The news you never want to get, a fire truck landed on your pristine 60's musclecar, that you've had for 34 years since age 16

How does the fire engine "land" on your car?

The road up the hill was very narrow, and the fire truck went to close to the edge on a curve, slid over, rolled, and ended right side up on the 1969 Firebird

Full story at http://www.denverpost.com/ci_12565202 via http://garage1975.blogspot.com.br

A variety of interesting images from Truque tructruk Tumblr.com

All just a smaple of the variety found on http://truquetructruk.tumblr.com/

Forest service fire engine... cool! I don't think I've ever seen one before, or any green fire engine

looks 1930's.... and why it has a cab, and an open seat, I don't even have a guess.

Found on http://truquetructruk.tumblr.com

Indian fire truck

ain't that something?! found on http://mentallydefectiveandborntoolate.tumblr.com

the biggest Jeep I think I've ever seen, a forward control and fire engine in one, a rare vehicle

found on the HAMB

the Fire Chief always got the coolest car, a '47 Buick Roadmaster nose and chassis

image found on the HAMB

the story about it is better found on Hemmings:
This rebodied 1947 Buick Roadmaster is an example of how volunteer firefighters in parts of New York have cooled off for years: They compete against one another in timed contests of basic hose-and-ladder tasks on lots of warm weekends.

The object is, a team of competitors board a customized vehicle that looks sort of like a fire truck. They line up at a starting line against another team and, on signal, race for 475 feet. The rigs halt, they dismount, and hook a hose to a hydrant before hitting a target with the water stream. Or, throw a ladder against a platform and scramble to the top.

 So on one level, it's a car race. Today's hottest "trucks" are often based on tubular steel chassis originally designed for drag racing or paved-oval Modifieds. One team famously used to use a mid-1960s Corvette body turned around backwards, with the fastback rear window serving as a driver's windshield and the engine bay, less hood, as a hose bed.

Where these contests exist, almost all in New York, they're big, big stuff. Millions were first exposed to firemen's jousts during the 1960s when ABC's Wide World of Sports, which had a top producer living on Long Island, discovered them. Their proximity and low production costs made them staple segments on the program, like figure-eight racing and demolition derbies from nearby Islip Speedway. A Web site specializing in the drills, www.nysdrillteams.com, lists well over 100 fire companies with drill teams, about 75 percent from Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island.

What we know about this Roadmaster starts with its purchase, evidently as new, by the Runts, drill team of the Flower Hill Hose Company Number 1 in Port Washington, Nassau County, Long Island.

The Roadmaster also lacks a pump, thus its use in laddering contests. It still has a hose bed, oaken panel liners and planks, the latter over steel sheeting. Fire and rescue work requires the most disciplined teamwork. Therefore, firefighter games are a team sport, with a wide, deep rear step on the Buick for the Runts' ladder crew. The Buick powertrain was left almost completely stock, a Dynaflash L-head straight-eight engine, displacing 320 cubic inches and with 144hp and a three-speed manual transmission

the Runts donated the Roadmaster to a smaller fire company in North Creek, New York, a rural area in the Adirondack Mountains that also had a tournament team.

Ron's fire wagon is impossibly rare, a Buick Roadmaster from the 1940s with a history in any kind of motorsport, maybe the first since the one that Lee Petty destroyed at the old Charlotte dirt track in NASCAR's earliest days. Quite the opposite of Petty's, this example is pristine. Devoid of modifications, it might conceivably qualify as the lowest-mileage 1947 Roadmaster extant. The odometer read 17,500 when Ron got it, and it's barely cracked 18,000 miles right now.
http://www.hemmings.com/hcc/stories/2008/10/01/hmn_feature7.html

New York, pre 1930s, from the just recently released New York Municipal Archives

found on http://pixtale.net/2012/06/more-historic-photos-from-the-nyc-municipal-archives/

http://pixtale.net/2012/04/historic-photos-from-the-nyc-municipal-archives/

my favorite fire truck was at the Palos Verdes Concours

I first saw this as the Desert Classic this spring http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/02/1940-beverly-hills-fire-department.html

1954 Kenworth fire engine of Vista FD

Coolest woodfired pizza around, an old fire engine that can come to events

I found the regular hang out of this pizza truck a couple months ago while walking around: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/03/dang-brothers-wood-fired-pizza-uses.html

I finally learned of a model T museum that has been photographed many times but not identified in emails, Near Yuma Arizona is an old gas station / private collection/museum

Steve told me that this was originally a gas station in Holtville Ca, but was bought and moved here

it is North of Yuma, in a small town named Bard. The collection is open for visitors in the cool winter months http://www.dynamitedave.com/places_cloud_museum.html

Greg Jones takes astonishingly vivid and crisp HDR photos of cars and aircraft, from WW2 bombers to space shuttles, here is a sample

as the last image tells you, making just one image in HDR is the result of using multiple bracketed shots processed in Lightroom, Photomatix, Photoshop, Noiseware and Topaz Adjust in various proportions.

for more, and each is accompanied by a write up of it's location and history: http://www.bigpixelpushing.com/journal

Fire departments have some great old treasures set aside to preserve for posterity, Narragansett #3 has a cool old pum per!

found on http://georgedennis.blogspot.com/2011/09/narraganset-fire-dept-3_05.html

Clam Cakes 911, that is a clever gimic

A movie with a steam locomotive and a firetruck, that'd be cool. But "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" has the firetruck on the train!

in a nice "making of" in the special features, they give a bit of info... this town has at least 2 trains of the few Narrow Gauge steam locomotives available, and so they filmed a lot of the movie in Chamas New Mexico

in the movie the train number changes from 550 to 557, but it's 484, 487 or 488  if you see them today Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad http://www.chamavillage.com/ctsrr.html

In February 1880, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad began construction of the San Juan extension, a route that went from Alamosa, Colorado to Silverton, Colorado by way of Cumbres Pass, Chama and Durango.

 Railroad service to Chama began in February, 1881 and facilities for servicing railroad equipment, a depot, warehouses and stockyards were set up along the route surveyed for the railroad. The brief period of construction from 1880-1881 was one of the most exciting episodes in the area’s history and Chama almost immediately became a boomtown.

The possibilities for development attracted both industrious and disreputable characters from all around. Individuals interested in developing the coal mines in Monero rapidly appeared on the scene as did representatives of the lumber industry, laborers, engineers and contractors to build the railroad and buildings required to accommodate the mass of people attracted to the booming railroad town of Chama.

 For many years Chama remained a rowdy and exciting place to be. It was a very prosperous town with plenty of work and a great deal of entertainment in the forms of saloons, gambling houses, moonshine stills, etc. Groceries were expensive and outlaws, such as the Clay Allison gang, regularly held up the railroad pay car construction camps with large payrolls, saloons and gambling houses.

 In the past, the main industries of the area were logging, mining and sheep and cattle ranching. Before the logging industry clear-cut much of the timber, the vast grasslands one now sees, were hundreds of square miles of forest. In pre-logging days the forest was so thick that it was difficult for a man on horseback to negotiate his way through the trees. The sheep industry operated on a grand scale until the depression and the terrible winter of 1931-32 combined to nearly wipe out the sheep industry.

http://www.visitchama.com/

1917 Model T fire truck modified by American LaFrance, double tank chemical.. and coincidentally, comparable to the 1925 same model at Fire Memories Museum

for comparison to the 1925 at Fire Memories Museum: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/03/fire-memories-museum-in-banning.html