Fire Engines Photos

Hello Theo,
the body must be from Lentner and the cab was stretched by Wackenhut. Only the pump can be built from Ziegler. That's a former civil defence pumper froim germany and all parts of the vehicle were built by other companies. Now the vehicle has a 2 thousand licenceplate that says that Kleve had bought the apparatus from the state of germany (these vehicles have 8 thousand numbers) and owns it.

Added by Juergen Hass on 18 May 2006.

I saw one of these old beauties at a thirteen pump barn fire in a small German village just recently! Although it has probably had a quiet life in its village volunteer fire company, around forty years on the run seems like a pretty decent record for any pumping appliance. As well as being apparently fully functional, it looks immaculate! One reason for so many pumps was a very limited hydrant water supply in the village, necessitating drafting from both a drainage ditch and the municipal outdoor swimming pool, which required a total of six pumps to relay water to the fireground.

Unlike fire services in the US, Canada, Poland and Benelux, German fire services tend to prefer relays from open water sources to tanker shuttles, and the common use of 75 mm rather than 65 or 70 mm hoses tends to help make this possible. In addition, many German pumpers carry a 1000 LPM portable pump to access awkward open water sources.


Added by Rob Johnson on 20 December 2023.

This example, like the one I saw very recently, is the LF-TS. It has a front mounted crankshaft driven pump and always has a portable pump too, which is carried in a centrally located rear locker. The elongated crew cab was built for a nine person crew, which was commonplace among volunteer fire companies in Germany back then, but newer units tend to settle for a more predictable six person crew.

Germany has more than 20,000 volunteer fire companies - one for every 4,000 citizens. These are in addition to 115 full time fire brigades, which are limited for the most part or towns and cities with more than around 80,000 population - and only constitute around 3% of all German firefighters.

Added by Rob Johnson on 20 December 2023.

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