Nice to see Angloco back bodying municipal pumping appliances. They largely dipped out of this sector of the market for years doing specials and industrial appliances.
Nice photo. Nice truck. But wait... Ah the ubiquitous Scania Pumping appliance. I remember the first time I saw one of these in the flesh, twenty years ago in Middlesbrough. It knocked me out. It was unique (to me), revolutionary and radical. But I never once expected the whole country to be awash with them within twenty years. And even though Rosenbauer's own statistics claim that the nation's most common fire appliance chassis is Volvo, I really struggle to believe it. Surely it's Scania; they're everywhere! But back then, when I first set eyes on one of these Scandinavian interlopers, it was a landscape dominated by Dennis, Dodge, and Bedford with a few foreign oddities thrown in just to make things interesting - Volvos and Mercs mainly. But today it's almost as though the country is morphing into a national fire service. National call-signs, almost identical liveries (hideous battenburgs), combined control centres and amalgamated brigades themselves. It's coming... It's happened in Scotland, and has almost happened in Wales. I sincerely hope it doesn't happen in England. Not in my lifetime anyway...
Added by Petros on 07 March 2018.