Fire Engines Photos

Is this the appliance the old Dinky Toy pump was based on?

Added by Rob Johnson on 01 February 2023.

No apparently the Dinky model was based on Lancaster's Police Fire Brigade Albion. The actual one had more windows on the side. The 1st covered appliance in North West England. Fitted with a Hadfield pump.

Added by Neal Glover on 02 February 2023.

The Lancaster Merryweather machine TJ7561 is here in an excellent article by Ron Henderson, one of a series in that publication online

heritagemachines.com/commercials/the-first-all-weather-fire-engines/

Added by Petros on 03 February 2023.

Count on Ron to cover this topic so well, with wonderful contemporary photos of several examples. BTW I encountered a couple of Darlington firemen who remembered the 1931 “country machine”, which was the oddly configured Dennis enclosed appliance with its trailer pump. I believe it was replaced by the Commer Whitson water tender NHN 999 in 1950, but there were also NFS heavy units and ATVs around in and after WWII, so it might have gone out of service earlier. As Ron points out, the UK was rather late in adopting enclosed fire appliances in the early thirties, and a few open units were still being bought in the 1950s. In addition to the French pumps for Paris in 1923 there were even earlier examples in both Portugal and the Netherlands, while in Germany enclosed cabs were pretty much universal on new units after 1935.

British fire brigades also seemed to have continued to buy reciprocating pumps for several years after these disappeared from other countries, probably because this was the only pump available from Merryweather - who were a major supplier, along with Dennis and Leyland.

Added by Rob Johnson on 03 February 2023.

The earliest American fully enclosed pumper I have come across was a 1935 Mack, and in the sunny south and west open cab pumpers were still commonplace well into the 1960s and later. Even in the north and east - where the winter weather can be pretty brutal - covered canopy cabs were only replaced by fully enclosed cabs in the late 50s and 60s.

One notable exception was Detroit, which by 1940 had a huge fleet of Seagrave "safety sedan" pumpers; one example from 1938 is on this site in picture 6992.



Added by Rob Johnson on 04 February 2023.

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