Fire Engines Photos

I remember seeing this in Edinburgh regularly. Think the booms were reused on the current Scania? Scrapped afterwards?

Added by Scott Hume on 02 November 2011.

Can any of the locals shed some light on why Lothian & Borders continued using rolling sirens for so long on their appliances?

Added by Andy Daley on 03 November 2011.

The rolling sirens were pretty effective at helping the appliances get thru the traffic, and were used up until L&B took delivery of the evaluation Scania , Volvo and Merc pumps. The last appliances to be fitted with them were Dodge / Renault WRL`s which were G regs.

Added by D.Cruickshank on 03 November 2011.

ERF pioneered the custom chassis for the 85 foot Simon Snorkel, and a major feature was the low profile cab with Perkins V8 engine set back between the rear seats. Other snorkels were often mounted on several different brands of commercial truck chassis, when brigades did not hace to worry abour cab height or crew accommodation.

Did the Dennis Delta offer any advantages over the ERF? They both had similar dimensions, the same GVW, the same seating capacity, even the same engine. And Dennis sold very few of these, so it was probably more expensive, if not in price but certainly for Dennis in terms of cost of production.

Added by Rob Johnson on 20 August 2014.

Cheshire bought two of these new mounted on the Dennis F125 chassis. Reg Nos WFM 465W to Chester and 464W to Macclesfield.Both were fitted with SS263 platforms with about 2metres of front overhang.They were powered by Perkins V8 640's and had Allison auto boxes. Initially the platforms were a little temperamental but eventually settled to become a reliable piece of kit.During my 34 years at Chester I had the opportunity of driving a number of different aerial appliances. Merryweather TTL, Dennis/Simon SS50 PHP, ERF/Simon SS70 HP, Scania/Bronto 28 metre and Volvo/Bronto 32 metre. The latter two being six wheelers. To be totally fair to Dennis the F125 knocked spots off the lot when it came to roadholding. You could confidently take most roundabouts like it was on rails. The noise levels in the cab were however excessive (I understand London FB fitted a solid bulkhead between front and rear cab to try and reduce this).Another problem was that over a period of time the chassis sagged at the point between the rear of the cab and the front of the bodywork. They were retured to Dennis' to have flitch plates fitted.When the Dennis' were due for replacement both platforms were remounted on ERF chassis.

Added by Tony Jones on 24 August 2014.

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