Fire Engines Photos, Pictures and Images Library

Picture No:

4200

Courtesy of:

Dr. B.A. Hutchinson

Year:

2007

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1930 Low Load Dennis FA4067

This is the Burton on Trent Low Load Dennis at Darlington Water Pumping station on the 7th. October 2007. The pumping station has a beam engine and two gas engines which were used to pump the River Tees into the domestic water supply of the for over 100 years. On one of the open days each year preserved appliances are invited to pump from the water settling tanks. This year I took FA4067 to pump. It has a 1000 gpm Dennis number 3 pump. You can see the jet it was producing behind the escape wheel. The hose coming from the radiator is a drain hose to remove the radiator overflow water from the surrounding vicinity of the appliance so it did not become bogged down. (A proportion of the pump water is fed back into the engine water to keep the engine cool. Intercoolers were not fitted until the 1950's). To pump 1000gpm at a reasonable pressure 70HP from the engine is required.

On this appliance there is small tank (around 75 gallons) which is connected to the pump through a 5 way valve which can give you different combinations of connecting the tank, pump, hosereel and hydrant supply connection together.

As with most 1000gpm pumps it uses 6" diameter suction hose which is just that little but more difficult to handle due to the extra weight and lack of flexibility compared to 4" suction hose.
Picture Added on 08 October 2007.

Comments

has this appliance got the whitte-poppe engine?
i hope to get to a few shows and look forward to seeing some of your collection

Added by Jason on 08 October 2007.

The engine in this machine is the 4 cylinder White and Poppe engine. This 60HP engine was first introduced into Dennis production around 1912 and can be seen in the Dennis 'N' Type which is at the York railway museum (England) and also in other 'N' Types such as DU179 (The Dennis factory City of Coventry 'N' Type) and 'Jezebel' the RCS 'N' Type. By 1930 Dennis were preferring to use the more modern monblock 6 cylinder engine (as in the Dennis Big Six) for their larger fire engines, but depending on customer preference the old engine was sometimes used.

The new engine had the gearbox and PTO integrated with the engine as is practice today, whilst the old engine had a separate pump PTO and gearbox strung out through the length of the chassis.
Added by White-Poppe on 09 October 2007.