Those look like motor-pace bikes to me. Note the small front wheel and reversed fork, both intended to get the rider closer to his pacer and get a better draft.
Scott Peterson
Bend, OR
TRACKRACING??!!
> Greetings, All--
>
> Okay, so I'm doing like I always do, catching up on
> the latest news in Cycling, albeit fifty years after
> the fact. And the Sept. 14, 1955 issue, summing up the
> Herne Hill track championships, has a photo of the
> tandem-paced 10-mile event (see link, below). It is of
> the massed-start champion Bernard King of the Coventry
> C.C. trailing Jerry Waters of the Kentish Wheelmen.
> With half-a-lap to go, King would come "cleanly round
> both Waters and his tandem in the home straight" to
> snatch victory.
>
> What is truly amazing to me is that both King and
> Waters seem as if they're riding standard ROAD BIKES
> whose brakes have been removed and whose FRONT FORKS
> have been SPUN AROUND 180-DEGREES, I suppose to create
> a shorter wheelbase. These are not Bates bikes with
> Diadrant forks (which technically don't curve
> backwards, anyway). No, they're standard road issue,
> or so I believe. So, my questions are---
>
> 1. Are these in fact road bikes both chaps are riding,
> with the forks spun round?
>
> 2. If not, was there some kind of British (or other
> marque) track bike built with reverse-curve forks?
>
> 3. If they are road bikes, was it a common practice
> for clubmen to spin their forks round like this when
> racing on the track?
>
> 4. Have any of you ever seen, heard of, or attempted
> such a thing before?
>
> 5. On the practical level of physics and
> bio-mechanics, does reversing a fork absolutely help a
> track rider, or is there a trade-off in the area of
> stability, steering, etc.?
>
> In retrospect it certainly is conceivable to me that
> many an amateur clubman would not be wealthy enough to
> afford separate road and track mounts, and that the
> idea of fork reversal might be appealing to them, but
> I'd never considered it before and this practice is,
> to me, anyway, a revelation.
>
>
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/
>
> Cheerio to all,
>
> Peter Jourdain
> Wondering in Whitewater, Wisconsin