What’s the history/reason departments chose Tuesday at 19:00

[u/OwnMountain703]

I’ve noticed that a lot of fire departments, including my own, hold training on Tuesdays at 19:00. Obviously not every hall follows this schedule, but it seems like a pretty common trend. Does anyone know the history or reasoning behind Tuesday evenings being the ‘standard’ practice night, or how that tradition got started.

This might be a stupid question and I apologize if it is, just one of my weekly shower thoughts I suppose.

[u/Crab-_-Objective]

7pm is early enough for people to get some decent training in and still get a good nights sleep but late enough that they can go come and eat dinner after a 9-5 job.

Tuesday because it’s not right after the weekend but isn’t later in the week when social events tend to happen.

This is my rationale without any real backing. My old volunteer company used Thursday nights though so who knows.

[u/Chicken_Hairs]

Our reasoning was

Mondays already suck

Fridays, people are doing stuff, going out etc

Wednesdays are church night in a lot of places.

That leaves Tuesday and Thursday.

[u/Barabarabbit → u/Chicken_Hairs]

Did not know that Wednesday was a church night. When I was young I always went to church with my family on Sunday.

Is Wednesday popular night for Bible study or other related classes?

[u/Igloo_dude → u/Barabarabbit]

Correct

[u/Vantabl0nde → u/Barabarabbit]

It’s more of an addition, I would go to youth group on Wednesdays and Sundays

[u/ClydesdaleDivision]

My old volly dept was Thursdays at 7pm and one Saturday morning a month.

[u/TLunchFTW]

Mine does Monday. Old one did Tuesday

[u/Dal90]

My area of southern New England which was rural and small factory villages when the fire departments were being founded mainly in the 1920s-50s...

-- Mill Villages where most of the firefighters worked in the mill in the neighborhood met mid-week @ 7pm or even earlier.

-- Hill Towns full of farmers liked their meetings later like 8pm. My company is in a hill-town.

Farming at the time had a much different rhythm than factory work; other than the morning milking MUST be done before the daily morning pickup...the rest was flexible and frequent adjustment to weather, what cow was sick, which tractor broke down, if your neighbor needed help, etc. etc. were just a normal day. A 1930 Grange meeting might start at 7:30 for members-only business, open up to the public at 8pm for a lecture, 9pm would be entertainment, light supper at 9:30 followed by dancing 10pm-12am for everyone eight to eighty. Those old farts could party. They ate dinner around noon time as the big meal of the day, if tired from the night before may take a bit more rest afterwards before starting up afternoon and early evening chores.

Factory workers had a different rhythm -- expected to work the same hours every day, pretty steadily and same thing all day, quit same time everyday, eat their dinner in the evening, wanted to go to bed early so they can repeat the next day. Office workers today are similar, just get mentally instead of physically worn down during the day. Try getting a married office-working 40-something year old couple with a couple kids to go dancing on a Wednesday till midnight today...most would think you're insane at the suggestion.

Our 1950s/60s factory workers, however, often had hour-long bus rides to various defense contractors in the area.

For our regular training we had Monday @ 8pm for the farmers, and Friday @ 7pm for the factory workers -- only once a month so it wasn't too bad, but they didn't have to commute on Saturday morning so they preferred that trade-off over midweek.

Special training the day and start time would just be worked out by those interested.

By the mid-70s we settled into training @ 7:30pm most Mondays, occasional extra training mid-week.

[u/Creative_User_Name92]

Monday for us

[u/Halligan0114]

My last dept did it because holidays aren’t on Tuesday, so they didn’t have to pay the casual FFs overtime/stat pay. 1900 is late enough to eat after work, while still having a solid 3 hour training. Then the “on call” shift rotation happened Thursdays, and rig checks were Thursday at 1900 for the same reasons.

[u/National_Conflict609]

Mondays 7pm for ours

[u/triton8890]

Monday night football

[u/Strict-Canary-4175]

You don’t use the colon when you use a 24 hour clock. It’s just 1900.

[u/Dal90 → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

Give me ISO 8601 or give me death.

2025-08-27T03:19:42.500-04:00. (3:19am and 42 seconds and 500 milliseconds Eastern Daylight Time -- a negative four hour offset from UTC)

or

2025-08-27T07:19:42.500Z (same thing, but in UTC)

Multiple date systems exist. Anyone not using 8601 is wrong :)

(I may be just a bit bitter because my day job involves frequent correlation of massive computer log files across multiple timezones, and there is still many systems out there using whatever they started using in the anything goes days of 1990s computing and I spend way too much time figuring out what timezones any given log file uses.)

[u/Strict-Canary-4175 → u/Dal90]

I do not care. You’re wrong and not a fireman. Good luck!

[u/Oosbie → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

My pikepole and I also insist on YMD HMS(Z) unless otherwise specified.

[u/Strict-Canary-4175 → u/Oosbie]

Your “pikepole” lol okay.

[u/Oosbie → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

Are you okay?

