People with a burning passion for fire engines of all shapes and sizes descended on Odiham this weekend.
The 15th annual Odiham Fire Show attracted up to 6,000 visitors for two days of fire displays, vintage engines and hundreds of scale models at Lodge Farm, in North Warnborough. Around 200 privately owned fire engines and emergency vehicles descended on the village for the show, which was first held in 1992, taking parts in drills and fire fighting demonstrations.
Organiser Linda L'Enfant, who spends 12 months of the year organising the show with Odiham Fire Station staff, said the event had proved more popular than ever, with visitors not put off by frequent showers. She told the Observer: "Every year the show is getting better. A lot of the other shows are stopping their live demonstrations because of health and safety legislation, so this is the best one for preservationists. We are becoming quite unique."
Over the year's the show has raised around £90,000 for charity, and Ms L'Enfant said organisers were hoping to break through the £100,000 barrier at this year's event. Volunteers spent a week getting the site ready for the show building a three story building, which was set on fire so firefighters modelling costumes and using equipment from the Victorian era to the modern day could tackle the flames.
Crews also using various types of fire fighting equipment to put out a burning plane, used hydraulic cutters to take the doors and roof off a Citroën Xantia, gave demonstrations of how to put out a chip fire and more. Odiham Fire Station watch manager Mike Paull helped organise the event, and owns several vintage fire fighting engines in service during World War II.
The 59-year-old, who has been a retained firefighter in Odiham for 37 years, follow both his parents into the service - his mother serving as a firefighter during World War II, and his father afterwards. He said: "It's very important to keep your heritage alive, whether's that's a vehicle or a building. History is very important to me. And we have had numerous incidents after the shows of people ringing or writing to the station to say if they hadn't come to the show, they wouldn't have known what to do in a fire."
Among the many exhibitors at the show over the weekend was Ivor Richards, from Tadley, who started collecting model fire engines more than 30 years ago. The collector, who has more than 1,100 models in his collection, had a fraction of them on display in the exhibitors tent and said Odiham Fire Show was the best he had been do.
Mr Richards, who was making his tenth visit to the event, said: "It's absolutely brilliant. None of the other shows out there are organised like this and attract so many people. It's incredible."
