A year or so ago Oscar Mulder of My Dutch Bike in San Francisco commented that he’d periodically heard from his family that his great grandfather had a bicycle shop in Amsterdam and was the “inventor of the bakfiets”. Perhaps this was never a particularly notable factoid until Oscar and his wife Soraya began a shop dedicated to supplying bakfietsen and other Dutch bikes last year.

Needless to say I’m always skeptical about anybody who’s supposedly the inventor of anything as straightforward as a bicycle with a box. But also being fascinated by the history of such things, and bikes in particular, I was also very curious to learn more. Was he known for developing a particular style of transport bike, or a special bakfiets for a particular purpose much as Maarten van Andel is much more recently the “spiritual godfather” of the 2-wheeled family bakfiets? Such stories often get twisted, misunderstood and mistranslated as they get passed through generations and languages so such an explanation seemed fairly plausible.

I forgot about the incident until Oscar sent me a note with a number of scans of photos he’d received from his mother (who still lives in Holland). None of the photos are dated but a little archive research as well as some technical features of the bikes seems to puts most of them in the 1910-1915 range. Making the task a little easier is the fact that the shop was in the Jordaan district just a few blocks from both my home and WorkCycles Lijnbaansgracht location where my office is. Much of the Jordaan looks much like it did 100 or actually even 250 years ago… aside from the cars (yes, even here there are some, though mostly just parked), some rather tasteless new buildings from the 1960’s and 70’s, and a few of the bigger canals that were filled in.

Concerning the photos and archive info we first see that great grandpa did indeed have a bike shop at Rozengracht 49 (and maybe also 40 though that’s disputable). It was called “Bergreijer” which is a play on words. Bergmeijer was the family name but “rij” is the first person form of “ride” or “drive” and “berg” also happens to mean “mountain” so in a punny sort of way it means “mountain rider”. The Dutch, incidentally, have a thing for funny names. Even when other countries were busy with dead-serious names and advertising the Dutch were naming companies with puns and other humorous approaches. It’s a history that goes back at least to when Napoleon became ruler of the region in 1810 and forced everybody to take on a family name which wasn’t at all universal at that time. Either out of spite for their ruler or figuring the names would disappear along with the ruler many people cose silly names. I actually know people who’s names directly translate to “Fountain pen”, “Short knees” and “Born naked”… seven generations later. Napoleon’s bones must be laughing in his grave.

This week Herbert Kuner of the excellent rijwiel.net website sent a couple emails to Oscar chock full of additional information. Kuner found a Bergreijer advertisement in a 1919 trade magazine listing also a separate factory at Laurierstraat 134-142. This is around the corner from the Rozengracht 49 and presumably the factory location was just for production since I don’t think the Laurierstraat was ever a street for retail shops. There are still a number of light industrial outfits there, for example our offset printing firm a few doors down from where Bergreijer stood. This location is also not listed in the 1915 phone book, which inexplicably we both found digitized on the Internet.

Another picture, though shows yet another bike shop called J. Cruiming right next to Bergreijer in the Rozengracht. Cruiming apparently also called themselves a bicycle factory and in fact a sign notes that their shop was not open to the public. This combination of retailer and fabricator is not so strange; many bike shops in this period made their own frames and other parts. I was able to find the same buildings in Google Street View. The two buildings in the right of the photo are essentially unchanged but the facades of numbers 49 (Bergreijer) and 51 (Cruimer) have unfortunately been changed.

The photos include a number of bikes, most of them fairly standard models for this period. Inside the shop are two rows of bikes, many of them with rod-operated rim brakes and none with lights fitted. A carbide lamp fitted to the bracket at the top of the headset was the standard nighttime solution then though none are visible here. Barely visible in the lower right corner seems to be a child sized bike.

There’s a gentleman in uniform, I’m guessing police though I suppose it could also be military or some other official function in which case he was very happy that the Netherlands remained neutral in WWI. His bike has a front fender that ends behind the fork crown as was the practice then. It’s a fixed gear since I see no sign of either hand brakes or even a reaction arm for a coaster brake. The chainring is a work of art and we can see it since none of the bikes in the photos have any kind of chain covers. Apparently the enclosed chain case became a defining feature of the Dutch bike later on.