[u/Strict-Canary-4175 → u/Oosbie]

Are you?

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

That is a local, and confusing variation, which is certainly not standard in English.

[u/Strict-Canary-4175 → u/Mediocre_Daikon6935]

No it’s not. But I know you like to argue so I guess here we go 🙄🙄

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

Wikipedia literally uses the hour minute separation. 

Syntactical-descriptive colons may separate the numbers indicating hours, minutes, and seconds in abbreviated measures of time. “The concert begins at 21:45. The rocket launched at 09:15:05.”

Because it is the standard delimiter that is used to indicate separation. It is used between minutes and seconds and ask.

Traditionally the British would use a full stop. What we call a period. 

[u/Strict-Canary-4175 → u/Mediocre_Daikon6935]

Girl I do not care. That isn’t how it’s used in the fire service. Full stop. Like the British.

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

Fire service where? Because I’ve literally never seen it written that way, anywhere in the United States, and it is not how the US military/NATO write time, because it is lacking the ymd & time zone abbreviation at the back (generally defaulted to Zulu time.

[u/Strict-Canary-4175 → u/Mediocre_Daikon6935]

NO WHERE? It’s NO WHERE in the US? lol okay.

[u/bleach_tastes_bad → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

incorrect. you don’t use the colon when stating the time using “military time” (in the US), in which case it would be “1900 hours”. while “1900” may be a shortened form of “1900 hours”, “19:00” is very valid, and when using a regular 24 hour clock, is the standard format

[u/Strict-Canary-4175 → u/bleach_tastes_bad]

No it’s not. Dork.

[u/synapt → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

You mainly I believe are confusing military time with 24 hour time as the same thing. While "24 hour time" (as defined by ISO 8601) functionally came from the concept of military time, they are two separate things.

Military time has no colon, and is generally specified with a timezone suffix (ie; 1900R for east coast/GMT). The non-military 24 hour format used by just about anything else follows ISO 8601 which supports both use and non-use of the colon separator, by default the standard most use is the extended format, which utilizes the colon.

So it is an optional thing, but it's also the normal standard, which is why virtually every single ISO 8601 based thing implemented software model (which is pretty much 99.9999% of software) stores with a colon separator.

[u/bleach_tastes_bad → u/Strict-Canary-4175]

ok.

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935]

Christ comes first on Sunday and Wednesday. Youth programs and sports on Monday Thursday.  Friday and Saturday are the weekend.

[u/Serious_Cobbler9693]

We did board/member meetings first Tuesday of the month, training the following Thursday and drills the third Saturday.

[u/Zajac19]

We use Thursdays at 1900

[u/Bostonhook]

Must be when the slot car track is closed. Silly hobbyists.

[u/Typical-Efficiency31]

Most departments drill every day. I can’t imagine a department that only trains once a week being very good at their job.

[u/Dusty_V2 → u/Typical-Efficiency31]

This is clearly a question directed at volunteer/ paid on call / part time.

Don't be so dense.

[u/Typical-Efficiency31 → u/Dusty_V2]

Wait, volunteers really do only train once a week? I thought that was just a joke.

[u/Dusty_V2 → u/Typical-Efficiency31]

Once or twice a month is real common, especially for all volunteer departments in my area that are only on call, no one actually mans the station.

And because I know the elitist attitude is probably coming, id challenge you to come up with a solution that could get these departments to train daily with people who already work fulltime and have families and other commitments.

[u/Typical-Efficiency31 → u/Dusty_V2]

The easy solution is to staff the station with paid people.

[u/Dusty_V2 → u/Typical-Efficiency31]

"Easy" solution. You've got it all figured out huh?

I wish I could be this blissfully ignorant.

[u/Typical-Efficiency31 → u/Dusty_V2]

Let me guess, you’re gonna ask where the money comes from?

I bet they find a way to pay the cops, teachers, garbage men and people working in city hall, right?

[u/Dusty_V2 → u/Typical-Efficiency31]

Im guessing in your head you're thinking of volunteer places like Kentland. There are absolutely places abusing the volunteer fire service, however, the vast majority of these places don't have municipal provide services like garbage people and no one actually works at the township building. Its called being unincorporated.

You should run for office since you've got it figured out bud.

[u/Typical-Efficiency31 → u/Dusty_V2]

So all the kids are uneducated, garbage is piling up and there’s no law enforcement?

[u/Dusty_V2 → u/Typical-Efficiency31]

Not quite but also some places not far off. There are definitely places where the schools are stretched thin, there is one police officer (often state or county) for 100 sq miles. Garbage is a private service, i know of only 2 places in my area where garbage is a municipal service.

Given how stretched thin these other services, a comparable for the fire service would be a single manned station for several townships or more. Response times through the roof.

Im not sure what big city you are from, but rural America is a hugely different place.

[u/No-Procedure5991]

Emergency aired Saturday nights from 1972 to 1977. Tuesday night drills meant you could be home to watch Roy & Johnny on Saturdays.