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sort of yeah… lol
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Many brigades are adopting their own shift systems now so in some places the old 2 days, 2 nights and 4 off is going in favour of more modern systems. On the back of that is the loss of part time working opportunities but there are still a great number that do. One of my old Divisional Commanders once said to me, despite it being ‘against the rules’ to work on your days off, he would always favour a firefighter who does cos at least they keep themselves active and are not lazy. Thinking back through time at some of the things that I’ve done - car repairs, labouring on building sites,truck driving, childrens entertainment, recovery driver, race rescue fire crew, window cleaner, decorating, helping with event planning and looking after the kids to name but a few!
Do you think my photo’s are a bit too much off thread mate, I would hate to upset the cart of many apples? I am searching for a decent fire forum place as I have a couple of good accounts of larger fires with pictures to accompany them, Flixborough for instances. As there are only a handful with fire engines on them it might be pushing it a bit putting them on here…
… In the meantime, here’s a couple of shots from when we were acceptance testing the first MAN/John Dennis Coachbuilders (JDC) Rescue Unit. To their credit, JDC did opt to put the truck on the tilt bed fully loaded and not with ballast weights. As it got to the point of tipping over there was only one bang and that was a shackle that had fallen out of a box otherwsie every last pice of kit stayed in place.
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Cheers bud, kind words - here’s a random few all except one taken by me, the other was by Norman Downs - enjoy …
The first is one of the first automatic Dennis fire engines that was purchased for the Hull fleet although Grimsby dod have automatic Dennis pump long before. It is pictured here at Hull East Station when we were decontaminating a load of equipment after a huge chemical leak on the docks.
I had a great Sunday lunchtime sat in this truck waiting for a recovery truck (ironically the same truck that dragged me in after the smash mentioned earlier). As we were returning from an exercise, I accelerated on to a roundabout and ‘bang’, gearbox all over the road. The crew went off in a reserve engine and the breakdown came for me…We rigged it on a rigid bar and set off on the short journey which at one point crossed a major junction in Hull. The lights were at red as we sat with a car on one side and a bus on the other, of course the poorly fire engine attracted quite a lot of attention form the bus bound people.
Lights go green, recovery truck takes off like a dragster taking with it my bumper, towing eyes and fog lights and leaving me half way across the junction. Sadly the only way to catch the driver’s attention was to turn the two tones on, which of course immediately made all the traffic at the junction stop in it’s tracks!
Oxfordshire T.K vs Renault 5 - Knocked the front axle straight out of the T.K. - For some reason they decided to rip the roller shutters open and get the kit out whilst it was on its side - Why they couldn’t wait till we put it back over i don’t know.Notice the Fire Officer with his cuppa 
Steve
Don’t suppose they managed to clean that one up so that the night watch never knew! Looked like a nightmare incident but a good set of photo’s nevertheless, thanks mate!
Steve 
That’s a nice looking little truck, good posting thanks mate
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Different Chevrolet - Different Recovery truck
Steve
Were the Chevies always breaking down? The Grampian two look nice… I couldn’t see them at first!
Glenn R:
Were the Chevies always breaking down?
The C reg was the worset one of the two - The C reg was at Newbury and the F reg at Slough - The C reg in the picture had just thrown its front prop off on the A34 - Straight through a following camper vans windscreen - missed the occupants and ended up in the asile bit of the camper 
Steve
Oh dear, not good then? lol
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just like ambulabces then…Coventry, York and some West Yorkshire machines used to be yellow
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Just going into the cupboard of doom to do some scanning mate … if I survive the cold I’ll post some new stuff later, brrrrrrrrrrrr