The Siren Board

Thanks so much for the info. I don’t think these sirens were designed with harsh Canadian winter conditions in mind. It’s my belief that winter, combined with lack of routine maintenance, contributed to their short life span. 9 years.. The current ATI system of 18 sirens (tested every Monday) is now going on 21 years with regular maintenance.

Alertronic6000 wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 03, 2022 12:12 pm

Thanks so much for the info. I don’t think these sirens were designed with harsh Canadian winter conditions in mind. It’s my belief that winter, combined with lack of routine maintenance, contributed to their short life span. 9 years.. The current ATI system of 18 sirens (tested every Monday) is now going on 21 years with regular maintenance.

I wouldn't say the system of ATIs is regularly maintained very well at all. Several sirens do not work, and they can be offline for months before the city bothers repairing them, and that's usually only after an enthusiast makes them aware of the issue. Every original ATI in the city has already had its original controller replaced due to issues, and despite having brand new controllers the sirens still break due to being junk.
As of right now the Vidal St., Sherwood Village, Beckwith St units, and two other units are confirmed as currently not working, while the Point Edward unit was destroyed by lightning and needed replacement while the Lansdowne unit was offline for a long time before getting its controller fixed. Even the High Park unit has a faulty controller that causes an entire minute delay between winding up and actually performing its tone, and this was after being dead for two months. It had the same issue before dying and this siren isn't even 10 years old yet, being installed in 2014. The city never should have invested in ATIs and it really shows. I can see why the Alertronics met the same fate.

Thank you for the info. I don’t “follow” the ATIs, so that was a bad guesstimating on my part. I have seen them being worked on on a few occasions, which is more than the Alertronics. But that make sense as to why I haven’t heard them on Monday recently.

I still have the newspaper article dated April 8th 1998, when the city announced they disconnected the 6000s. Some of the city council members bashed the sirens and likened them “to aging dinosaurs.” Why they waited until the end 2012 to remove the remaining 8 is a mystery to me.

If you are interested in knowing the status of the ATI's I made a map some time ago that shows the status of the city/township system.
https://www.google.ca/maps/d/u/0/viewer ... 06196&z=11

Here’s a video from 1996 of the Alertronics sounding
https://youtu.be/2V2afg8DEao