Image via Hagerty/YouTube
Tom Cotter is good at sniffing out barn finds, but in a recent video he uncovers something just as miraculous. A guy in rural Maine named Andy Swift runs a shop dedicated to rescuing and restoring classic fire engines. We know a lot of people have fascinated about one day buying and restoring a fire engine, but that’s all this guy focuses on, day in, day out.
Ride along at the back of a ladder truck as it responds to a house fire.
When Tom shows up at the shop, Swift is working on restoring an old steam-powered fire engine originally built in 1901. The massive boiler is on its side as the restoration is in full swing. What’s more, it’s the last one of that model still in existence, so this is a piece of history that’s all but lost.
At 71-years-old, Swift has accumulated quite the collection of junked fire engines. He has them scattered about his property, some hidden away in overgrown vegetation. Certain ones will be restored while others will be stripped of their valuable, hard-to-find parts to put on other vehicles with a better shot at restoration.
Swift has been restoring classic fire engines for 40 years and he obviously not only loves what he does but is good at it. He was a professional firefighter before, leading him to focus on the machines which saved so many lives and structures from blazes long ago.
But Swift mentions that he’s still in the craft in part because of fears it will die out without his help. He isn’t getting any younger, so there’s a possibility once he is gone, restorations of classic fire engines will become even more of a lost art.
One of our favorite online car shows is Barn Find Hunter and it’s precisely because of episodes like this. When else are you going to get to peek behind the curtain of one of the last fire engine restoration shops in the US?
Images via Hagerty/YouTube
