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Three-and-a-half years without a motorcycle. During that time I never got over my obsession. Finally, in September 2011, I bought a rather unusual model. If you live in the United States, you may never have seen a Royal Enfield in person. One appeared in a recent Harry Potter movie with a sidecar, and another appeared in the movie "Big Fish", also with a sidecar, but there's no reason you'd have known what make you were seeing.
Royal Enfield is, however, the oldest existing motorcycle company. The first machine was built in 1901 in Redditch, Worcestershire in England, one year before Triumph and two years before Harley Davidson. The claim suffers a bit when you know that they did not build them continuously during that time, but technically it is still true.
In 1956 in India, the company "Enfield India" began to produce the Bullet under license from the company in Britain, first assembling them from English parts, then by 1962 building complete machines. The English company was sold in 1968 to the company that made Nortons and Triumphs, and they quit producing the Royal Enfield in 1970. The company in India continued, however, and bought the rights to the name Royal Enfield in 1995. (Before, they were simply called "Enfield".)
The models seen today look very much like models introduced in 1949 and in 1955, but they now have gas shocks and modern metallurgy, and most importantly, they have a new fuel injected engine and a catalytic converter in the exhaust, so they meet European and American emission requirements. And they're considerably more reliable that the ancient machines that were being manufactured only a few years ago.
I hope to have this motorcycle for many years, unlike the others I've owned. I can truly say that it is my favorite when compared to the others I've had since 2003. Let's hope the reilability is somewhere near Japanese standards.
Here are a few photos for your enjoyment. Click the image to see each one larger. (But you know that by now... the internet has been around forever!)
The locomotive in the photos is an ALCO 2-8-0 manufactured in 1913. It carries number 895, and ran on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. The T&NO was owned by Southern Pacific in its last years, and SP donated this engine to the Baytown Lee High School Key Club and the City of Baytown in 1957. It's been in Roseland Park ever since, and was refurbished in 1993.
The bridge in the second group of photos is the 2.6 mile long cable-stayed Fred Hartman Bridge, part of Texas Highway 146, over the Houston Ship Channel between Baytown and LaPorte, Texas.
The oil well in the last pictures is part of a field on Texas Farm to Market Road 565 in Mont Belvieu, Texas.
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Go back to my "Motorcycles" page