FORMER New Forest firefighter John Powell has rolled out his own Green Goddess after an eight-year labour of love.

Mr Powell has finished restoring the 50-year-old vehicle - for which he paid only £50 - just as other Green Goddesses are being brought out of mothballs.

They will provide basic cover during the planned series of firefighters' strikes, which are due to start next week.

But Mr Powell, 64, of Walkford, has no intention of loaning his vehicle to the Army, which will be standing in for civilian fire crews.

He worked with Green Goddesses while serving with the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) in Christchurch from 1957 until it was disbanded in 1968.

He said: "For what they were designed to do - pumping vast amounts of water over long distances - there has been nothing superior before or since."

His Green Goddess was built in 1953, making it one of the earliest examples of the vehicle.

After service with AFS it was sold by the Home Office in 1971 and repainted bright yellow by new owners Birmingham Airport, which used it as a crash tender until 1984, when it passed into private ownership.

It was a derelict hulk in a north London nursery when Mr Powell paid £50 for the vehicle in 1994.

He has returned the Green Goddess to its former glory, rebuilding the wooden and metal coachwork and restoring the mighty Sigmund pump - capable of pumping 900 gallons of water a minute - to full working order.

Mr Powell took the Green Goddess to a Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service open day at Eastleigh in the summer.

After leaving the AFS he became a retained firefighter and served at New Milton until he retired in 1990.

He worked through the 1977 firefighters' strike, but said he had no strong views on the current dispute.

"When I started as a retained fireman we got 12s 6d (62p) a call, day or night," he said