Horses of Iron

berkshire-Eagle-Logo-crop-630x200.jpg

(Wiki:)
The Berkshire Eagle is an American daily newspaper published in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and covering all of Berkshire County, as well as four New York communities near Pittsfield. It is considered a newspaper of record for Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
... and:
Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. The population was 44,737 at the 2010 census. Although the population has declined in recent decades, Pittsfield remains the fourth largest municipality in western Massachusetts, behind only Springfield, Holyoke, and Chicopee.

In 2005, Farmers Insurance ranked Pittsfield 20th in the United States as "Most Secure Place To Live" among small towns with fewer than 150,000 residents. In 2006, Forbes ranked Pittsfield as number 61 in its list of Best Small Places for Business. In 2008, Country Home magazine ranked Pittsfield as #24 in a listing of "green cities" east of the Mississippi. In 2009, the City of Pittsfield was chosen to receive a 2009 Commonwealth Award, Massachusetts' highest award in the arts, humanities, and sciences. In 2010, the Financial Times proclaimed Pittsfield the "Brooklyn of the Berkshires", in an article covering its recent renaissance.

Leonard Quart | Letter From New York: Cycling in the city:
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/leonard-quart-letter-from-new-york-cycling-in-the-city,530962

Starts:
NEW YORK — In the mid-1890s, New York was seen as the "Metropolis of Cycledom," home to 250,000 bike-owning citizens, ten cycling journals, 55 cycling clubs in Manhattan alone, twenty-nine cycling academies, and cycling racks everywhere from Madison Square Garden to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bicycles became a status symbol for the city's middle class, which was committed to buying the most expensive, luxurious and tasteful bicycle and accessories possible. Even though it was seen as a genteel, decorous pastime and riding extremely fast was frowned on, the reduction in the cost of bicycles brought a number of new young riders who rode wildly and irresponsibly.

Still, not many years later, the city's citizenry would abandon the bicycle as quickly as it had been taken up. In 1899, approximately 1.2 million bicycles had been produced in America — four years later, only half as many were made. Public interest waned, and the bicycle magazines and schools closed.

New York City spent the decades that followed embarking on a transportation policy that stressed mass and, later, automobile transportation, and completely ignored the bicycle. However, cycling culture was revived in the city about a decade ago. Today the bicycle, rightly or wrongly, is often associated with progressive values like environmentalism,

Includes:
But clearly not every New Yorker sings the praises of bike culture. Many people I know who are in their 70s and 80s view bicyclists as a danger to themselves, especially badly-paid restaurant deliverymen on electric bikes, who seem to follow no traffic rules at all (Of course, their difficult job is totally dependent on how fast they can make deliveries). I am not certain that I can find statistics that bear out how many pedestrians are injured, but the fear and anger that pedestrians feel can't be blithely dismissed.

A friend in his mid-80s told me that he was knocked over by a bike going the wrong way in a bike lane on a one-way street. His feeling is that though cars may be more dangerous and the city's car traffic should be reduced, they mostly obey the rules of the road, while numbers of bicyclists ride illegally on sidewalks, ignore red lights as they race ahead of car traffic, and come at you out of nowhere at top speed with no apparent care for you as a pedestrian except as an obstacle. Another friend is even more critical of bicyclists. He sees them as "flouting traffic rules" like wandering into the main traffic area from designated bike lanes. He adds that "they are a menace to pedestrians and their actions threaten their own safety."

:cry:

BTW...:
https://theberkshireedge.com/author/lquart/
Leonard Quart is Professor Emeritus of Cinema — CUNY and COSI; Contributing Editor, Cineaste; Columnist for Berkshire Eagle; and co-author of American Film and Society Since 1945 —4th Edition (Praeger).

Folks riding with an electric-assist "tarred with the same brush" as the "Lycra Crowd"...

