News items about the Branch, TOMCC or Triumph Motorcycles
The Branch AGM was held on the 13 February 2025 at the BCSA. There were 32 members in attendance. Here are some photos from the meeting.
The existing committee were re-elected to their existing roles with the exception of the Runs Coordinator role, which became vacant. Therefore runs will be organised by a number of different people going forward See here for more details of the current committee.
The front cover of the February 2025 issue of Nacelle, the Triumph Owners’ Motorcycle Club Magazine, featured a picture of Berkshire Branch Vice Chairman, aka Bibendum, with his well used 2007 Triumph Scrambler taken on a ride-out between Christmas and New Year. The picture was was in stark contrast to typical magazine covers showing shiny bikes. The bike was pretty filthy and Bibendum was dressed like he was going on an arctic expedition. But it did illustrate a point. The Berkshire Branch go on ride-outs throughout the year, even on very cold winter days. There is no pressure to do so. Many of our members only go on rides in warm dry weather and we all probably prefer riding in the summer. But some of us get withdrawal symptoms if we go more than a week or two without going on a ride, so we brave the freezing conditions throughout the winter. In fact, with the right kit on, riding in the cold when its dry is a lot of fun. So if you’re the sort of biker who can’t bear to give up riding just because it’s winter, you’ll feel at home at the Berkshire Branch. Our Club nights continue all year, every Thursday evening as well, whatever the weather, but in the winter most people do come to those in cars. We’re not completely mad !! See the full magazine cover below.
Looking back at 2024 we’ve seen lots of new faces at both our ride-outs and club nights. Its been a busy year for the Branch. We’ve met every Thursday with turnouts of 20 plus in the winter months, and 40 or more on dry summer nights. During the winter months we had presentations on touring in India and record breaking at Bonneville salt flats, a quiz night and bring and buy sale. We also adopted a new badge for the Branch and produced a new line of clothing and regalia with it on. We’ve had more 40 than rides organised this year and gone on visits to Cassington Bike Night, Triumph Day at the Ace Cafe, Triumph Day at Sammy Miller’s Museum and to the National Motorcycle Museum. We’ve also gone on the Easter Egg Run and Christmas Toy Run.
The highlight of the year was attending the TOMCC 75th Anniversary weekend at Shelsley Walsh. Another great weekend was spent with our Branch stand at the British Superbike Championship at Thruxton. At our home base at the BCSA we have hosted two lunchtime bike meets, our Old Motorcycle Gathering and a barbecue evening. We’ve also taken our Branch stand to several other shows including MAG’s Easter Show, Dr B’s, Popham Megameet and the Swallowfield Show.
We had more than 60 people at our Christmas buffet on our last Club Night of the year.
See the video below to look back photos of the rides we have gone on this year.
Looking back at 2023 we’ve seen lots of new faces at both our ride-outs and club nights. Its been a busy year for the Branch. We’ve met every Thursday with turnouts of 20 plus in the winter months, around 40 on dry summer nights and more than 50 turned out to hear Norman Hyde speak in March. We’ve had 44 rides organised this year. We’ve also had two lunchtime bike meets, our own Old Motorcycle Gathering and we’ve taken our Branch stand to several other shows including the Swallowfield Show and Dr B’s. We joined in the annual Toy Run and Easter Egg runs, went to Sammy Miller’s Triumph day and Bulldog Triumphs Launch day. We had a quiz night, a BBQ and a bring and buy sale. Altogether, we’ve had around 100 events for Branch members to meet together. See below for some photos of the year.
We’re planning another year full of activities in 2024, so we can all look forward to having more fun on our Triumph’s next year.
Triumph has announced they will discontinue the Thruxton and is producing an exclusive limited Thruxton Final Edition to mark the final production run of a British legend in exquisite style. For information follow this link .
The first Thruxton was produced by Triumph in 1965. This was a production racer and only 52 were made with nearly all of them bought for racing. The Thruxton pictured is the very first of those 52 and is currently owned by Berkshire Branch member Richard and was restored by his brother Greg. See here for more information about this special bike.
The Thruxton name was not used again by Triumph until 2003, when the Hinckley based company launched one based on the new Bonneville which had come out two years earlier. It had an 865cc engine, as compared 790cc for the standard Bonneville, swept back exhausts, rear set foot rests and low clip-on bars. As with the standard Bonneville, this bike was air cooled and had twin carburettors. In 2008 it was upgraded to electronic fuel injection along with the rest of the Bonneville range.
In 2016, Triumph completely redeveloped their Modern Classic range with new water cooled models and as part of that they launched the Thruxton 1200 along with a variant with higher specification suspension called the Thruxton R. Since then Triumph have produced a number of updates including an even higher specification model, the Thruxton RS, the Thruxton Factory Custom and a Chrome Edition with an all chrome tank.
The modern Thruxton’s have frequently been used as a starting point for building custom cafe racers. Numerous custom examples can been seen at bike shows.
So is this really the end of the Thruxton? Well, its been discontinued before and then come back, so maybe it will make a reappearance in the Triumph line up in the future.
Triumph Motorcycle sales, revenues and profits surged ahead in 2022. The company has just published it’s accounts for the year ending June 2022 showing that it’s world-wide sales of motorcycles had increased by over 25% to 89,143, up from 70,838 the year before. Revenues showed an even bigger increase of over 41% to £711 million, up from £502 million in the year ending June 2021, while profits increased to nearly £50m (£49,964K) for the year.
The percentage of the company’s motorcycles sold overseas has increased to 89%, up from 86% the year before, showing Triumph is firmly established in world markets.
The company says it remains dedicated to the continuous improvement of its products and committed to meeting it’s customers needs and desires.
Amen to that.
This year was our first full year of activities after two years disrupted by the pandemic. We made good use of it with around 100 activities/events organised which were opportunities for Branch members to meet up during the year. We had about 40 ride-outs, held our Old Motorcycle Gathering show, held two other bike meets, had our Branch stand at half a dozen other events, met every single Thursday evening and hosted the National AGM. Here are some photos of the year.
I hope you enjoyed the year. I am looking forward to having more fun with you all on our Triumph Motorcycles in 2023.
Keep on rolling!
Ton-Up Ted
This is a copy of the Branch newsletter emailed out to all Branch members in January 2021
This is a copy of Branch Newsletter emailed out to all Branch members in February 2021
