Fire Engines Fire Engines
Seagrave's second water tower, also a triangular 65-foot mast, was also produced in the W.E. Seagrave plant at Walkerville, Ontario, Canada. It, too, served a major Canadian city: Montreal, Quebec. Note that the tower's nozzle pointed forward, over the horses.
Montreal's 1906 Seagrave 65-foot water tower, doing what towers do best: pelting huge volumes of water at high pressure against a nearly-uncontrollable fire, at the J.R. Walker & Company warehouse on Common Street in Montreal. In 1914, the tower's rear wheels had been moved to the former front end, so that the nozzle now faced the rear, away from the new air-cooled Seagrave tractor attached to the original back end of the rig.
Montreal's 1906 Seagrave water tower late in its career, attached to a 1929 Seagrave Model F tractor, which replaced the 1914 air-cooled Seagrave tractor. This tower would serve only one year of active duty with its final tractor. In 1930, Montreal placed two tower-equipped 100-foot Magirus aerial ladder trucks in service, relegating the tower to the occasional general-alarm fire. Finally, the 40-year-old tower was retired and scrapped in 1946.
The Seagrave painter's log, the best surviving reference for Seagrave serial numbers and dates, lists only Seagrave apparatus made in the Columbus, OH, factory from 1906 to 1963. Because Montreal's water tower, and its later tractors, were made in Seagrave's factory at Walkerville (Windsor), Ontario, Canada, there is no surviving record to establish the serial number or the exact date of this water tower and its tractors.
This page was last updated on September 7, 1999.