:roll:
 
Hehe... [Grumble Grumble] ESB "Search found 4 matches: Michaux"... BUT the author gives zero mention re Trouve and his bettery-electric trike in Paris in 1881. :evil:

Evolution of motorcycles: From bicycles mounted with steam engines to electric and flying bikes:
http://www.financialexpress.com/aut...engines-to-electric-and-flying-bikes/1093825/

First motorized bikes... Steam-this and Steam-that... ie powered by coal. [Sigh]

:roll:

PS. :lol:
 
Hehe... Pretty fun history bits... already posted in the ES thread "YOUTUBE RECOMMENDS:" though thought could CC here as mentions folks like Magnus Volk (ESB "Search found 13 matches: magnus volk"), places like Blackpool in England (ESB "Search found 27 matches: blackpool")... Video of the dying daze of horse-drawn vehicles... ("literally eating into slender profit margins"... hehe) (Wiki: A knacker is a person in the trade of rendering animals that have died on farms or are unfit for human consumption, such as horses that can no longer work.)... Touches on the small town of Fintona in northern Ireland (Wiki: Its 2013 population is calculated at 1,423) where some of my family left to come to North America...
Turns out I've been thinking it's pronounced in "American English" like "fin-tone-a" whereas "proper British" English it's more like "fint-na"... :) Hehe... "objections to unsightly overhead wires"... "toast racks"... (hehe... crazy pedestrians...) 1952... when London, England converted from electric trams to hundreds of diseasal buses... "which contributed in no small way to the disasterous smog that killed over 12 thousand people later in the year"... "trams also blamed for causing congestion as private car ownership increased"... [Sigh] Hehe... then tram systems, having being shut down about out of existence through the decades of the 20th Century, in the 1970s and on, starting to re-emerge "Perhaps those folks on the continent are right? (about electric trams)...


100 Years of British Trams
[youtube]oZShlcyBIpQ[/youtube]
 
How Cars Came to Rule the Roads
[youtube]k6CjxKnu33Y[/youtube]
 
Hehe... Current pic image on "social media" site FacePlant (sp?)...
31946571_611554192531282_134985741166968832_n.jpg


:mrgreen:
 
Hehe... UK company Ultra Motors first popped up on the `Sphere back in 2008:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4888&p=72801#p72801

... then reborn as A2B...
https://www.bikebiz.com/products/ultra-motor-goes-into-administration

THEN bought by Indian "automotive" company Hero... and today/next month going on sale in India (as reported via ES Newz):
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=57933&start=5500#p1380412

$600 (Beaver Bucks) each??? I'll take two please... Hehe...

a2b-speed-right-side-view_600x300.jpg
 
New Electric Cycle (1966)
[youtube]Aq13koCQhic[/youtube]
 
^^ Hehe... betcha it was hard to pedal...
bugt56-01-1.jpg


:lol:
 
Things That Arent Here Anymore with Ralph Story KCET PBS
[youtube]ta9Mcjrq2Jw[/youtube]
 
So the discussion was about the need to build what would be known as a 'Lane.' The response being "A LANE, you say. Extraordinary." Someone would have to bring up the need to make it wide enough so that if there were TWO bikes, moving in opposite directions, they could pass one another. Picture the shock of these people being thrust into today.
 
La-Crosse-Tribune-new-logo1.jpeg

(Wiki:)
The La Crosse Tribune is a newspaper published in La Crosse, Wisconsin, covering the tri-state area of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota in the USA.
... and:
La Crosse is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of La Crosse County. Lying alongside the Mississippi River, La Crosse is the largest city on Wisconsin's western border.

The city's estimated population in 2016 was 52,109. The city forms the core of and is the principal city in the La Crosse-Onalaska, WI-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of La Crosse County and Houston County, Minnesota, with a combined population of 135,298.

The Way it Was: Early electric streetcar:
https://lacrossetribune.com/news/lo...cle_c2572913-edaf-5379-b924-62bad343fb42.html

Starts w/a pic:
5b6779b91257d.image.jpg

Captioned: This La Crosse scene from the early 1900s shows a motorman and conductor posing with an electric streetcar, an open, or summer, car that served the “Cemetery, Main Street and Green Bay Depot,” according to a sign on the side of the car.
La Crosse Public Library Archives


And:
This La Crosse scene from the early 1900s shows a motorman and conductor posing with an electric streetcar, an open, or summer, car that served the “Cemetery, Main Street and Green Bay Depot,” according to a sign on the side of the car.

