Riding an Enfield with Henry Manney III

Garbed for colonial duty —in America.
(Cycle World Photo)

 Henry N. Manney III was a legendary automotive columnist whose writing invariably was salted with humorous wisecracks. 

I was delighted, recently, when I came across Manney's appreciation of the Royal Enfield Bullet of 1977, published that year in Cycle World magazine. 

Keep reading and I will submit for your appreciation some of what he wrote about the Royal Enfield 350. 

Or, you can read the whole article here. 

Somehow I had vaguely assumed Manney the Third was British. He did put on a faux Colonel Blimp accent ("...they may well larf...") for the Royal Enfield article. 

But no, he was an American, born in Virginia, the son of a decorated Marine colonel and grandson of an admiral. 

A World War II veteran himself, he used his G.I. Bill educational benefits to take ballet lessons. He'd have seen the humor in that.

He raced cars (including the tiny Crosley Hotshot), and became a motorsports journalists in 1955, when invited to submit an article for Motorcycling magazine.

Discovering that, as a journalist, he could get into races for free, "I have never looked back," he wrote.

His description of racing in the 1957 Mille Miglia in his Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce was a true classic of his style. He was the passenger (navigator), but his main role was "extruding the floorboards with my legs" as the car approached turns.

Today, Manney's many jibes at India, Indians and the Royal Enfield of that day could raise an eyebrow. Or two. But some context is necessary.

In the day, it was clear to readers that Manney was joshing. His digs were meant to be read as endearments. Obviously exaggerated and outdated, even when they were written, his criticisms typically brought a rueful smile, even from victims.

Among those victims would be the readers, whom Manney playfully demanded know what he meant by dubbing the Bullet a "coelacanth." That's a fish thought extinct for 66 million years, but found alive in 1938. You couldn't just Google that definition in 1977.

Nothing and no one was immune to his deliberate slander, which always seem to be made more in passing than in anger. How could you take it seriously?

It helped that Manney posed for goofy pictures of himself in costume, to accompany some articles. This one shows him dressed like a Victorian colonial gentleman. He once posed for an article dressed in a suit of armor.

I think it's fair to say that Manney wrote for an audience that would understand his asides.

An example here is his repeated insistence that the Royal Enfield Bullet did not need its neutral finder lever because neutral was "child's play to find" on an Enfield!

Later he would add "you could find neutral with your eyes closed."

Though he never explained, I assume, by this, he was making the point that a "false neutral" lurks between every gear on those old Albion gearboxes.

So, it's easy to find a neutral, wanted or not, right?

The neutral finder lever is often the only way to find the intended neutral. It's not useless; it's indispensable. But never mind.

Manney certainly would have believed that, if you recognized his distinctive byline, you were looking for entertainment.

And I like to think that he also believed that if you were interested in an article on the Royal Enfield Bullet you probably already were sold on liking it, flaws and all.

He died in 1988. I miss him still.

Quotes:

"Just getting on the bike shoots one backward 30 years in time — a time with clean teenagers, cheap gas and about 1/100th of the stoplights we now have."

"What we have here is a motorcycle for people

who

like

motorcycles

to look like motorcycles and act like them, preferably English motorcycles of the early Fifties."

"The whole picture may seem a bit dumpy in these days of streamlined cylinder head nuts, and the Madras Enfield budget apparently doesn't extend to buying quite enough spaghetti to cover the electrical wiring completely, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

"He rode it straight through the shop to the accompaniment of the clatter of downed tools and remarks like why would anybody want to restore an Enfield? followed by you don't mean that's NEW?"

"Gracious me, how the twilight of the British Raz has lingered on in Madras as, for old time's sake, the Enfield even showed the statutory float bowl drip and occasional oil leak."

"About the only complaints I can think of, as I really like the bike, are a too-stiff throttle return spring, miniscule grips, and a front brake too tiny and inefficient to ever stop before nailing your ever present sacred cow."

"Long stroke is not dead, good shifting is not dead: long live a 350 overhead that feels like a fussless 500 flathead! join us as we putt off into the distance on our Instant Classic..."

One final swipe, although possibly an honest error: the "Specification" box attached to the article lists the Enfield lubrication system as "wet sump."