Here’s a rather dashing fellow looking ready for the start of the next Portland Tweed Ride or other costume themed bicycle gathering. I’m guessing he’s physically challenged since his stylish tricycle is hand driven through a very simple pair of levers that also serve to steer the machine. It looks like it would ride fine in a fairly straight line but sharp turns could be difficult, especially for somebody who’s partially paralyzed… or maybe that’s not really the purpose of this trike. There aren’t many streets this wide bordering large rivers in Amsterdam so I’ll venture a guess that this photo was taken on the west side of the Amstel river.

***Correction: A sharp-eyed, bike loving friend of Herb Kuner in Amsterdam points out that the above and below pictures look like they were taken along the Nassaukade. Silly me! That’s right around the corner from my home and I didn’t recognize it. Of course it is about 100 years later, but still… This morning I looked more carefully while riding Pascal to his daycare center and sure enough I found a spot where the trees (aside from being much thicker) and buildings match the above photo.

This is our first bakfiets of the bunch, and it’s a remarkably ornate one. Check out that laquered box, the beautiful ironwork that seems to support both the loooong leaf springs and the handlebar, and the carbide lamps missing from the bikes in the shop above. The bike almost looks like more of a showpiece than a utility vehicle but who knows what its function was: selling cakes or household goods perhaps? Whatever it carried wasn’t heavy given the light-duty leaf springs. Though this is a very old bakfiets I’ve seen many pictures of similarly old bakfietsen from England and the Netherlands. Nope, this is not the bakfiets Mr. Bergmeijer invented.

Now, THESE last two are the bikes in question. They’re vaguely “Long John” type bikes from at least 20 years before anybody called them “Long John”. Actually they differ from Long Johns and all of the more modern variations in that the frame also runs above the load carrier along with the steering mechanism. On Long Johns, van Andel’s Bakfiets.nl Cargobike and the legions of bicycles these two have inspired the front wheel is steered via a rod linkage below the load carrier. The two photos show two different versions o the Bergreijer transportfiets. The photo with the delivery boy is probably an earlier model or prototype with no steering linkage; the handlebar has simply been extended back to reach the rider. The other bike with “G. Goes, Hemonystraat 18″ (an address in Amsterdam) has a longer box and is steered via a rather complex system of bevel gears on a shaft. They seem to have gone from the simplest system possible to the most complicated… or maybe the other way around. The bike is clearly marked “Bergreijer” and “Model D” along the top tube.

I have seen a few other bikes that looked like these. One of them I almost purchased a few years ago but the owner decided not to sell it after all. This bike with its much more robust construction and dynamo lighting is much more recent, possibly from the 1930’s. The owner told me it was a Maxwell, a very well regarded Amsterdam builder of transport bikes, quite a few of whose big trikes still can still be on the streets. Another very similar (but still different) bike is displayed at a bike repair shop near Amsterdam Central Station.

Looking more recent than the Bergreijer bikes but older than these two are these slick-looking Veeno’s shown on rijwiel.net. It is worth noting that ALL of the bikes described here are older than the 1938 I’ve seen proposed as the beginning of the Danish Long Johns, though I imagine somebody, somewhere in Denmark was also experimenting with long wheelbase transport bikes before then. This repeating of history and reinventing of wheels I discussed earlier in “What’s really new in the bicycle world?”.

So did the Bergmeijer brothers invent this type of bike? It’s possible and their “Long Johns” are the oldest I’ve seen yet. However I’m only a dabbler in antique bikes and this was a time of incredible innovation and experimentation with bicycles (and cars, motorcycles and trucks too). There were several thousand little bike companies throughout the country so quite likely somebody else was also working on such bikes as well. Some day somebody else’s grandmother might pull a few worn photos of even older examples from a shoe box. For now though, I think it’s safe to say we’re at least approaching the beginnings of the Long John type bike.

Does anybody have any more good clues to help fill in the puzzle?

The last few winters have been pretty wimpy; hardly any snow and not even particularly cold. Actually that’s not entirely true since there’s nothing more bone chilling than a rainy, windy day just above the freezing point. The Dutch call it “waterkoud” meaning “water cold”, though it doesn’t prevent them from cycling like their water soluble cycling neighbors.

This winter began in November. It rained for weeks and weeks and weeks, right through much of December. It was apparently the rainiest November since the Golden Age… or something like that. Fortunately we were in Japan enjoying perfect weather. Then in late December it got colder and the rain turned to snow. Of course we’re talking about Amsterdam here so it’s never very much snow, but at least it’s been snowing regularly and the snow’s been sticking around for long enough to have some winter wonderland. Cycling in the snow is fun, especially in a city where the distances are short and you can largely avoid cars. I’ve always loved the quietness and lightness of a snowy city, I assume the result of the snow absorbing sound and reflecting light far better than most of what’s under the snow.

