Question about the bee-striped Thunderbolts

[NewEnglander1212]

Does anyone know if the "Bumblebolt" stripes were exclusive to the 1952 models? I haven't seen them on anything newer than that year, so I'm curious.

[jerrylovessirens]

I'm not sure when the "bumble bolt" scheme was discontinued, but I'm sure it was a quickly evident cost saving measure that was adopted early on. Lots more paint prep/masking needs to be done versus just spraying the whole thing one color.

[traintraveler]

Funnily enough this topic actually came up on the FB a few days ago, actually. Although I am not certain on when exactly striped production ended, but several 1952 units (particularly located in Cleveland, Ohio), featured no stripes and only the base yellow paint.

And, just for fun, here's some photographic evidence of that! (Thank you, Kurt and Luke!)
Wichita, KS:

IMG_6350.jpg (84.52 KiB) Viewed 5088 times

Cleveland, OH:

IMG_6351.jpg (64.3 KiB) Viewed 5088 times

[HDN]

Nice pictures! I don't think I've seen any pics of a Thunderbolt in its shipping crate.

[MKIIProductions]

I believe that this may have been a "built-to-order" option from Federal Signal at the time. There are some units that were shipped early on in the striped paint scheme while others were solid yellow.