August 1907 race

[LCK81403]

I am catching up on reading material by going through a September, 1907 copy of the Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal.  During the period August 5-10, 1907 there was an Automobile Carnival at Atlantic City, N.J., with part of the festivities being races.  A segment of the article is titled, "A Peculiar Accident," and it reads in part:  "The only other event in which the mile was made under a minute was the special race for stock touring cars against time.  The six-cylinder Stearns of Leeland was the only starter and after covering the course in 44 flat, just after passing the line the fly-wheel of the speeding car burst sending part of the floor boards and the dash high into the air and badly damaging the motor.  No one was injured but the car could not compete in the next day’s races."

 

That must have been quite a thrill for the driver.  Yikes.

[alsfarms]

I bet more that a thrill...it probably scared the internals out of the driver!  Old news is rather interesting.  You never know what you find.  Our area is very rural with the county seat being 40 miles away.  Our area had rail service but the county seat did not.  Consequently, a business minded fellow created a "Bus" service to run people from the rail station (in my area) the 40 miles to the County seat.  This was like 1909-1915.  One of his fleet was a Thomas Flyer.  Our local News Paper archive tells a story of one of the trips with dignitaries, down the complete dirt roads in the back seat of the Thomas Flyer.  You can imagine what that trip would have been like in the heat of a summer day.   I would sure like to find the bones of that particular car!