Fire Engines Photos

A few comments:

- This 85 foot (26 meter) ladder built by Magirus was probably the longest one available in 1928, as these were wooden, and considerably heavier than the later steel ladders (which were introduced in 1931).

These could be as high as 30 meters - and eventually reached 45 meters during the late 1930s, although only small number were built.

- Early pneumatic tires could not handle much weight and were not popular on heavy commercial vehicles until the mid 1920s. Fire brigades were even slower to adopt them, because city streets still had a lot of local traffic which was horse drawn, and cast off horseshoe nails posed a serious risk of punctures - which would badly delay the response!

- The idea of combining a pump with a turntable ladder was not common at this time, and I suspect this may have been one of the first to have a pump. In common with other British TLPs, it does not seem to have carried much of a hose load, and the pump was mostly for water tower operations.

- The deck monitor is very unusual! The only example of a deck monitor on an aerial I have ever seen was in Turkey, and - although every North American pumper has one - they have been a rarity in the UK, with only a few brigades ever using them...

Added by Rob Johnson on 22 February 2018.

Some German TLs from this era had a crankshaft driven front mounted pump, although these were rare on TLs and much more common on plain pumpers. This is a possibility too, as well as a trailer(?) - but fitting an independently powered midships pump would have certainly limited the ladder rotation.

Added by Rob Johnson on 10 August 2023.

see commentary here



Added by Petros on 11 August 2023.

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