Yeah; but it's supposed to be a dry sump system (I say, as I wave away clouds of oil smoke on start-up).

Here's what it looks like when a Royal Enfield Bullet "wet sumps."

Just let me ride my Royal Enfield!

 I am miserable. I haven't ridden my Royal Enfield motorcycle in weeks. 

Life, as they say, has intervened. 

Only in small ways, fortunately. I am healthy, for my age. My immediate family is not in crisis, although there are some health challenges ahead. 

Officially I don't even "work." I am "retired." 

Some retirement. The list of duties is laughably small, but it's enough to be distracting.

It's summer; the yard needs tending. The barbecue grill is out of gas. My wife thinks the air conditioner is failing. Friends came over for lunch (a welcome diversion). 

My mailbox is crammed with pleas for help from organizations that aid people facing starvation, or death from disease or missile attack. What right have I to complain?

And yet, I do.

I know that it is me who is making me miserable. I'm focusing on the wrong stuff.

My key problem is the struggle with technology and modern "conveniences." In the process I  have virtually managed to derange my entire digital life as I flounder with online apps, sign-on protections, and general paranoia.

Today I had to admit to myself that I am no longer really a motorcyclist. I am a motorcycle blogger who spends time he should be riding instead wrestling with the internet.

Yesterday's hassle, with my "domain provider," left me unsure whether I still have a domain (although I paid for it), how safe it is, and what its password might be?

Last night I dreamed I was back in college, with an essay due at a 10 a.m. class. All I could do was bash out a plea for more time on the back of a menu from a Chinese restaurant, using a broken typewriter. I began running, barefoot, across campus to deliver it, knowing I would be late and the teacher would refuse.

For some reason the path I was running on was ankle deep in water. I never got to class.

That's what it's like, for me, dealing with the internet!

Luckily I know the cure. All I have to do is ride my motorcycle.

Motorcycles rode the rails in Norway

Norwegian made Tempo motorcycle with Sachs fan-cooled motor, converted to run on railroad tracks.

 My wife and I took a ride this summer down the Flåm Railway in Norway, on the way to a fjord cruise. 

For great scenery the ride on the railroad rivaled the cruise through two famous fjords. 

That's because the railroad is very steep as it descends from the top of a mountain range to sea level. 

Its claim to being Europe's steepest standard railway relies on the fact that its steel wheels run on ordinary rails. No racks or cogs to keep this train from skidding off. 

The train does have back-up braking systems, though, and the freight it carries is limited, to prevent building up too much speed.

Two 180-degree curves help level things out, too. Impressively, one of those big turns is inside a tunnel. No scenery inside there, unfortunately.

Very popular with tourists, the Flåmbana, as it is called, gets its own museum, at the end of the line in Flåm, Norway.

That's where you board a boat (hardly big enough to be called a ship, although cruise ships do visit this port) to carry on your journey through the world-class fjords.

But first, you should visit the railway museum. It's free, and right there on the docks. It houses a 1944 electric railway locomotive and, incredible to me, vintage motorcycles.

Rude and crude. Sachs powered railroad bike, carrying the rider's skis.

Yup, motorcycles. Motorcycles that ran on railroad tracks, with the help of a third wheel on an outrigger, sidecar style.

Dubbed "fireflies" by their riders, the odd devices were used for track maintenance and inspection — weather permitting, I assume.

A video in the museum explains that the obviously crude devices, originally pedaled like bicycles, weren't expected to crawl back up the steep railroad. They only went downhill, being loaded onto trains for the trip back up.

Old photo in museum shows riders on a pedal-powered firefly.

You only have to look at them to realize how dangerous they'd be to ride. Speeds of 60 kmph could be achieved downhill, and even a rock on a rail could mean disaster, according to a worker shown in the video.

There were fatalities, up to 1988. The fireflies were replaced with four-wheeled vehicles that must have been more stable, and even offered weather protection.

Similar three-wheeled handcars were used in other countries, of course. I have never come across any others with motorcycle power, but that seems like a natural step. Their formal name seems to be "draisine."

EL9 locomotive in the museum had five braking systems, including rail brakes. They were the first to have electrical resistance braking.

