The Use of Converted Motorbuses or Motorcars as Fire-brigade Expedients.
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Most fire brigades, be they professional or amateur, are. to-day convinced that to be horse-drawn is to be old-fashioned and, as a rule, inefficient. Had they the means, most sell-respecting firemasters nowadays would not hesitate to part with their cherished cattle and to purchase the best available motor-propelled plant they can secure without delay. But there are brigades which have to make the best of plant that Is obsolete, and of equipment that is insufficient., a state of affairs traceable to lack of financial resources
solely. To such organizations the acquisition of a thousand guinea, 600-gallon plant is little more than a dream. We urged manufacturers several years ago, to get. on with small units, but die cost of these is regarded as unapproachable in some cases.
Even the smaller 250-gallon machines which are now being introduced represent too great an expenditure to bring them within the realm of practical politics. But motor-drawn the engine must be, especially if there are long toilsome cross-country journeys to be taken once every now and again, and theexperiment is being tried, in quite a number of village and. other small brigades, of hauling existing steam-pumping plant. by means of an adapted petroldriven chassis. Not the happiest of compromises, but credit must be given for such definite attempts to make the best of a had job.. The financial possibilities of such a conversion are revealed in a letter which we publish on page 550.
Such experiments must necessarily whet the ready appetites of the members of the brigade, and induce them to leave no stone unturned to acquire more satisfactory and complete outfit, by hook or by crook, as soon as passible. Our nervousness in respect of such experiments is due to two causes : one is that there may be a temptatioa to use and adapt radically unsuitable chassis as the tractor; and the other is that within our own experience we have found that tractordrawn fire-engines are almost uncontrodable, And are, in fact, a danger to other traffic when the demon of skidding is abroad. On greasy asphalt, on wood pavement or other treacherous urban road surfaces, the tractor-drawn steam fire-engine cannot be hauled with safety at any speed. For country brigades, on soft. macauam, the experiment may be worth encouraging. Snow, however, wid, we fear, disable the plant. Limestone, dead leaves and gradients will all
be enemies of SI1C CC Es It is an expedient, which perhaps may have limited possibilities of seeeessful operation, but it must be regarded strictly as a makeshift. Finally it has to be remembered that the steamer in such cases is a trailer, if the tractor be a heavy motorear, and as such its speed " shall not exceed five miles an hour," which, to say the least of it, is not heroic for a fire-engine.