Montreal Fire Department 1970's

[spike6969]

Hi Ian,

 

Do you happen to have a picture of the 150' Firebird?  Thank you again for the great pictures.

 

Kevin

[Ian Stronach]

Platform 705 - 1974 Thibault-King Seagrave (Fire King) 90 ft.

[Ian Stronach]

Platform 705 - 1975 Calavar-Hendrickson 150 ft.

[Ian Stronach]

Fuel Tanker 881 - 1977 Ford

[Ian Stronach]

In the late 1980's Montreal acquired what would become the largest fleet of Brontos in any North American fire department.  It consisted of a 75 ft. 23-2T1WT water tower, 11 - 88 ft 27-3 articulating platforms and one-165 ft. 50-3T3 articulating, telescopic platform.

 

Water Tower 1503 - 1988 Bronto-International 4 x 4 75 ft. water tower.  The boom was delivered with a hydraulic auger the idea for which was to be able to drill holes in roofs for ventilation.  After some tests which showed the fantasy was better than the reality it was removed. The chassis was shipped to Finland where the tower and body were mounted.  The subsequent 88 ft. and 165 ft. units were built by Anderson Engineering in Langley, British Columbia.

[Ian Stronach]

Platform 734 - 1989 Bronto-Anderson Engineering-Freightliner 88 ft.

[Ian Stronach]

Platform 7019 - 1989 Anderson Engineering-Bronto-Pacific 165 ft.  Pacific was a British Columbia heavy truck manufacturer that made trucks for the logging industry.  They made a small number of custom fire truck chassis the exact number of which I do not recall.

[Ian Stronach]

By the early 1990's Montreal needed to replace some of the aging ladders.  It was decided to acquire some "tall" ladders - E\-One supplied two - 135 ft. and Anderson Engineering supplied two - 110 ft. ladders.  In addition a number of five-section Nova-Quintech 100 ft. aerials were acquired.

 

Ladder 423 - 1992 Anderson Engineering-Seagrave-Freightliner 110 ft.

[Ian Stronach]

Ladder 446 - 1992 Anderson Engineering-Seagrave-Freightliner 110 ft.

[Ian Stronach]

Ladder 403 - 1994 Nova Quintech 100 ft.

[Ian Stronach]

I will close this 1970's and little later tour of the Montreal Fire Department with the Montreal fire boat which really was not the Montreal Fire Department fire boat.  The James Battle was built by the Detroit Shipbuilding Company in 1901 and served a one of the Detroit fire boats until 1941 when it was sold as a tug to Sincennes-McNaughton and then to McAllister Towing and Salvage in Montreal in 1959.  McAllister operated it in Montreal from 1959 to 1992 as a tug.  They had an agreement with the City of Montreal to make it available upon request in the event of a fire. Its pumping capacity was 10,000 gpm. It was not replaced with another fire boat or fire fighting tug but rather with the "fire barge" but that is a story for another day.

[jlg1875]

Ian what ever became of the Bronto water tower? I know it was not in service for long....

[kieferfire]

Hi Ian,

 

GREAT photos and very interesting apparatus. Greetings from Germany !

 

Juergen

[Guest]

Hi Ian,

 It is great to see your photos from Montreal, especially some of the earlier apparatus which are long gone. I have seen the odd photo of yours in past issues of Enjine Enjine but to see a comprehensive collection of Montreal's fire apparatus together is just a treat. many thanks.

 

Terry Yip

[DaveYoung]

Platform 7019 - 1989 Anderson Engineering-Bronto-Pacific 165 ft.  Pacific was a British Columbia heavy truck manufacturer that made trucks for the logging industry.  They made a small number of custom fire truck chassis the exact number of which I do not recall.

Love this platform! Just awesome. Thank you so much for this thread. I've loved all the photos you took the time to post. Wonderful shots.

[Ian Stronach]

Thanks everyone for your comments.  I neglected to post the following two rigs.  In 1990 Montreal disbanded the heavy rescue squads and replaced them with 10 rescue pumpers.  These pumps were not 200 and 300 series but 600 series like the rescues.  They were built on Mack MC chassis and had rear-mounted 1050 gpm (imperial) pumps, 500 gallon tanks, 55 gallon foam tanks and remote controlled deck guns.  The carried hydraulic rescue tools.  Thibault went bankrupt before the order was completed and Nova Quintech finished the construction.  What goes around come around - Montreal now has returned to heavy rescue squads.

 

Rescue Pump 623 - 1990 Mack-Thibault-Nova Quintech 1050/500/55

[Ian Stronach]

Ladder 416 (running as Ladder 427) - 1955 Thibault-Magirus 100 ft.

[usonian55077]

Ho-leee-smokes! Thank you, Ian.  I haven't been around this site for awhile, and this thread made my year!   Montreal is one of favorite cities, I first visited there in 1985 when most of the rigs shown here were already gone. It's difficult to find photos of these older pieces, so, again, I thank you for sharing!

[Frank B]

I like this because you get to see different trucks that I have never seen before. By any chance is the Id numbers available on any of the trucks? I know guys that are looking for numbers on the Macks, and I am looking for the numbers on the imperials. Were these photos scanned from prints? Thanks for posting. I have to look to see If I have any to contribute....

[Ian Stronach]

I have no ID numbers as they were not something of interest to me.  The Kodachrome 64 slides were scanned on a Canoscan 9000F at 4800 dpi and then resized in PE 8.  I certainly will not be using a $150 scanner to digitize my collection of 20,000 slides but it is handy on the corner of my desk for quick scans for websites.  For some inexplicable reason the sharpness of some of the scans is better than others.