The Green Bay Depot was in reference to the Green Bay and Western Railroad station that was located at Ninth and Green Bay streets. Electric streetcar service in La Crosse began 125 years ago on Aug. 8, 1893, replacing horse-drawn cars. Four days after the service began, the La Crosse Chronicle reported that “electric car parties are the fashion and many people are now riding just for pleasure ... there is quite a novelty in riding through the streets at the rate of 20 mph.” Streetcar service in La Crosse ended in 1945.

Hehe... "electric car parties"... The City of Toronto TTC STILL runs electric streetcars. Must check on rental rates. :mrgreen:
 
^^ Groovy. :) Catch that part about the streetcars starting up in La Crosse, Wisconsin re "electric car parties"? So I just posted on the Toronto Electric Riders about just having a regular Saturday night Electric Car Party on the Toronto Queen Street East-West streetcars. :mrgreen: Guess there's a few cities in North America (world-wide?) still running electric "streetcars"/"trolleys"/etc. Maybe we can kick off a Global Electric Car Party in Saturday nights? :mrgreen:
 
39257801_10157688063297619_3088524790873456640_n.jpg


Coalconsumptionbyregion_legend.png
 
Hehe... Again, from the daze before electrics. The Iron Maiden
[youtube]Rf8XQPKgbq4[/youtube]

:)
 
The forbidden fruit. Nostalgic if your from the future.

They don't want us going fast,.. but it looks right to me.



M.Appel
View attachment 2

M.Appel
E-Racer 004 copy.jpg

M.Appel
E-Racer 005 copy.jpg

One gas,(propane?), two electrics.
 
^^ V.Cool...
Horseless-carriage-race.jpg


:wink:
 
That's funny. I've always heard that none of the predominately electric cars finished the first somehow official race. The Electric carriage company fielded more than half of them.

The article mentions Cadillac, which was originally called---FORD.
 
First Russian electric car:

First Russian Electric Car.jpg

in Russian:
http://samodelkin.komi.ru/history/hrusel.html

The small model followed the design of the original layout at that time: the front wheels of large diameter - leading, the transmission of chains from two unrelated electric motors, under the crew's floor - the power plant. To control the car were rotary rear wheels with a smaller diameter than the front. The front wheels were suspended to a steel tubular frame on four coil springs, the rear wheels on a transverse semi-elliptic spring. All wheels are of a cart type, wooden, with solid rubber tires and bronze bushings.

In the cab behind the two-seater cabin was a bulky battery compartment, above which was a control post with a driver's seat. On the side of the box with batteries there were two steps along which the driver ascended to the control post.

To slow down and stop the crew served as electric recuperation and mechanical brakes. The speed control in the range from 1.5 to 35 km / h was carried out by a nine-step controller.

Romanov attached great importance to reducing the weight of an electric vehicle. He was an experienced specialist in electrical engineering, he understood the technical difficulty of creating light batteries. Nevertheless, it is in this direction that he strenuously works. Accumulators of the Romanov design had thinner plates than most of the batteries of that time, and were not located vertically, but horizontally. The mass of the gratings that formed the basis of these plates was 30% of the total mass, while in the case of batteries of other designs this figure reached 66%.

The electric motor of its own design, light and high-speed, developed a power of 4.4 kW, equivalent to 6 hp, at 1800 rpm. And finally, a light frame made of pipes, a rational design of the chassis and body allowed to bring the mass of the two-seater electric car up to 720 kg, of which 350 kg were accounted for by accumulators. Here it should be noted that one of the most advanced electric vehicles of those years of French "Janto" mass was 1,440 kg, including 410 kg accounted for by accumulators.
 
Back
Top