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  • Something the article doesn’t mention is why this was phased out. Was it replaced with something similar?
    by citizenkeen
  • Ah, the Mack Super pumper. Shame Mack started to struggle in the 60s until the 80s and got out of the fire truck business. They had some very interesting designs in terms of cab design and components. I always loved the F model cab-over which were produced until the early 80s which is what the CF fire truck was built on.
    by MisterTea
  • Anyone else struck by this bit?

    Mack was awarded the contract to build the truck in 1964 and by the end of the year, the unit was nearly ready to hit the streets of NYC.

    Seems amazingly fast by current standards. Those were the days!

    by 7402
  • This thing feels like a mortal danger to the (up to 8x!) iron pipes / hydrants it's pulling from, that it'd want to just chew up the very pipes themselves! Or to the building it's hurling 37 tons of water a minute at! I don't understand how a connector hose wouldn't collapse, how it maintains any cross-section rather than being sucked into collapse.

    Also wondering: what replaced this!

    (Ed: great reply from Mindcrime. Also, the new Ferrara Super Pumper shows a very impressive ribbed(?) 8-inch "hard suction" hose! There's a whole wikipedia section for these drafting/vacuum hoses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suction_hose)

    by jauntywundrkind
  • That "deltic" engine just for the water pumping is incredible, I'd never seen that cylinder layout before.

    > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic

    by giobox
  • My dad worked on the Space Shuttle main engine program in the 80s. One of the things they built was the turbopump [0], which generated 23,000HP (and could drain your average home swimming pool in one minute).

    Seeing the test firings of the pump was pretty amazing, draining one "swimming pool" and filling another in a minute.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25#Turbopumps

    by jedberg
  • SysAdmin related: I was once talking to a fire chief and I asked about how much water the fire engines carried. He said that they carry about enough to put out the typical house fire. The first engine on scene immediately jumps to fighting the fire. The second engine on scene hooks the first engine up to the water supply before going on to fight the fire.

    I've often thought about that when there's a work crisis: If I'm the second on the scene, what can I do to support those fighting the fire right now, before jumping in.

    by linsomniac
  • And while we're talking about highly specialized firefighting apparatus... while I don't think Chicago FD ever ran anything quite like the FDNY Mack Super Pumper, they are well known for their use of a piece of apparatus known as a "turret wagon". Basically, it's a big-ass truck with a huge deluge gun (aka "monitor" or "turret") mounted on the back, and with a big intake manifold for receiving multiple supply lines. You could think of a "turret wagon" as being conceptually akin to the "Satellite" units that were part of the FDNY Super Pumper System.

    Anyway, one of the best known Chicago Turret Wagons was "Big John" (aka 6-7-3).

    https://chicagoareafire.com/blog/2013/04/chicago-fd-turret-w...

    https://chicagoareafire.com/blog/2013/04/chicago-fd-turret-w...

    Not sure if CFD still maintain any Turret Wagons in contemporary times or not, but variations on the concept are still found, particularly in industrial fire departments that protect high hazard sites like oil refineries, certain chemical plants, etc.

    by mindcrime

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