Posted by Owen Roberts on December 03, 2007 at 16:42:09 from 80.189.118.110 user OwenRoberts.
In Reply to: Re: "Feeling old" (was The motor car in "Winter Holiday") posted by John Giddy on December 03, 2007 at 11:47:03:
You are correct about the epicyclic gearbox. As we know AR owned both a Trojan and a Bullnose, I wonder if the move from one to another brought the gear crunching episodes to a story input level.
Bullnoses had a crash gearbox(i.e. no synchromesh)and took a little practice before one could change silently. This was facilitated by a method called double declutching. With more practice one learned to match the revs by sound so well that one did not need the clutch.
However some people never learned to change gear quietly on a crash gearbox. I wonder if Evgenia was one of those people.
I still think Rattletrap may have been a mixture of the two cars.
AR seemed to be adept in taking real life artefacts and places to taking a piece from here and there to weld into a new fictional whole.
For example Swallowdale may have been a real valley but the waterfalls at each end may have been derived from elsewhere.
I think the Clifford Webb illustrations in the first two books may be a good guide to the actual scenes from another artists eyes. AR certainly took CW around to show him the places to be illustrated.