1956 Bedford RLHC Hose Layer RYX355 owned by Dan Walker of West Kirby. Originally issued to Warwickshire in June 1962 and sold through British Car Auctions in August 1988. Seen at Welland Steam Fair 31/7/11. (George Ward)

David Moore from The NFS and AFS Vehicles Group writes ... The photo shows it in its original role, laying hose. We are laying eight 75ft lengths of 6in diameter hose round the arena, so that four Goddesses can pump 900 gallons per minute (that's about 4 tons of water per minute!) out of the 2500-gallon dam, through the four Goddesses and back into the dam from a spout 10ft in the air! It was impressive.
We had a 30-minute arena slot to set it all up, run the pumps and clear up, and get everything out of the arena. The sceptics said it couldn't be done in the time, and they were right - it took us 35 minutes!

These hose layers held a mile of hose - 70 lengths - and could lay it at around 20mph.