The Flåmbana is really just a 12-mile spur line off the main railroad from Oslo to Bergen. It has 20 tunnels. A river adjacent to its route was put into water tunnels to reduce the number of railroad bridges necessary. That's engineering.

Building the line, from 1923-1947, was a major expense. It cost lives not just in accidents but, for the miners, the fatal lung disease silicosis.

German occupiers continued the construction project through World War II. The area was strategically important — a ship sunk by the Luftwaffe during the invasion of 1940 remains under water in the fjord at Flåm.

The train stops so passengers can view the Kjosfossen waterfall. Look closely to the left of the ruined building for a sight of the fairy/witch of the valley. Not too close, gentlemen; she's a seducer.

Civilian passenger traffic increased after the war, but the line was always in danger of being closed down as a sort of railroad-to-nowhere, especially after a year-around automobile route to the region opened in the 1990s. 

Investments in facilities and rolling stock, and the creation of branded "Norway in a Nutshell" tourist packages, helped save the line.

The Flåmbana has been called one of Europe's most scenic trains.

In two weeks of riding trains in central Norway, I came to feel that the whole country is curated for attractiveness. Mountains and streams are a given, of course, but those romantic looking farmsteads always in the distance...

View from the Flåmbana.

New magazine features Royal Enfield

"1901" is the name of a new magazine devoted to Royal Enfield. 

 Named "1901" for the first year Royal Enfield built motorcycles, a slick new magazine seeks to promote the brand while exciting "riders who live by just one code — the motorcycling way of life." 

Volume 01, 2026 is online now, and it is impressive for its high quality photos and interesting stories. 

It describes itself as "First published in India by HarperVintage 2026, an imprint of HaperCollins Publishers." 

Copyright is held by six individuals. Beyond that, it's a bit coy, explaining: 

"These are stories about motorcycling and experiences it enables the riders to live. 

"The fact that the machines are all Royal Enfields, well that is just a happy coincidence. Or is it?"

Well, maybe not, since the publication is featured on the RoyalEnfield.com website.

Online, 1901 looks and "turns pages" like a glossy print magazine. The copyright page states that it is "Printed and bound at Thomson Press (India) Ltd." That suggests it is a physical magazine, but no "cover price" or subscription information appears.

Online, the magazine format means the photographs are lush and lavishly display. But I had to constantly zoom in to read the type. Obviously, this gets annoying.

The nine stories in Volume 01 are:

The Last Degree — Santhosh Vijay's account of motorcycling to the South Pole.

Custom Act — Norman Fields' description of a vintage custom show bike built around a Royal Enfield iron barrel motor.

Chasing the Buddha — Santosh Vijay dares to penetrate the Tibetan plateau against all the rules.

Factory Reset — Kartik Ware enters Royal Enfield's first factory in India, built in 1955 in Chennai.

Peak Valley  — Santhosh Vijay on experiencing the Mustang Valley of Nepal for the first, but not the last time.

The Last Potters of Likir — Clifton Shipway visits the vanishing practitioners of a thousand-year-old craft.

Easy on the Ice — Louis Rudd crosses the Ladakh region of the Himalayas in winter, when the road is closed.

Story of My Life — Kartik Ware fulfills his father's dream of riding his 1975 Bullet back to the factory where it was built.

The Bike Bandit — Rishad Saam Mehta on escaping from a mountain man who demanded to have his Bullet.

It's all fun reading. As you see, life changing adventures in the high mountains dominate. The magazine is aimed at an audience in India, and at one point it presents several lines of untranslated Hindi. (You'll get the drift, in context.)

Ironically, for a magazine devoted to a brand of motorcycle, the South Pole episode highlights the quote "I'd never been so glad to not ride a motorcycle in my life."

The Story of My Life article lingers long on how unreliable the old Royal Enfield Bullets were. As usual, in tales of travel by Royal Enfield, this disaster prone tendency is treated as somehow endearing. 

You would not find this in a magazine devoted to Honda.

The last "page" closes the book with the Royal Enfield cannon logo — probably not a coincidence.

Will there be a Volume 02? When? Next month? Next quarter? Next year? This is not revealed.

So don't wait. Go read "1901," or, at least, feast your eyes on the gorgeous photos it contains.