Another week of old scanned pictures. This week we are back in the USAF and looking at firehouses. After basic training in the Summer of 1983 I was assigned to technical school at Chanute AFB in Rantoul, Illinois. I would spend the next 13 weeks here. The firehouse sat at the corner of Pacesetter and Galaxy Drives . The engine must have been one of the 1978 Ward La Frances that they ran. They closed Chanute in 1993 and from some of the pictures I've seen since a lot of the buildings were left to waste. Some have been torn down. Sparky spent some time here also, before I got there. I'm sure he saw the inside of this station. I hear they had one of the few brass poles in the Air Force.
Yes spend some time in this fire house. And yes it did have a brass pole. I did my basic firefighting here and visited several times after that for other fire classes. As for the Ward LaFrance. We had a 1979 in England UK. Would love to have one of these engines....
ReplyDeleteThat Ward would be a Ward Limited and not a Ward Lafrance. This was in their final years after the had been bought out aand changed their names. Not the same quality as the Ward LaFrance's. We operated one at the Mechanicsburg Navy base that was a 1979, big windshield and a great view of the traffic but I preferred to drive the FTI or the International.
ReplyDelete