penampakan LOCOMOTIEF KRUIS FRAME

LOCOMOTIEF KRUIS FRAME

1936-1955

Here are some extracts:

First generation

The first bicycle to be called a cross frame was the “Premier” in 1886, made by the (British) Hillman, Herbert & Cooper in 1886. The cross frames were one of the first safeties and were made by several companies until the nineties. The cross consisted of the seat tube and a tube that connected the head tube to the rear axle (the last part of course as a fork, encasing the rear wheel).………

In the UK, however, homeland to the bicycle industry, cross frames were manufactured up to the thirties. Raleigh,  had them in their collection as early as 1897, kept on advertising them ‘at home’ up to 1935, and in the Netherlands even until 1936. Third generation At this point, we have arrived at the third phase in the history of the cross frame bicycles. In the Netherlands -and obviously in no other country- the cross frames became really popular by the late thirties, together with the reintroduction of a different category bicycles: the tandem, and a flourishing development of the (bicycle-)industry. After the depression of the first half of the thirties, people bought more bicycles, obviously providing opportunities for more special models. One of the first, if not the first, was Gazelle in 1930. Other well-known brands like Simplex, Juncker, Locomotief and Germaan followed suit in the late thirties. In the early fifties, every major brand had one or more models in its collection, with the striking exception of Fongers. The probably most popular model was the Locomotief “Super de Luxe”, which was promoted as a unisex cross frame.

Locomotief unisex cross frame, app. 1936 – 1955