WATER TENDER LADDER
This is the workhorse of the brigade which every station has at least one of. Carrying water, hose, ladders, branches, first aid hose reels, rescue equipment, various tools, in fact everything you need to start with at an incident.
Strathclyde inherited a fair old mixture from the five brigades and in some cases the scrap they did not want. One Brigade even moved new appliances out of stations they were losing to Strathclyde and put them in stations they were keeping and replaced them with their oldest machines. They inherited from Central Area Fire Brigade Bedford Green Goddesses, Bedford SLZGs, Bedford TKs, and Dodge K850s, from Glasgow Fire Srevice AECs, Dennis and Dodge Scooshers, Deutzs, from Lanarkshire Fire Brigade Dennis’s, from South Western Area Fire Brigade Dennis and Bedfords and from Western Area Fire Brigade Austin, Bedford, Dennis and Dodges. Some of the Western Area Dodges were painted in day-glo with a foot wide? yellow stripe round the cab and FIRE written under the driver and written backwards under the OIC, then later written along the side of the cab on the stripe.
A lot of the machines had crash gear boxes, no power steering and flap lockers? Strathclyde started to buy Dodge K850s the first batches having rear facing seats in the back for the crew which were probably a safe idea in that in a crash you were thrown into the back of your seat rather than out of it into whatever was in front of you but in reality they made you feel sick as you couldn’t see where you were going and although it was all right going to a fire as the adrenaline was going the return journey was terrible. Then they changed the crew seating to forward facing with the BA Sets in brackets on the floor in front of you. Then came the larger ‘T’ reg Dodge K1613 with day-glo cabs and the BA sets moved into brackets behind the 2 outriders (great for slipping on while in your seat) but the other two sets were on the side of a compartment behind the two middle riders containing the spare wheel with a removable padded 5”? wooden baton which was the back of your seat and these two were murder to get out.
Then came the HCB Angus Crew Safety Vehicles, these were Bedford TKEL chassis with CSV cab by HCB Angus and bodywork by Fulton and Wylie. They had no power steering, and the first time I drove one was to a fire at night, I couldn’t find the indicators and decided to give a hand signal, stuck my right hand out and as the seat was so far in from the door only my fingers appeared outside. The gear box was also very tight and it was very easy to put it into reverse when taking off, so you had to let the clutch out gently to see whether you were going backwards or forward before taking off for real. The first batch of V regs had automatic gearboxes which weren’t very good at climbing the hills in the Greenock area so when the next year’s batch of W reg ones arrived with manual gearboxes the Vs at Greenock and Port Glasgow were replaced by Ws and the Vs sent to Glasgow stations with flatter areas and eventually some or all of the Vs had their gearboxes from automatic to manual. These machines were kind of pointed at the front unlike the next batch of X regs which were still Bedfords but with bodywork by CFE (Cheshire Fire Engineering) and these were squarer with rounded corners.
Then came the Fire Warriors, Bedford
The workhorse of the brigade
Ret to get new Volvos & WT to get new Scanias
Strathclyde inherited a fair old mixture from the 5 brigades and in some cases the scrap they did not want. One Brigade even moved new appliances out of stations they were losing to Strathclyde and put them in stations they were keeping and replaced them with their oldest machines. They inherited from Central , from Glasgow , from Lanarkshire , from South Western and from Western Dennis and Dodge machines.
Dodges K850 F&W rear facing seats, then forward facing K1113 F&W. A batch of K1613 HCB Angus lot longer dayglo paint
After the Dodges came the Bedfords in the guise of Fire Warriors to start with from Fulton and Wylie of Irvine, these were murder, they had no power steering (unlike the Dodges) and a very poor turning circle
CSVs still no power steering and very tight gear box you could easily put it into reverse instead of 2nd and only knew when you moved backwards instead of forwards.
The workhorse of the brigade
Ret to get new Volvos & WT to get new Scanias
Strathclyde inherited a fair old mixture from the 5 brigades and in some cases the scrap they did not want. One Brigade even moved new appliances out of stations they were losing to Strathclyde and put them in stations they were keeping and replaced them with their oldest machines. They inherited from Central , from Glasgow , from Lanarkshire , from South Western and from Western Dennis and Dodge machines.
Dodges K850 F&W rear facing seats, then forward facing K1113 F&W. A batch of K1613 HCB Angus lot longer dayglo paint
After the Dodges came the Bedfords in the guise of Fire Warriors to start with from Fulton and Wylie of Irvine, these were murder, they had no power steering (unlike the Dodges) and a very poor turning circle
CSVs still no power steering and very tight gear box you could easily put it into reverse instead of 2nd and only knew when you moved backwards instead of forwards.
Photos Early Pumps
Photos Dennis Pumps
Photos Dodge Water Tender Ladders
Photos Bedford Water Tender Ladders
Photos Volvo Water Tender Ladders
Photos Scania Series 2 and 3 Water Tender Ladders
Photos Scania Series 4 Water Tender Ladders