If I can get this to work. Here is a picture I took of a board track racer that is hanging on the wall of an H-D dealership in Eureka, Ca.
I live about 20 miles from the old Amatol Board track, which was called Atlantic City Speedway....for a short 3 years (1926-1928) it rivaled Indianapolis as the preeminent race track in America......all that's left of the speedway is the Administration building which my father served in for many years when it was the barracks for Troop A of the New Jersey State Police....it is now abandoned and boarded up... The outline of the mile and a half track can be seen in satellite photographs such as on Google Earth....just search for Amatol and you'll see the track outline as it is today........I have been there with Automotive Stud's father and we stood right where the front straightaway used to be!! Go here for more info about Amatol.....its origins as a munitions plant and village during WWI, and its history during the board track days.....there are photos there too...... http://www.amusementparknostalgia.com/amatol.html try this too: http://venus.atlantic.edu/amatol/ Hope you enjoy the history......pretty cool to have had that right here! Brucie
I should be out in the shop working on my latest project but I have the sickness when it comes to these old racers. Someone mentioned Milwaukee. The Miller Golden Sub kicking up dust is at Milwaukee Fairgrounds in 1917 in one of his match races with his arch rival Ralph DePalma. The crowds came out to see just these two cars race at a number of tracks in 1917. Oldfield won that day as the Sub was admittedly a better car on the dirt. DePalma came back strong at Sheepshead on the boards (where he generally bested the Sub and Oldfield). The #4 is Depalma getting the checker and DePalma leaning forward trying to cheat the wind at about 118mph in this photo. Louis Cheverolet is close behind in his SOHC Frontenac four (1917 about ten years prior to his Ford OHC conversions). This Frontenac was a truly great racing car and his Frontenacs went on to become the first true American racecar to win at Indy and back to back at that (1920 and 1921). Oldfield car was a bit out of the money to even get in the photo finish. The photo on the banks is at Sheepshead Bay boardtrack with DePalma running pretty strong for having a flat left front tire. The smoker is Oldfield in his Miller engined Delage, a stablemate to his Miller Sub. The four cars on the starting line is at the Chicago boardtrack at Maywood Illinois (there is a hospital there today). The car on the far left is Joe Thomas in a Mercer, then Oldfield in the Sub, Chevrolet in the Frontenac and DePalma in the Packard. The neat thing about this photo is that all four of those cars had American built overhead cam racing engines, three four cylinder engines and the 12 cylinder engine in the Packard. The only engine to survive is the DePalma 12 that resides in my garage (and the reason I collected a few of these photos) and a similar engine to the Sub engine was used by Buck Boudeman to recreate the Sub. How anyone could throw out these (and a bunch more) jeweled aluminum OHC pieces of art is beyond my thinking.-Jim
this is just way to cool, just to think of the manpower to build and maintain the tracks is unbelivable, the sights, sounds and smell must have been great, wonder what they charged for admission?
Most of these tracks (I believe over time there were twenty four boardtracks that they used for racing cars) were built in short order, some in the span of several months. The admission at most was around 50 cents and a program was a dime. Most were oval shaped with severe banking with track lengths from 1 mile to 2 miles. Many of the racing engines did not use gaskets and some carried up to 5 gallons of oil up under the cowl and the mechanic would pump this oil to lubicate the engine and some of the external moving parts so oil was going everywhere including all over the racing surface. They tried to use sand to soak up some of the oil but it was a toss-up as to whether the oil or the sand was more slippery. Imagine these cars at 100 mph plus on the straights slipping and sliding with open headers and some burning oil and others burning castor. As I have said before, heaven would include me one trip back to those days to experience the sights, sounds and smell of those really unique racing venues-Jim
Anyone know who painted this and where I can get a print? Is that a drawing/painting or an actual photo blown up??? I would REALLY like to have this hanging somewhere in my house or garage! Any info would be appreciated!
I'm not sure that it was a lack of technology that was the genesis but rather it was something that worked and made the promoters money. Playa Del Ray (1910 I believe) in LA was a bowl and they raced bikes and cars with some success. The first race at Indy in 1909 was a fiasco because of the dirt surface. The bricks were an afterthought to help improve a really poor racing surface. The races on the bricks were always a rough affair. Indy to this day is a flat track as bricks would not work so well on severe angles more than likely. They had built a concrete track in the Northeast but its surface was far from perfect as is the case today. Asphalt was not well developed at the time and even if it was, even today's asphalt can be problematic if it is "green". Many of the dirt tracks were shorter lengths and many were the local state fair type tracks. The cars threw up the stones and with the dust they were not always fun or safe for the drivers. Around 1915 with the onslaught of the extremely fast purposefully built racing cars from Europe (Peugeot, Delage, Mercedes and Sunbeam OHC cars) it became necessary to build tracks where they could showcase their speed against the new crop of American racing cars that were being purposefully being built to compete. Many of these cars were also fast OHC capable of speeds in excess of 100mph. They wanted tracks where people could see racecars race side by side at over 100 mph. Jack Prince the man behind many of the boardtracks had raced bicycles and originally built wooden vellodromes for bicycle racing. When they tried motorcycles on these board tracks they were extremely fast and exciting and so cars were just a natural progression. Wood was plentiful and so was cheap labor including child labor. Some of these tracks were packed for the events and they made money so the promoters like Prince and Pillsbury knew if they built them they would come and that they did. That is not to say that bankruptcy was not in the cards but the lure of making big money helped get these tracks built in a number of areas all throughout the country in short order. When built these tracks were not just a bunch of sticks they were really impressive well built structures. Sometimes though Mother Nature showed that she would tear them down quicker that the cheap labor could put them up. The technology of that era in my estimation was really quite impressive especially with the cars. Not only is Wallen's book a good read but Peter DePaolo wrote a pretty good series of articles entitled "I Drove the Boards" that goes into his exploits from riding mechanic in Uncle Ralph DePalma's Ballot up thru his own Miller successes.-Jim
Great photos Jim! I was just reading some of the paperwork that goes with the Charolette photos I posted. R.J.Johnson slid 600 feet there before crashing, must have been the oil you mentioned. The photo shows two original helmets from the day.
