The Siren Board

I was recently on a siren-hunting road trip in Eastern Oregon, and I stopped in John Day to get pictures of all their sirens and record the “Weltex” going off for its noon test.

I noticed that the Weltex had a tag, and I managed to get an up close shot:

Ladies and Gentlemen, we now finally have confirmation of the exact brand and model of the “Weltex” siren! It had been suspected for a while that these were E.D. Bullard sirens, however they don’t have the angled chopper that Bullards normally have. The tag reads E.D. Bullard Co, San Francisco, Model 3H27, - , Volts 220, Phase 3, - . All the names on all the maps that I own will be changed to match this new info. It looks like there could be a 3rd character after the 7 in 3H27, but it’s very faint and doesn’t readily match any character other than “+” so I don’t count it, as it’s most likely a scratch.

Holy, amazing discovery! Now everybody has to correct the titles on their YouTube videos of these lol

SamtheSirenMan(531) wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 09, 2022 5:45 am

I was recently on a siren-hunting road trip in Eastern Oregon, and I stopped in John Day to get pictures of all their sirens and record the “Weltex” going off for its noon test.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we now finally have confirmation of the exact brand and model of the “Weltex” siren! It had been suspected for a while that these were E.D. Bullard sirens, however they don’t have the angled chopper that Bullards normally have. The tag reads E.D. Bullard Co, San Francisco, Model 3H27, - , Volts 220, Phase 3, - . All the names on all the maps that I own will be changed to match this new info. It looks like there could be a 3rd character after the 7 in 3H27, but it’s very faint and doesn’t readily match any character other than “+” so I don’t count it, as it’s most likely a scratch.

Funny. But the kiddies will probably discredit you and continue plastering "Weltex" all over them, as I had argued for some time that there was literally zero confirmation on them being "Weltex". But I was ridiculed because they were "shaped similar".


Kudos on the find however.

It's great that we found out the actual name of this type of siren, but I'm wondering as to who originally said these were Weltexs. Perhaps someone saw a on one of these with the name Weltex on it, or something else? My mind is boggled.

SirenTube wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:09 pm

It's great that we found out the actual name of this type of siren, but I'm wondering as to who originally said these were Weltexs. Perhaps someone saw a on one of these with the name Weltex on it, or something else? My mind is boggled.

One of the Facebook "experts".

SirenTube wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:09 pm

It's great that we found out the actual name of this type of siren, but I'm wondering as to who originally said these were Weltexs. Perhaps someone saw a on one of these with the name Weltex on it, or something else? My mind is boggled.

If i remember correctly, Adam Pollak posted a picture on the Siren Enthusiasts facebook group of a larger, but similar looking siren in Gardena, California. It had a downward-facing chopper, motor on top, and three supporting legs. Everyone looked at that and thought that "surely, this other three-legged, downward-facing siren located in a similar area is related, right?".

sirensandfirealarms wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 12, 2022 1:11 pm

SirenTube wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:09 pm

It's great that we found out the actual name of this type of siren, but I'm wondering as to who originally said these were Weltexs. Perhaps someone saw a on one of these with the name Weltex on it, or something else? My mind is boggled.

If i remember correctly, Adam Pollak posted a picture on the Siren Enthusiasts facebook group of a larger, but similar looking siren in Gardena, California. It had a downward-facing chopper, motor on top, and three supporting legs. Everyone looked at that and thought that "surely, this other three-legged, downward-facing siren located in a similar area is related, right?".

This is correct. One of the so called Facebook experts deemed them all Weltex sirens with no evidence, and the rest of the community ran with it. I had long suspected these to be E.D. Bullard sirens, as their vertically mounted sirens used nearly identical vertical mounts and motor covers. The Weltex Siren Adam posted had a much simpler design, housed the entire motor in the siren assembly itself and was larger than any of these sirens that all seem to be the same size and port ratio. However being 100% of all Bullard sirens we knew about used conical chopper assemblies, I had my doubts.

More new info! Recently the Camas Valley FD in Oregon restored their Bullard, and posted about it on their facebook. They mentioned that it had a 10HP motor, although I am still skeptical of the given the size and volume of these, and the way E.D. Bullard did the model numbers of their other sirens, with the number in front of the H representing HP- e.g. 1/4H for a small vehicular siren.
More importantly, they shared a tag shot with me:


Image courtesy of Camas Valley Volunteer Fire Department.

Here, the model number stamped is "3H260", rather than 3H27. I had wondered for a while if the suffix of the model number was actually part of the model designation, as it seems to bear no relation to the actual siren. This confirms that it may just be a serial number attached to the model number. Looking back at my older image of the John Day Bullard, its stamped number was probably "3H274" in full, so serial number 274. I'll be redesignating these on my maps as just "3H" to account for the variations in serials.

Nice find!

I saw one without the top cover thing. And then it looked like a
Soup can!