This afternoon poked my camera out the door to snap the above picture. Good thing those bikes aren’t spring flowers but no takers for a bakfiets rental this evening?

It’s ironic that some humble, dirty parts such as a parking stand actually have far more influence on your cycling experience than a beautiful frame or fancy, name-brand components. A stable, smooth working parking stand enables you (for example) to safely load up the kids and groceries, plop the bike onto the ground and cycle away uneventfully… just how you want it to be. But few people pay attention to such mundane things in the showroom so this is exactly where most manufacturers save a few bucks or euros. WorkCycles isn’t “most manufacturers” because we actually ride our bikes every day, carry our kids on/in them, move our stock between two shops on them… and listen to our customers who do the same.

Finding decent parking stands has been one of our most vexing challenges. During our quest for the perfect parking stand we’ve tried dozens. Most are so crappy that they don’t even deserve mention: All those Hebie copies from Taiwan and China fit poorly and then either bend under the weight of a loaded bike, quickly get scarily sloppy and break, or seize up from corrosion. The more sophisticated folding stands from Humpert and Spanninga (Sparta) have also failed our durability tests miserably. The cast aluminium Pletschers are light and pretty but not strong enough for bikes with child seats and heavy bags.

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We arrived at work yesterday figuring that the sub-zero cold, wind and snow would keep most of the customers away, leaving us with time to work on some projects. The highest priority is reconfiguring our workshop after building a massive, floor-anchored, steel frame to hang our electric bike lifts from. It’s a great improvement but not entirely our own initiative. The lifts, you see, were bolted into the 150 or 200 year old wooden beams of our ceiling… and thus the floor of the neighbors upstairs. Though the lifts are nearly new and operate very quietly they do make some vibration. Standing on the concrete (over sand) floor we never noticed this vibration but it drove the lady upstairs crazy. Actually she’s complained very vocally and angrily about a lot of things, apparently calling and writing every possible authority on a regular basis. Most of her complaints have nothing to do with our activities (there’s another bike workshop next door and several apartments have been renovated), but the vibration was a legitimate issue according to the various city inspectors who visited to investigate.

So the city ordered the building owner (a social housing corporation that manages tens of thousands of properties) to fix the vibration problem. It was decided that the only solution was to totally isolate the lifts from the floor beams, and the only practical way to do that was to build a steel frame all the way to the floor. We’re very fortunate and thankful that they took care of the job and paid for it. But it still requires an investment of several days of our labor to refit the lifts and lights. We took the opportunity to make them fully adjustable on both X and Y axis as well as angle, and now we’re adding more lights. I don’t think a workshop can ever have enough light.

Anyhow, this is all we were thinking about yesterday morning so I got busy with the scaffold, drills, plugs, screws and wiring to hang the fluorescent boxes on our ancient ceiling. And then the first snowy Cargobike and customer came in:

Customer: “My bike is almost impossible to ride. It’s really slow, and I think the brake lever might be broken.”

Mechanic: “I’m pretty sure your cables are frozen.”

Customer: “But I think there’s also something wrong with the brake.”

Mechanic: “The brakes are probably fine but they’re being locked by the frozen cables.”

Customer: “Oh wait, now it seems to be fine.”

Mechanic: “Sure, your bike is indoors so the cable just thawed, releasing the brake. It’ll freeze again a few moments after going outside. If you can wait 15 minutes I’ll fix it.

While working on this bike another snowy bike came in with the same problem, and so it went the whole day. Alexis and I pulled and flushed at least 15 cables yesterday. The problem is that Amsterdam bikes live outdoors, rain or shine. Tiny amounts of water drip and condense into the cable housings. On good quality bikes the cables are stainless steel and the housings are lined with polyethelene or another low friction plastic so the water doesn’t make much difference… until the thermometer goes below the freezing point. Then the cable freezes inside the housing. Usually it creates enough friction that pulling hard on the brake lever will overcome the friction, actuating the brake but the brake’s return spring cannot pull it back… thus locked brakes.

So here’s what you do to fix (or prevent) a frozen cable:

1. Let it thaw.

2. Remove the crimped end cap and make sure the end of the cable isn’t unwound or damaged. If it is either rewind, shorten or replace the cable as necessary.

