Terex from Gruas Kirten

Terex is not a common crane name in these parts, but the brand is well known. It is now part of the Demag group, but is marketed separately.

This particular unit, which arrived by ship last week, belongs to Gruas Kirten of Soria, Spain, and is apparently a rental for use somewhere in western Canada. and appears to be a AC 250.1 model (250 ton, 300 US ton) capacity, with the 80 meter boom and 12x8x10 drive train.

I have seen several Spanish cranes in the past year, all headed west on rail cars.

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Pemfab - correction and expansion

In my piece about bus bodies below I referred in one of the photo captions to a fire engine in the background as a Pemfab/Thibault. This was an error - since corrected. It was in fact a Pemfab/Pierreville.
I won't get into the machinations of ownership issues between various elements of the Thibault family in the 1980s. [see Canadian Fire Truck Archive for a good explanation: http://www.firetruckarchive.ca/ ]
But here is the explanation for my mistake.
Halifax Fire Department bought a number (I think four) Pierreville 1250 gpm pumpers in 1982. They were fitted with the Pemberton Fabricators, Pemfab 93 cabs - a really stylish model that was also highly distinctive. Each of the four peninsula stations was assigned one of these pumpers (#1, #3, #4, and #7 engine companies.)
One of the pumpers (#1 engine company) was in a collision (at the corner of Spring Garden and Queen , I think) in about 1985. By that time Pierreville Fire Trucks had gone out of business, and the remains were sent to Pemfab in New Jersey for rebuilding. The Pemfab 93 cab had been discontinued, so the engine was fitted with the Pemfab 95 cab - a really ugly looking piece of work. When it came back to Halifax of course there was no Pierreville marking on it, but had the P for Pemfab on its vent grilles and the Pemfab sing on each sie of the cab.
At about the same time Halifax ordered a 30 meter aerial from Thibault. It came with the Pemfab 95 cab (also ugly) but carrying a bit more finish work.
So at one time HFD had two vehicles with Pemfab 95 cabs - one a rebuilt Pierreville and one a Thibault. Confused?
Well the pictures should be clear enough.
1. The Pierrevile logo was front and centre, and there was extensive pinstriping and gold leaf.

2. On delivery to Halifax, the first Pierreville also had the Pemfab logo on the door post. It disappeared soon after. 3. Following repairs at Pemfab it lost the Pierreville name, and had Pemfab in two locations on each side, one on the grille and one under the crew window.

4. The Pemfab 93 cab was a winner.

5. As front line engines on the peninsula they would be at every fire. (Halliday's Kempt Road, just down the street from station 7.)

6. Their low profile and well positioned lights made then look good.

7. The Pemfab 95 cab was not an improvement. It's interestiung that the top mount wipers were later moved to bottom mount.

8. The rebuilt unit was assigned to various stations in its later years as new apparatus was delivered.

9. The Pemfabs 93s remained in front line for a good many years, and were repainted at least once, losing all the gold leaf and pinstriping in the process, but gaining the reflective stripe.

10. There was a certain amount of sheet metal distortion over the years, but these rigs were worked hard. 11. The rebuilt unit made it through amalgamation and joined the HRM Fire & Emergency where it finally had its acquisition number applied, but at first lost its station assignment number.

12. This one had been somewhere else to receive a white over red paint scheme before it came back into HRM Fire & Emergency. It now sports its assignment number. I believe this is the unit that has gone to the NS Fire Fighting School.

13. At the Halifax Club fire in 1987 the rebuilt Pierreville works ahead of the Thibault aerial.

14. The brand new Thibault 30m aerial at its first fire, shares the Pemfab 95 cab, but has some nice gold leaf and pinstriping and big Thibault sign to spruce it up.

These were not the only Pierreville, Thibaults or even Pemfabs in the Halifax Fire Department, but they were only ones with Pemfab 93 and Pemfab 95 cabs. It was difficult to keep track of the three Pemfab 93s because they kept changing station assignment numbers on the doors. It was not until amalgamation that the new HMR F&E began to display acquisition numbers. By then (1996) new apparatus was on the way and they were supplanted in front line service and sold off.

