Low tone model 5 or 7 recording!

[pyramid head]

Their is no glass, so you just walk up an push it I guess.

[Robert Gift]

Wow! Usually glass is present and must be broken - to deter pranksters from just walking up and sounding the siren.
As children, my friends and I would have given it a little "growl" test if no one was around.

[AllSafe]

There is a better recording of one on the Siren Archive (look at Llanerch, PA). It's missing the first half of the windup, though.

[AllSafe]

Wow! Usually glass is present and must be broken - to deter pranksters from just walking up and sounding the siren.
As children, my friends and I would have given it a little "growl" test if no one was around.

Robert, there are sirens all over the place in Haven which could be sounded just by flipping a switch next to them (and most of them aren't locked up!). I also saw a Thunderbolt last week next to the Lafarge plant in Wichita with a recessed toggle switch right on the side of the timer cabinet (the kind you would have to put a small piece of metal into to switch it).

[JasonC]

Wow! Usually glass is present and must be broken - to deter pranksters from just walking up and sounding the siren.
As children, my friends and I would have given it a little "growl" test if no one was around.

A lot of small towns still have open alarm boxes to sound the siren, reminiscent of "pre-911" days. False alarms are rare due to the fact these boxes are in plain view of many people.

[500AT]

My hometown of Dundee, Michigan, used to have a red Sterling alarm box just like that. You would break the glass, and press the black button to activate the siren. The siren would cycle over and over till someone hit the stop button inside the radio room, or next to the timer. Sadly, this box was removed in the 1980s, due to a lot of false alarms, and is now inside the station on display.

[CABLEVision]

The city of anaheim california used to have a pull box stations. Sadly these were removed in the 70's but I still know where a red pole is that says "FIRE" on it.

[pyramid head]

here is a much better recording I made today, with a almost complete wind-down! uber siren.mp3 - 0.65MB

[pyramid head]

My pics from today as well. I do have more, but they are not all that good.

[AllSafe]

They take a lot longer to wind down than that. About 2 1/2 minutes or so. Very heavy cast-iron rotor.