Fire Engines Photos

I suppose these older ladder carriers - which were once very common - largely died out for two reasons.

1- The development of lightweight 15 metre telescopic ground ladders, which were quite quickly adopted as a standard item on urban pumpers in France. Used with hook ladders ( which are still a standard feature of almost all French pumpers ) these can fulfill most of the inner courtyard access issues for which the old 18 metre wheeled ladders were used.
2- The appearance of compact 18, 20, 22, 23 and 25 metre turntable ladders, which first cropped up in the 1920s, but became widespread after WWII. Although not necessarily able to get inside courtyards, they are just as useful in street access incidents.

Britain kept their old wheeled 15 metre ladders in front line use until the seventies, and many British firefighters regretted that they were replaced by a 13.5 metre ladder which weighed 120 kilos - and was comparatively very hard to operate.

One unfortunate side effect of having all these wheeled ladders in widespread use for so long was the result that British fire brigades had bought relatively small numbers of turntable ladders over the years, and the country still has very few compared to most other places. For example, London has 16 while Paris has more than 60! Berlin, with half of London’s population has over 40, and both of these European cities operate large fleets of pumpers with 15 metre ladders too.

Added by Rob Johnson on 29 October 2025.

Please add your comments about this picture using the form below.

Comments

Your Name

Your email address - this will be shown on the page and will allow the system to notify you of further comments added to this picture.