Vintage work crew photos

[PJs]

I get inspired by some of these photos and find the trials and work of these people who preceded use of great cultural value to us and future generation. Much like Walt Whitman and Wordsworth inspired many a thought with great words about mankind and important concepts. There faces, postures, clothing and such along with the industrial age inventiveness are beacons of core principles, work ethic and a daily grind, perseverance for us all to ponder, now and in future generations.

I've been doing a lot of graphic/web/video work lately and as a respite to the grind of it, sometimes I like to "Clean up" some of these so I may better see what was happening in the picture and the people in them. This is one of them and here are a "cleaned" version and a zoomed in crop of some of these hard working folks.






This one in particular brought up a PBS special I saw a while back about tunnel building in Boston and how generations of "Tunnelers" have worked on them, what kind of people they are and what they are doing with the new one. It also comes full forward to today to what Elon Musk is doing in LA with his high-speed underground rail system, which is pretty impressive tech wise without getting into the values or rightness of it...Inspired visionary action, imho.

Hope this adds some inspiration to others here on this great forum.

PJ

[Jon]

Workers posing by the satinet machines in the Taft or Old Huguenot Mill, approximately 1880.

Fullsize image: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net...w_fullsize.jpg

[ranald]

they actually had some room for the pose.

[Jon]

Steam powered fire engine extinguishing a fire. 1920.

Fullsize image: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net...w_fullsize.jpg

[MeJasonT]

What are they putting out, the only smoke i can see is coming from the pump.

[MeJasonT]

Must be the RN sailor in me, we got bollocked for making black smoke, never new about the preparation of setting up the pump before hitching the horses - makes sense. It looks like the hoses are charged are we saying that they are filling up the pump as well. Is the name on the building behind of any significance, IE. the company operating the pump. Who would later become an insurance company perhaps.

[VinnieL]

What did they do with the horses once they arrived at the fire? Did someone remove them for their safety and to keep them from going nuts over the fire?

[Frank S]

What did they do with the horses once they arrived at the fire? Did someone remove them for their safety and to keep them from going nuts over the fire?

You are correct once a pumping unit was placed on station the horses would no longer be required the team usually only 2 unless it was one of the much larger pumping units would have been the fire station and possibly used to haul a ladder wagon, but most of the horses were trained not to panic in the face of a fire situation resualting in them remaining hitched to the engine they were pulling In larger cities some fire houses had several horses stabled in the fire house several teams were required to haul multiple pumping units and other fire fighting gear
A very good read about the history of fire horses
A History of Horses in the Fire Service - Fire History

[VinnieL]

We have a Fire Chief who is retiring soon. I am going to use that photo to make a card for him something about "Your First Fire".

[wizard69]

The funny thing about these steam powered fire fighting pumps is that in that era many fires where caused by trains and other steam powered machines throwing out cinders and sparks. In this case we have a huge plume of smoke riding out of the engine. Makes me wonder how long it took to get steam generation up to the point of being able to drive s pump.