3. Remove any kinks in the cable so that it can easily be pulled and reinserted through the housing.

4. Pull the cable out.

5. Seal the nozzle of a compressed air pistol against the upper end of the housing and blow everything possible out of the housing.

6. Seal the dispenser straw of a suitable light oil against the brake lever end of the housing. It might be necessary to pull the housing cap to do this. We use a generic multipurpose oil with teflon but just about any light oil should work fine. Don’t use “dry” type lubricant because it won’t displace the water for long.

7. Spray the oil into the housing until it begins coming out the other end.

5.5 Oops. Put a rag at the brake end of the housing to catch the oil coming out at great velocity.

8-9-10. Thread the cable back into the housing, readjust the brake and crimp a new end on.

This fix is valid for any brake (or gear) cable but I’m basically assuming the bike has roller brakes here. Drum brakes can pull their own freezing tricks and rim brakes simply aren’t suitable for storing outdoors and riding in snow country. Now the techies can ask me why I didn’t write anything about disk brakes.

This experience also demonstrates something about Amsterdam cyclists: Not only do they store their bikes on the street, they also ride in ALL conditions including snow. Of course they do; How else would they get to work, take the kids to school, do the groceries and visit their friends?

Speaking of snow, here’s a sneak peek at our surprising new development: The WorkCycles Child Transport Sled. We’re strong proponents of the K.I.S.S. philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid) and our Sled meets the KISS criteria beautifully: It needs no wheels, tires, bearings, towing linkage or even harnesses. Just shove the kid in and go! It’s versatile too: You can pull it while walking, tie the patented “S.T.R.A.P.” (Singular Tied/Releasable Attaching Pieceofplasticwebbing) to your bike or even have your dog(s) or oxen pull it from a yoke. When there’s no snow it can be attached to the front carrier of your bike as a convenient transport bin.

In testing the WorkCycles sled we also learned that Amsterdammers not only ride their bikes all year round in all conditions, they can also make really big snowballs.

The Swiss are known for making and liking “good stuff” thus it makes me proud when Sjoerd at Swiss WorkCycles dealer DoubleDutch sends along these great photos showing how happy he is with our Fr8 bikes. Sjoerd also does a fun blog called Bakfiets Totaal. There you’ll find nice workbike photos and great ideas.

The photo above illustrates how stable your bike will stand with our special, extra wide version of the Hebie 2-leg centerstand. The Hebie is currently the only really solid and reliable centerstand on the market, and we’ve tested them all. Our stand simply has legs with a different bend to make it a few centimeters wider… and thus (even) more stable. Sjoerd was apparently so convinced of the stability that he put his lovely Rega amplifier in the crate, as evidenced below. Now that does seem a strange thing to do but I don’t presume to understand other cultures, and it makes for a nice photo anyway.

Looking at this picture reminds me of our quest for nice, suitable crates to mount on bikes. At WorkCycles we fit hundreds of tough plastic crates to the front carriers of bikes. They work just fine and are relatively cheap. The Dutch milk crate below is a good example; It’s utterly indestructible and a handy size… but pretty it ain’t.

Customers sometimes find charming, old, wooden crates formerly used by beer, wine or produce companies. These look great on the bikes and are just about as handy as the modern plastic crates, if somewhat heavier. We’d love to have a collection of these at the WorkCycles shops for customers to choose from… but where to find a stock of them? Ideas?

A while back I wrote about how some goon stole the rear wheel of Doede’s antique bakfiets. After some measurements we determined that this bike was quite strange in that the rear hub axle and crank axle were narrower than usual. Consequently the chain line is much closer to the center of the bike meaning that even if we widened the frame (40mm!) to fit one of our wheels the rear cog wouldn’t line up with the chainring in front anyway. It was decided to bring the bakfiets to the WorkCycles shop for further investigation and repair.

So how does one transport a non-functional bakfiets? On another bakfiets of course! Here Mette van der Linden (brother of web genius and maker of these photos Doede) rides the bakfiets ambulance across Amsterdam. Mind you, an old bakfiets is not exactly something you can just toss in your car, even if you happen to have one; This particular example is over 300cm long, 130cm wide and weighs probably 130kg… OK somewhat less since it’s missing it’s almost 10kg rear wheel thanks to some knuckle-dragging cretin.

You’re the Hasidic Jew who tried to kill me. I’m the girl on the bike. – w4m
Date: 2009-07-29, 7:01PM EDT

Dear Sir.