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Keeping roads clear - its still NACL

In this part of the country the roads need to be plowed in winter, but that is only half the job. Fluctuating temperatures create multiple freeze/thaw cycles, often several in one day. We can see rain falling on frozen roads, or freezing rain falling on wet roads, causing black ice (i.e. invisible) or just plain sheet ice. In any form, ice is dangerous on roads, and the solution has been to spread the salt! Our temperatures only rarely go below the freezing point of salt water, so salt is a good solution, even if accelerates rust.
Sometimes salt is mixed with grit or sand, and this year some genius has decided to pre-salt the Halifax streets with brine. It is applied wet, dries and then is reactivated by snow. Yesterday one lone Ford F-350 was patrolling all over the downtown all day. For some reason there were two men in the truck - not sure what the second guy did unless it was the keep the other guy awake. The spreading system was totally unregulated and gravity fed. This meant lots of brine at stop lights (where it is needed most anyway) but it is a pretty unsophisticated system.
And I guess it would sure save money on equipment compared to the normal (dry) salt spreading equipment.
1. Downtown yesterday this DIY brine spreading arrangement was patrolling the bi-ways. He is heading northbound on Barrington Street, but his southbound pass, applied a half hour before hadn't dried yet.

By comparison- here are a few trucks rigged for salt spreading in 1992:2. In 1992 this aging White Western Star was ruuning for a private contractor in Dartmouth, NS. Note the exhaust stack repositioned to the driver's side to clear the wing plow elevator (it appears to be winch controlled.) The spreader body looks a bit newer.3. In the summer of 1992 this 1950s Autocar had just come out of the paint shop in St-Fidélè, QC ready for another year. The cage over the spreader body would break up frozen chunks of salt from the loader.
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Part 2 (and such) bus body vehicles

Fire and police forces often used bus body vehicles, either purpose built or converted, for command posts and other uses.
One such was the Halifax Fire Department (pre-amalgamation) which converted a GM New Look bus into a mobile command for fire and police. The conversion was done in 1992, and the bus was a former Halifax transit unit. It only lasted a short time until truck based units arrived.
1. One bus side window remains, and couple of heavy duty doors were added to the curb side.

2. Only the emergency door remains to be seen on the driver's side. That is a Pemfab/Pierrevile the background.

The next is filed under Mystery Motor in my system. It was operated by the Paroisse-St-Antoine-de-la-Rivière-du-Loup in Quebec, in 1988. That is the same year in which the village merged with its neighbour to form the Ville de Louiseville, and the two fire departments combined. This unit, and the tanker parked next to it, were likely in line to be repainted about the time this photo was taken, or they may have been surplus. It is a pretty big unit for such a tiny town, so it doubtless saw service elsewhere before, likely in a big centre like Montreal. It was purpose built (school buses don't usually have tandem axles) but by whom I haven't a clue. The distinctive windshield should be a giveaway.3. The flashing lights have been removed, so this rig may have been retired from service.
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Bookmobiles (and such)

The Halifax Regional Municipality still operates this bookmobile - at least for the current financial year. Threatened with the budgetary axe in April, it was saved for one more year, but by the looks of it, it will need some work to stay on the road for much longer.
Built on a Bluebird bus body the rolling library was still rolling this morning, but it was coming out of the repair shop when I caught it.

Speaking of book mobiles, the Gerstenslager Corp of Wooster, OH was the premier US bookmobile builder. They built thousands between 1956 and 1986, along with delivery bodies and fire rescue bodies on commercial chassis. The company was founded in 1860 as a carriage maker and became part of Worthington Industries in 1997, but still maintains its identity. Its plants now turn out car parts, like doors, for current models, but also have an inventory of molds to produce body panels for older vehicles.

Despite their bus like appearance, the Gerstenslager bookmobiles were developed independently (Gerstenslager never built buses.)

The unit shown was spotted in Malone, NY, September 16, 1986.

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Oshkosh no more

I received the news that Oshkosh 82654 of the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation caught fire and badly burned on January 21. This particular unit, working out of the Antigonish depot was featured here in November 2010.
http://truckfax.blogspot.com/2010/11/big-os-in-north.html
Oshkoshes are becoming rarer and rarer, and so this is sad news indeed. They are notoriously long lived if they don't meet with such fates, but they are no match for fire.
Here a few more from my collection:
1. In 1986 Burke, NY was running this model WC-906, #6392.

2. In 1980 Van Buren, ME had this O chained and ready on September 6.

3. Nova Scotia #82552 was laid up in Port Hawksbury in 1984. With a little TLC it was probably ready for the road again that fall.

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Canadian tanks leave Halifax

1. Fourteen tanks in a row, were landed in Halifax earlier in the week at the Fairview Cove terminal, in the background, and loaded on rail cars to head west.

2. This is the first tank on the left from the photo above.

3. This is the second tank from the left from the top photo.

Fourteen Canadian tanks left Halifax by train Friday, probably destined for Wainwright, AB. Tanks going to Gagetown, NB would go by truck. As loaded on the rail cars they have their turrets facing backwards, away from the direction of travel.

I only managed to glimpse them briefly before the snows came on and so I have little to add to the photos, except that Canada has opted for the German Leopard tank, purchased from the Netherlands. They are acquiring 100 tanks to form 5 groups of twenty.