Code 3 1/32 Diamond FDNY Engine Co. 68 Yankees™ Seagrave Pumper - DP #4 (12981)

This is Item #12981

Scale: 1/32
Release: July 2002
Edition Quantity: 10,000
Dimensions: 11 inches Long

Engine Company 68 was organized as a Combination Engine Company on August 23, 1898. A combination engine company, in the days of the early consolidated FDNY, consisted of a steam powered pumper, a hose wagon, plus a ladder truck. They were quartered in a wood frame building at 1080 Ogden Avenue, in a then rural area of The Bronx. During their first full year of operation, in 1899, they responded to a total of only eighteen alarms and performed actual duty at twelve of those. Their first apparatus was a 1898 LaFrance 4th size streamer, a 1898 Sebastian hose wagon and a 1898 Gleason and Bailey city service ladder, whose longest ladder was a 40-foot manually, raised two section extension. All three pieces were horse drawn, with three pulling the steamer, two for the hose wagon and two for the city service ladder truck.

On February 15, 1908, Engine 68 became a regular engine company, with the city service ladder truck being re-assigned to another unit. Their original steamer was motorized with a Christie tractor in 1916. Due to the many steep hills in their first alarm district, the motorized steamer was replaced with a new type 75 American La France 700 gpm pumper on October 18, 1921.

Engine 68 received a new neighbor directly to the rear of their fire station on December 23, 1913, when Hook and Ladder Company 49 was organized in a new fire station at 1079 Nelson Avenue. They remained neighbors, in this very unusual situation of back-to-back firehouses, until March 1, 1947, when due to an economic circumstances, Hook and Ladder 49 vacated their newer house and moved into the older house of Engine 68. Sharing quarters meant the tractor drawn aerial of Hook and Ladder 49 was parked behind the pumper of Engine 68 in this single bay fire station. Fire Patrol 6, a salvage unit of the New York Board of Fire Underwriters and not part of FDNY, took over the Nelson Avenue quarters of 49.

On September 19, 1979, both companies moved to new quarters two blocks north at 1160 Ogden Avenue, at the corner of West 167th Street, where they are both still quartered.

The first alarm territory of Engine Company 68, which is located mainly in an area of the Bronx long known as Highbridge, consists of numerous old tenements and private homes, a few low income high-rise projects, a multiblock wholesale produce market complex, many one story commercial buildings known as 'taxpayers' in FDNY terminology, plus Yankee Stadium™, the home of the New York Yankees baseball team. At their own expense, the company has had their last few assigned pumpers decorated with the Yankees logo and distinctive pin stripes. Their current apparatus is a 1997 Seagrave 1000 gpm pumper, with a 500 gallon booster tank, carrying the FDNY registration number of SP9706, indicating that it is the sixth unit of the 29 Seagrave pumpers delivered to FDNY in 1997. Ladder Company 49, as it is now known, which shares the quarters with Engine 68, has a 2001 Seagrave 100 foot rear mount aerial carrying FDNY registration number SL 01004. In the year 2000, Engine Company 68, which is part of the 17th Battalion of the 6th Division of FDNY, responded to 2,764 alarms. They went to work at 2,137 of those alarms. Of the 2,137, 216 were working fires in occupied structural buildings and 797 were medical responses. The company has received eleven unit citations and has suffered one line of duty death since their inception.

Jack Lerch

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