We had our encounter on Bedford Avenue this afternoon, just south of Division. I was the petite brunette in a white sundress, riding a red road bike in the rain; you were the Hasidic gentleman (and I use the term loosely) in a blue SUV who came up on my back wheel, honking, and attempted to run me out of the bike lane before swerving directly in front of me and pulling up to the curb ahead.

You refused to roll down your window and talk to me after this incident, leaving me to shout, “That’s against the law” at the rain-streaked glass and then continue home. And while it *is* against the law — both the laws that govern New York City drivers, and also those that govern general human decency — what I really wanted to say to you was simultaneously less accusatory and more important. This is it.

I know that the bike lanes aren’t great. You may not believe it, but cyclists don’t like riding next to you anymore than you like sharing the road with us. Given the choice between inhaling your exhaust and pedaling blithely down a forested greenway, I’d always take the latter.

I also know that presence of cyclists on busy streets can make driving in the city even more nerve-wracking than usual, and that some of us antagonize the shit out of drivers by disobeying traffic laws, failing to signal, and generally acting like we own the road (I am not one of these, but that is beside the point). And I completely understand if, at this point, you start hyperventilating at the mere sight of a bike with which you have to share the road. I empathize; I have a car, too. It sucks. I know.

Nevertheless, we can’t all live in Amsterdam, and the frustrations of sharing the road with me do not change the facts: You are in a car, and I am not. You are protected from collisions by airbags, fenders, and a steel cage; I’m not. You are piloting a one-ton pile of steel; I am piloting something that weighs as much as a dog. (Not even a big dog — we’re talking Welsh Corgi, here.)

And if your frustrations at sharing the road get the better of you, and you want to get in a fight with me, sir, there is no doubt whatsoever that you will win.

You’ll win… and, in all likelihood, I’ll be dead.

This is what I wanted to say to you: You may not like cyclists, and that’s fine. But you have a responsibility to the human race, and I don’t cease to exist the second I step off my bike. I am someone’s wife. I am someone’s sister. I am someone’s daughter.

And if you have any of those things — a spouse, a sibling, a child — do me this favor.

Picture them.

Imagine yourself on your way to meet your wife for lunch; imagine yourself waiting for your daughter to come home from school.

Now, imagine getting a phone call, hearing the voice on the other end telling you that that person — the person you love — is dead, because some asshole in an Audi thought her life was less important than waiting another five seconds to park his car.

This has been a public service announcement from the U.S. Department of Please Don’t Kill Other Human Beings.

Location: south williamsburg

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1295924472

See the original ad here on Craigslist.

Thanks to Caroline S. at Transportation Alternatives in New York for spotting this on Craigslist.

Thanks to Steve Pinkus for the above photo.

A man travels with his home-built home on a bicycle. That’s all I know about this one. Thanks to artist friend Abner Preis for the tip but don’t go searching for his website – it seems to have been hacked into a porno site, I assume NOT Abner’s doing.

Speaking of houses on bikes I’d forgotten about this fantastic camper bike from Kevin Cyr:

UPDATE: Jason Moore in the first comment below reminds me of another bicycle camper/motorhome, this one traveled with and lived in full-time by Brian Campbell. His bike, which has gone through several iterations is ingenious. Brian’s situation though isn’t one to be envied; I’m under the impression he doesn’t live in his bicycle entirely by choice. You can read about Brian on Bike Portland, and also the sites of many others who’ve met Brian during his travels. Photos by Jonathan Maus of Bike Portland.

But then I begin to google camper bikes further and find that a whole new world has opened to me: bicyclists not content to merely travel by bicycle but who also insist upon sleeping in or on their bicycle. Take these Midget Bicycle Campers from Australia for example:

And then there’s this one by Paul Welkins, as seen on the Design Boom site:

Check out Welkin’s site for an amazing array of self-built, efficient vehicles and other random stuff.

Even the sober “doe maar normaal” Dutch are at it. Check out “Met een bakfiets op vakantie“.

And a family from Zeeland (as in the original Zeeland that New Zealand is the new version of in the same way that New York is the new version of Amsterdam… or something like that) who used to ride their old bakfiets as a camper, kids riding alongside on their own little bikes.

A few years ago there was an Italian firm called “Tasso Italia” that offered (though probably didn’t ever sell) a copy of the Main Street Pedicabs trike with a pop-out camper tent on the bed but they seem to have disappeared into the ether.

