Fire Engines. Part-Two.

Specialist vehicles.

New York was the first skyscraper city and Paris had its Eiffel tower, but as the 20th Century progressed Hong Kong, Tokyo and Dubai would see the popularity of having the race for the highest tower blocks. Nothing different was thought of in the west until 9/11, but Moscow had to cope with the various Chechen militant attacks five years earlier which killed hundreds of people.

Japan has set in place specialist vehicles to deal with Earthquakes and high towers, if they are not fully evacuated. Claims have been made in the U.K. and U.S. that they have various hydraulics to rescue people in the event of a fire from high-rise buildings. There are so many problems with getting ladders up to great heights, wind is one and mechanical failure is another.

Many of these vehicle types are based around the eight-wheel chassis of military transports and the up to twenty-wheel civil telescopic cranes. in the future It it better to fit some form of emergency elevators/lifts to securely evacuate buildings in the future and we just do not really know anything until that dreadful event should occur.

Cranes. Part-One.

Ancient to Present.

The crane has been around as long as man has been on the Earth, Stone Henge in the United Kingdom, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Great wall of China could not have been constructed without some form of crane or pulling device.

Slaves and animals too played an essential part, because the people who designed and built these monuments where part of high society and part of powerful empires. Today we take the crane and various lifters for granted, not high rise can be built without them being built into the structure of the towers in New York, Dubai and London.

Today there are a variety of types available to do different types of lifting, some of this being the recovery of heavy loads or the moving over structures into confined spaces. This is were the telescopic cranes have come into their own right.

Monorails.

Still viable.

Today if you want to travel on a Monorail you only have to visit a handful of countries around the world, Germany, China, Japan, Canada, India and Dubai in the U.A.E. The concept of this form of transport was developed from two projects in 19th Century Ireland, one in Fenit, County Kerry and the other in Killiney. Co. Dublin.

There was a third project in County Donegal, some of these were not totally Monorail in their operation and function. Fenit was the first ground rail project and I believe it has been partially restored. It was to Germany that the credit for the first hanging Monorail would go.

We will not look deep into the systems at this time, but since then many nations have developed successful railways on this concept worldwide. Monorail may come into its own as are cities become more crowded this century.