A Rare Fox Accessory, And A Mystery

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! Step right up, and listen well! Do you have a Fox typewriter with a carriage only about average length? One such as this?

And, Ladies and Gentlemen, are you tired of being unable to fit your lengthy accounting and engineering work into that average length carriage? Do you wish that you... yes you there, with the popcorn. Listen up. Do YOU wish that you could easily type out 2 and a half letters at a single time, rivaling any other writer or author in the land? Do you wish to have a carriage that quite literally takes up the entire desk space, proving its mighty superiority!?

Then look no further than the amazing, the wondrous, the awe inspiring Fox Interchangeable Carriage!!!

With only a minute of your time, you can easily swap out that lowly, normal carriage for the mighty behemoth!

I'm not sure how many of you noticed this wonderful bugger on that notorious bidding website, but it was there, and I was determined to get it. And so here it is. A monstrous, 140-character wide Fox carriage. Even came with extra paper supports (which I have no idea on how to attach). As it turned out, the fellow who I bought it from is a well renowned typewriter collector (whose name I will not mention for the sake of privacy), and so it had been well taken care of for quite some time.

Its hard to see, but on the back of many Fox carriages you can find a decal of the general model number which the carriage was meant for. Even though this specific carriage was bought as a separate unit, it still has the decal.

A bit easier to see (just a bit) is the decal on my Fox No. 25 carriage.

The thing that made this a heck of a find was the fact that not only is it a spare carriage, its a spare carriage with its original cardboard box. And I have to say, 1908-ish cardboard puts modern stuff to shame. This stuff is thick.

However, when I placed it onto my machine to take the picture, I noticed that the carriage was sliding left. Well that ain't supposed to happen. I decided to take a look to see why.

It turned out that this behemoth of a carriage did not have the standard escapement gear that is rather necessary for all my Fox desktops to function. Its supposed to be where you can see the smoothed indent on the bottom half.

The thing is, upon close examination, I could find no sign of there ever even being one. There's no damage that would indicate a part snapped off, and no screw holes. I took a close look at my 25's carriage to confirm I wasn't insane.

Yup, thats a gear where its supposed to be. Now, the only thing I know for sure is that Behemoth was built after my Fox 25 (due to the inclusion of the later style carriage release levers). Because I have no first hand examples of anything later than my 25, I have no idea if they changed the general design of the machine later on so that the gear is a fixture of the machine instead of the carriage. If anyone can tell me if their later Fox desktop has a gear attached to the main body or the rail of the carriage, it would be greatly appreciated.