Of course that’s all good fun but we shouldn’t ignore the countless rickshaw drivers in Indonesia, India and elsewhere who sleep in their bikes out of necessity and not for kicks. It’s about as easy to forget as the fact that a great number (a majority even?) of transportation cyclists in the US are neither “cycle chic” nor “cycling enthusiast”. In fact they’re people who cannot drive; they’ve either lost their licenses or are too poor to own a car, and their accident statistics are so appalling that they skew US bicycling safety stats markedly toward the danger direction.

Just the other day I was waxing philosophic about big, old skool, Dutch bakfietsen after a short rant about the theft of the rear wheel of my friend Doede’s bakfiets. Then today this blue beauty came back from Clarijs the “zeilmaker” with her new Bisonyl box cover. They did a great job getting a snug fit over the strange box shape. We’ve saved the pattern and will now offer it as a standard option for the XL Classic Bakfiets.

Why blue? Hey, it was the customer’s choice. We were really skeptical but now that it’s done we see it was a great call. It stands out from the sea of similar bakfietsen on the roads here but is still timeless. Perhaps it’ll help deter scumbag thieves as well.

While I’m writing about bakfietsen again here’s some more info about what makes them tick…
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I wrote in an earlier post about the two ex-Marines riding WorkCycles Secret Service bikes around the world. They previously sent a photo anonymously from their Blackberry (that much I could read in the email) of one of them somewhere in the UK. Well now they’re apparently somewhere else, judging from the different, hilly scenery in this photo. And they’ve traded camera duty thus we see our other protagonist in this story… though I honestly can’t remember which one of the two is Sage. I think it’s the guy in this picture. Detailed descriptions are clearly not their forte.

[UPDATE: In this photo we see Cooper while in the previous photo it's Sage. Glad that's cleared up.]

Speaking of riding the Secret Service in terrain hillier than pannekoeken flat Holland and also of non-detailed descriptions, we were tinkering with Shimano roller brakes today. Shimano makes several versions of their nearly maintenance-free roller brake but their literature and website offer almost no information about the differences between them. Countless conversations with the Shimano tech support guys were fruitless. There are three basic versions of roller brakes commonly found on quality bikes:

For about a year or so we’ve been fitting the IM70 to all Bakfiets Cargobikes and the Secret Service, partially because they look cool but mostly because it clearly has a more consistent, snappy feel and is more powerful. This baffled us since the braking unit in the center of each rollerbrake seemed to be exactly the same unit. In theory then there shouldn’t be much difference.

But today our chief mechanic Eric showed me something new: They’d opened up one of each type of rollerbrake to check out the guts and it turns out that the IM70 is actually special. While the IM40 and IM50 share the same flat braking surface (like a drum brake except in steel), the IM70 has a “V” shaped, or rather double conical braking surface. This gives it more braking surface area and probably makes it self-adjusting as well.

The problem though is that the front IM70 doesn’t have it’s own cable stop, thus meaning that it only fits on front forks equipped with a little cable stop tab. Many bikes don’t have these.

Enter the Shimano IM80 roller brake due for introduction shortly. Again the Shimano literature is just worthless marketing garble but at least it’s visible from the photos that the cable stop is built into this one. Let’s just hope that they’re using the better V-shaped brake surface.

Oh, just to back up a little here… “What’s a roller brake” you might ask, or perhaps a little more advanced question: “how is a roller brake different from a drum brake or a disk brake?” I’ll try to explain briefly, without photos. If that doesn’t work I’ll try again later WITH photos.

Drum brake: Two semi-cylindrical “shoes” get pressed against the inside of a cylindrical drum. The drum rotates with the wheel while the shoes are stationary in the frame or fork. The shoes are pressed outward at one end by means of a cam. More sophisticated drum brakes have been fitted to motorcycles and cars but, to my knowledge, never to bicycles.

Disk brake: A disk rotates with the wheel and the sides of the disk get squeezed by flat pads. The pads can be either cable actuated through a helix or hydraulically actuated.

Roller brake: The IM40 and IM50 are basically just drum brakes with a six lobed actuation cam that presses the shoes outward radially over their whole length instead of just at one point. The roller brake shoes are also steel, running in a bath of special graphite grease. Does your rollerbrake make noise? Squirt fresh grease in.

The IM70 roller brake has the same actuation as the IM40 and IM50 but uses a special type of drum described above.

I’m sure that’s all just totally clear for you know.