Fire Hose - Model Railroader Magazine

Having been a fire protection engineer for a paper company for over 30 years ( Retired) and a former member of NFPA 13 Automatic Sprinklers ( Discharge committee) and I have seen a lot of big fires during my career.

As a result, I have added a lot of fire protection scenes on my 1910 era logging RR. I have used mostly solder to represent fire hose but I have also used small diameter hookup wire. The time line for my sawmill has my mill burning down sometime in the future ( About 1930) as a result of any one of the many fire hazards I have designed into my Logging Co. These include:

Non standard fire walls.

Poorly maintained dry pipe sprinkler Valves.

Partially sprinklered flammable liquid sheds.

Atrocious house keeping. ( Which, like weathering, I love to model)

My fire water mains take suction from my wood chip infested log pond using steam fire pumps for suction.

I have based my sprinkler system designs and equipment on old drawings from the FM Global Insurance archives. These include hand wheel operated post indicator sprinkler sectional valves. I have a woods fire train with a steam fire pump on skids along with other fire fighting equipment such as wheeled soda acid extinguishers and hose carts.

I have really enjoyed creating these scenes which I find are seldom modeled.

Peter Smith, Memphis