Visit to Harrisburg Fire Museum

While on Vacation to Pennsylvania this year we stopped by the National Fire Museum located in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. I have visited over a dozen fire museums throughout the country and this was by far the best I have ever been too.

 This is the building it was located in. It is a early 1800's fire station that use to actually have a horse drawn hose company and pumper.

 This is the apparatus room where they had a hand drawn hose wagon and a horse drawn steamer.

 This is called a Gamewell indicator Gong this would be located in a fire station and when a call box would be pulled on a street corner after going thru a switch station it would sound the gong and the pull box number would be displayed on it, also a ticker tape would be produced. This was pretty advanced for back then.

Here is the switching station or dispatch station.

This is a Call Box that would be found on the street corners and you would pull to call the fire department (Pre Telephones and 911)

 This is a wooden hand pump. A bucket brigade of water would be dumped into it then men would pump the handles and create a stream of water from the top. Late 1700's to early 1800's.

 This is a horse drawn steam pumper. 

 This is a parade wagon. Back in the early days of fire departments they were all volunteer and each station was its own department. So they would have these fancy wagon to show off their fire company.

 Early motorized fire trucks.

 Early phone operator station

 A full history of radios from large car battery size to the current pocket size.

 This is a display of helmets the commemorate the 343 firefighters who died on 9-11. It brought the number to life and wow there were a lot of helmets in there.

 This was a parade hat of the Hope fire Company dates to around 1741.

 This is the apparatus room. They had it set like it would have been way back then.

It was very cool in seeing all of the old fire fighting equipment. Can't wait to visit more museums in the future. If you get a chance stop by your local fire department and visit their museum. Give them a donation too as they are ran only by people who have retired from the fire department and volunteer their time. No government money is used to run these places and it's getting harder to stay open. Help preserve the history of this nation.