the track history of speedway park in maywood(the board track in chicago) is covered along with many of chicago's lost and current race tracks.http://www.chicagolandautoracing.com/
mryon retired in sun city and i had the chance to meet him and was told the board track story. he brougt along a leather sand bag and some alum rod and showed me how to weld alum. with a torch first try. he had a new never finshed curtis midget in his car port in sun city. told some wonderful stories. driving a dusenburg from the dealer to the indy race and getting caught in traffic and all most mised the race. showed a picture with him and tom mix at indy. had original bluebrints for drake/offy. told a story about building hedders for a miller 91. using axle shafts bent in progressive radius,s and heat the tubing bending it then sliding the axle shaft in the tube and hammering the wrinkled area flat took 80 hrs to build a set for the 91. one year the blocks were late from the foundry. they put a machine shop in a railroad car and went to michigan and waited for the blocks to come out or the factory and headed back to indy machining on the warm blocks as they went. one of the most impressive people i have ever met.
I used to sell these repro vintage racing posters. Here are some for the old board tracks. Gives you an idea of where some of the tracks were located.
Thanks Mike, here is an opening day program from the Baltimore-Washington Speedway in Laurel, Maryland, July 11, 1925. I hope that photo of track data is readable. It cost $500,000. to build the track. They used 3 million feet of select southern yellow pine to build the 1 1/8 mile track in SEVEN weeks! Banking was 48 DEGREES!Could some run the numbers on what it would take to build the same track today?
Here's a link with some good information on board track history - worth a look. http://www.circletrack.com/thehistoryof/0304_hist/
A photo I found in an old album from Nebraska. Omaha had it's own large board track north of the city in the late teens and early 20's. I assume this was where this was taken. It's a cool photo.
A lot of info on the board tracks are in a book called American Racers. I don't know if it is out of print or not. This book is about early motorcycles.
Here's a rather crappy photo of the (reproduced?) Sub, in the pits at Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2003.
Wow! What a fantastic thread!! You guys sure dredge up the old, almost lost, memory tracks in a guy's brain. My Grandad used to tell a story about an incident at the Beverly Hills board track. I heard it so many times, I thought I'd never forget it. Oh to have been smart enough to record it on one of those occasions! Apparantly, Harry Hartz had been having trouble with his Miller and requested a final test lap before the race. He was given permission to run the lap. Unaware that he was going onto the track for a test, the starters began lining up the cars for the race at the starting line. As Hartz came off the last turn he could see the track blocked in front of him. He had nowhere to go but toward the pits, which he did, hitting and killing a car owner and a photographer. Grandad was fairly well aquainted with Harlan Fengler and at 81, stopped and saw Harlan at the Indianapolis Speedway on a trip back east in May of 1974. Harlan said, "Joe, is that You?" and gave him a free run of the speedway. Grandpa was in, "Hog Heaven", and talked about it for years after.
This might be a little OT but anyway, my parents neighbors in Oregon City have a shop called American Cycle Works and it is a family owned buisness restoring Very Early Vintage Motor Cycles. No later than teen's. One day after knowing about what they do I finally stopped in unanounced. They were so polite they said "what's taken you so long? We see you all the time and comment about that bucket of bolts you have been driving." They not only restore these bikes they also build a 1916 style bike from scratch. Casting the motors, building the frames, Vintage paint "fo paint" so they look like the real deal. He told me they try to build and resore about 10 a year. Very impressive, I told him that I did not even feel comfortable looking at them. I am sure some of them were priceless. He had all day to talk with me but I could tell he was busy as Hell. That was the only time I have stoped by, but every spring I see him at least once in town with one of his latest creations. They work out of an old Dairy Barn that has been renovated. By the way the badest bike there was a Douglas flat tracker that was built in New Zeland. He said they were outlawed very early because thay were kicking butt with a Woman at the Helm. It had so mutch style! They were at least 50 bikes that I saw waiting work, And I bet there were less than 5 said HD. Cody
A couple of links from my "Favorites": http://www.daheim.com/indian/index.htm http://www.rumbledrome.com/ Some cool stuff here - going to add this thread to my favorites, too!
this is probably one of the best threads to hit the hamb in 6-12 months. lets bump it back up... anymore cool pics or stories?
Is the one in the picture yours? If not, here you go: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Indian-INDIAN-1913-INDIAN-8-VALVE-RACER-ORIGINAL-1911_W0QQitemZ110079656267QQihZ001QQcategoryZ6709QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Thanks, Kurt
The Jalopy Journal
