using wagons and sleighs that advertised their wares with decorative pictures and signage. Commercial vehicles in the museum's collection include a Concord stagecoach used to transport hotel guests in the White Mountains, a butcher's wagon complete with hanging scales and meat hooks, a Maine druggist's patent medicine wagon and a Pennsylvania Conestoga wagon, used to haul produce from rural farms to city markets. Vehicles were also essential to firefighters, who needed to transport water and equipment quickly. A variety of early firefighting vehicles are represented in the museum's collection. The horse was a latecomer to firefighting, not pressed widely into service until the 1870s. To save precious time, horses were kept in the firehouse. Their stalls had break-away chains and, at the sound of the alarm, the horses raced to their places in front of the waiting equipment. Their collars and harnesses were suspended from the ceiling, poised like spiders in a web, ready to drop at a touch. The steam-driven pumper, the hose wagon, and the hook-and-ladder truck became the three major horse-drawn firefighting vehicles. However, it was the steamer, usually driven with horses harnessed two or three abreast, that provided the most spectacular sight as it flew down the street with smoke pouring from the funnel of its boiler, building up a head of steam to run the pumps. See also Liz Whitney Tippett (Llangollen estate) References Shelburne Farms Coach Barn Saint Michaels College Ongoing Project on the Shelburne Museum Wheeling, Kenneth Edward. Horse-Drawn Vehicles at the Shelburne Museum. Shelburne: Shelburne Museum, 1974. Carlisle, Lilian Baker. The Carriages at Shelburne Museum. Shelburne, VT: Shelburne Museum, 1956. Shelburne Museum's Carriage Collection Visser, Thomas Durant. Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings. London: University Press of New England, 1997. Arthur, Eric and Dudley Witney. The Barn. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1972. Sloane, Eric. American Barns & Covered Bridges. New York: Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1954. External links Shelburne Museum Horseshoe Barn Shelburne Museum Transportation museums in Vermont Carriage museums in the United States Barns in Vermont