well beyond the means of most working men in those days. Clearly some producer has contacted someone and asked for a period motorbike without any thought to the context.

BTW the viaduct over the river Nidd referred to earlier is on the Harrogate to Riply Greenway and I regularly ride over it as I live next door to it.

Ian

[Oldjohnw]

Most people see a Pashley, even on the street let alone on telly, and think: look at that old fashioned bike.

I recall when a prequel to Dallas was being shown on TV. It was set in the 1920s at a early oil rig and one of the characters was wearing a digital watch.

Just last week I watched the Italian guy for the Venice to Croatia series (can't remember the name*) on BBC2. He dived wearing blue flippers and at the bottom was wearing yellow. When he resurfaced he was wearing blue again. Clearly not him at the bottom!

*Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage.

[Brucey]

reflector pedals are older than most people suppose; the earliest models hail from the 1930s or perhaps earlier than that. Early models I have seen have included glass jewels, constructed the same way as (old style) glass cat's eyes, but smaller.

[ Safety never comes cheap; there is a dark past to such things; pedal reflectors were first patented and made a legal requirement in Germany in the 1930s, which you might think was a good thing. But there is another side to this tale; the successful patentee was a Nazi party member and another similar application (which I understand to be prior) by a non-party member was refused. Having both created and given a virtual monopoly to one man, the Nazi party took a slice of the pie and gained a considerable amount of revenue from it.
Back then, there was big money in bicycles. However state control of legislation concerning construction and use of anything might cripple a manufacturer overnight. I have often wondered if this sort of thing was one element in Opel's decision to quit the bicycle making business altogether; at a time when they were the World's biggest bicycle manufacturer, they quite suddenly sold their entire bicycle making business to NSU.]

I think the plastic prismatic reflector was first made in the late 1940s but I don't know when pedals so equipped first became available or commonplace. They were certainly not commonplace in the UK for some years after they were first available. So I'd agree that just post-war they were either unlikely or impossible on a British bike. And yes, a BSA bantam or something like that would have been more credible than a Velocette, unless they were trying to make out that the rider was wealthy or something.

cheers

[Brucey]

no reflector pedals visible here

presumably the 'black paint all over' has obscured them; in another picture upthread they are clearly modern pedals which would have been fitted with reflectors originally. I'd imagine that the reflectors might show up on camera whenever a fill-in light is used, and that might be why they have been removed/obscured; I'm not sure but I think there is no reflector at the back of FB's bike either; there doesn't seem to be one here



A period correct Raleigh might look more like this 1954 model;



This wouldn't have had pedal reflectors when sold in the UK, but would have had a (plastic probably) prismatic reflector at the rear.

cheers

[JakobW]

(Drifting further OT...)

However state control of legislation concerning construction and use of anything might cripple a manufacturer overnight. I have often wondered if this sort of thing was one element in Opel's decision to quit the bicycle making business altogether; at a time when they were the World's biggest bicycle manufacturer, they quite suddenly sold their entire bicycle making business to NSU.

AIUI (some of?) the Opel family were party members and supported organisations like the National Socialist Motor Korps, so one would have thought they'd be ok on that front. By the time they sold their bicycle business the company was fully owned by GM (though ownership was purposefully somewhat obscured); the rationale at the time was that the company wanted to concentrate on motorised production. If you were to expand that to 'production including military vehicles for rearmament', that might make sense.

[Brucey]

OT: I'm no historical expert and nor do I have any particular axe to grind, but I don't think there are many organisations (of any kind) that survived that period in Germany that were not also in some way tainted by it. GM (and Ford I think) got rich by building things for both sides during WWII. [Similar stories about WWI too; e.g. apparently both sides used what were essentially 'Triumph' motorcycles, and even traded spare parts for them across the front lines....]. My understanding is that one of Opel's major contributions to the German war effort in WWII was the manufacture of trucks, and that they (along with the rest of German industry) arguably failed in this respect; the German army remained largely horse-drawn, railway-borne or simply on foot throughout the conflict. Making boring old lorries was never a high priority for them; same with the Russians too. The Soviet army's fleet of trucks comprised largely of American-built ones, which outnumbered the domestic variety several times over.

I have heard that the controlled economy in Germany descended into Kafka-esque madness; there were (literally) millions of bureaucrats without whose written instructions nothing could be done. They themselves were acting under instructions that might change from week to week. Towards the end of the war the Opel factory was still making trucks, but they couldn't even be tested because there was no fuel allocated to the truck factory. The result was that a good fraction of the trucks delivered had faults which could have been easily fixed at the factory, but not in the field. Forced labourers were likely to sabotage output in any event, but there was probably no real necessity for this, given the way it was all organised.

Anyway back OT (sort of); until I did some research a few years ago, I didn't even know that Opel made bicycles at all, leave alone that they were at one time the World's largest manufacturer. I don't know all the details but I think that NSU's factories were divided between both sides of the Iron Curtain after WWII and that this must have been to the overall detriment of the German cycle industry. In the 1950s British industry was trying to export as much as possible, and import tariffs usually made foreign imports fantastically expensive. The chances of Father Brown riding anything other than a British bike with British parts on it would have been miniscule. Even today's Pashley wouldn't have been possible then; too much of the bike would have been made overseas; Global trade is in many ways a wonderful thing but today it means it is much quicker to list the few UK-made parts on the 'British' Pashley than those that aren't.

cheers

[Brucey]

tsk tsk, I have just been watching an episode of 'Foyle's war' and 'Sam' is seen riding a bike which has a distinctly post-war looking dynohub…

can't find any stills of it though.

cheers

[Trigger]

I find it easy to avoid any of this guff by way of binning off the TV about 20 years ago.

[Freddie]

Much prefer Cadfael to be honest.

[further]

[quote]Much prefer Cadfael to be honest./quote]
What bike does he ride ?

[Brucey]

Cadfael maybe rides one of these...?


Stoke Poges stained glass

cheers

[gordonyoung]

I agree . Everytime I see that bike I think it would have had rod brakes. I restored one of these vintage bikes to take part in a local rally tht was taking place. I didn't find the rod brake's worked very well so perhaps that is why they don't use them. Here in Co. Limerick we have a bicycle business called the High Nelly who specialises in building these old bikes for people (those sit up and beg bicycles have the nickname of a High Nelly here) who could supply such bikes to film companies. (www.highnelly.ie)

[Postboxer]

Cadfael maybe rides one of these...?


Stoke Poges stained glass

cheers

None of that would go down well on the local shared path.