Showing posts with label American LaFrance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American LaFrance. Show all posts

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Bonhams is auctioning off the estate of Dr Cox, it seems he had a lot of stuff at an aviation museum, plus a train, cars, fire trucks, etc


1873 SILSBY ROTARY STEAM PUMPER


1906 HAMMOND SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA STREET CABLE CAR


1909 PREMIER MODEL 45 45 55HP 6-CYLINDER RACEABOUT


1920 BALDWIN 2-6-2 LOCOMOTIVE


1929 AMERICAN LAFRANCE


Conestoga wagon


Fatman sales display


Model T accessories and parts


a B-17 engine


See all the cool stuff at http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22174/

The Dr. Ralph W.E. Cox Jr. estate sale will take place on Saturday, May 10, at the Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum in Cape May, New Jersey, the very site where Cox’s collection was on public display between 1961 and 1964 

Friday, March 7, 2014

American LaFrance is done. Closed the doors, turned off the lights.


The company's roots go back to 1832 as a firefighting equipment maker. It began building steam-powered, horse-drawn fire engines in the era before the internal combustion engine and merged with LaFrance in 1903 to become one of America's leading fire engine builders. Unfortunately, the 21st century was not been so kind to the company. Freightliner bought it in 1995 and production was moved from North Carolina to South Carolina, but it was sold again in December 2005. After declaring and emerging from bankruptcy in 2008, American LaFrance moved to a smaller factory in Moncks Corner, SC, in 2013

info from http://www.autoblog.com/2014/03/07/american-lafrance-fire-engines-closed/
and  http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/2014/02/farewell-to-american-lafrance.html

Once the colossus of the American fire apparatus industry, American LaFrance LLC (ALF) abruptly closed its South Carolina plant on January 17 --the sad end of a storied dynasty extending back 114 years (182 years if you include predecessor companies that trace their roots back to 1832). The American-LaFrance Fire Engine Company of Elmira, New York, was founded in 1904.

The legendary nameplate now joins other once-revered names like Maxim, Pirsch and Ahrens-Fox in the pantheon of U.S. motor fire apparatus history.