The Snow Plough.

Roads and Rail.

Basically this is a shovel fitted to trucks and locomotives to push soft snow to one side, but these ploughs could also be employed for pushing sand after a storm. The need for this goes back at least two hundred years, with the onset of the the invention of the engine the design has not changed much!

Today the idea of blowing both snow and sand has been added to snow plough or for sand removal. Railways suffer greatly from such obstacles and from wet leaves that can be the cause of both slippage and derailment. Various forms of weed killer and spray trains have also been designed, along with the removal of dust and rubbish in Metro and underground systems world wide,

Switzerland and Italy have lead the way in these specialist type trains and the British in Metro cleaning systems.

Fire Engines. Part-One.

Water Carriers.

Humanity has developed because it has been able to harness fire, to make it and to use it in daily survival. But at times fire can attack us, with devastating consequences. The construction of large villages, towns and cities has lead to the development of mobile water carriers.

The river and bucket system will not work in a large city, so the concept of the first fire carts came with the invention of the pump. London, New York, Paris all developed their take on this horse drawn water tank. Each vehicle had place for water, ropes, ladders and sand. The crew sat on an open cab or hung on to the sides.

Even with the development of the engine this outlay continued, right up to the 1940's era.