Sterling History

[Franz?]

I found my 1970 price sheet, hang onto your hats.
5hp 3? single head $500- single ? $650-
5hp double head $650- single ? $700-

7?hp 3? Double head $550- Single ? $700-

10hp 3? Double head $750- Single ? $900-

Single head machines were only offered in 5hp

Fortunately, nobody ever ordered a 7? or 10 in those days because the company had no motors to build them.



A cast box with hook switch for the front of a firehouse cost $70-

$550 in 1970 would cost $3078.27 in 2008

[500AT]

Here is a siren from nearby Belleville, Michigan. All of the controls for this siren were made by Sterling, from Rochester, New York. What model siren is this?

[Daniel]

That looks like a GCS siren or maybe a Darley. The guts are almost certainly a Model 5.

[JasonC]

Franz, are you very familiar with the fire/ambulance sirens Sterling made?

[Franz?]

Franz, are you very familiar with the fire/ambulance sirens Sterling made?

Those were pretty much a dead issue by the time I came along. There were a couple skids of parts for them in stock, and possibly 10 completed machines, but they just didn't sell.

I do remember one that was sold for the roof of a brand new Cadillac/Superior ambulance that cost the company a lot of money to put a new roof on the ambulance. It had so much torque it caused fractures to the roof.

[pyramid head]

Franz, do you know shipping locations of the sirens up north? I am in Upstate NY and I have not seen a single Sterling up here. The only one I have even heard of is Lyon mountains old siren, which is going to sit in a museum for people to stare at. When I offered to buy it, it was already too late. There are some things that I won't get in life, but a Sterling won't be one of them! Where are you located?

[Modulator Master]

Here is a siren from nearby Belleville, Michigan. All of the controls for this siren were made by Sterling, from Rochester, New York. What model siren is this?

In Jerome, Somerset County we have a Siren like but with a pointed top instead of a round one.

[holler]

Hey Franz do you have any idea if this strange mystery siren I found in my hometown is a Sterling? I has 8 or 9 ports.

[Franz?]

I'm in North Greece, a few miles from the last location of Sterling Siren Fire Alarm which was 1619 Manitou Rd.

I've dug up everything I can find pertaining to Sterling, and I don't have a shipping list. I know a lot of them went to the Southerntier of NY and during the 50s, Civil Defense was buying sirens by the truckload taking them in single lot delivery for warehousing and redistribution. I think there is a major problem among younger folks understanding things didn't work in the 50s the way they do today in terms of shipping.

Civil Defense might order 50 sirens in a batch, and when they left Sterling's plant on Plymouth Ave S in Rochester the whole load went to a single Civil Defense warehouse. The machines were all individually crated, and manhandled onto the truck hauling them. Where they went after leaving the plant might never be known to the plant, unless the final user called or even more likely mailed in for information.

About the farthest one I ever serviced from Rochester was in a village called Canasaragua down by Dansville. I drove there in a blizzard because the firehouse had caught fire Christmas Eve day, and the siren was the only way they had to summon firemen, and they needed it. With no expressways, it took about 3 hours to get there, and I left Rochester with the Chief's phone number in my pocket along with the instruction if I got stuck or lost to call so his men could come and get me.

After I got the machine back on line around midnight, I was offered a few free overnight stays if I didn't want to drive back. I figured I'd drive back and was given a sheet of paper with half a dozen highway barns and firehouses I had to check in with along the way to make sure I wasn't stuck in a snowdrift someplace. That's just the way things were done back then, and I made every one of the checkins too.

I even caught hell from Wild Bill for not checking in with him when I got back around 4 in the morning.

Unfortunately, all of the company records went in the dumpster around 81 when Wild Bill auctioned off everything and retired. Well, his wife said he retired, and his doctors said he retired, but a few months later he was back in action operating a couple dozen automatic blood pressure testers in supermarkets around here, and building a 6 bay garage for his grandson's Tonka trucks.

[Robert Gift]

...

Since the siren is inside and protected I would remove those sheet metal stator hoods.
I'd also oil it more than once a year.
And find that missing intake cone.