The Siren Board

Hello,
Just wanted to share a few British sirens of which I have seen, mostly courtesy of Brendan W’s UK Siren map. I will most likely continue adding to this as I find more sirens.


I have put a number beneath each photo which allocates which siren is located where.

Locations:

1. Mystery siren at the East of England Showground in Peterborough. I actually discovered this siren, which I am proud to say

2. A Castle Castings siren in Appleby-on-Eden, used for flood warnings.

3. Klaxon ES1/2S fitted behind the Appleby-On-Eden cricket club building, for the same purpose as the Castle Castings siren.

4. A Whelen WPS 2901 at the Campact/Egger chemical plant in Hexham.

5. Gent siren atop the Hexham Abbey function room. Installed during WWII and afterwards used as a fire siren until Hexham’s mayor asked for it to be decommissioned due to it apparently frightening his children during the 60s.

Wow! Nice find on the mystery siren.

My friend has just discovered a potentially Klaxon FP6 siren in Carlisle, Cumbria. I will upload some pictures here when I visit it.

Forgot to add these here; we took some nighttime shots of the siren to quickly confirm the location and came back another day to expand upon the detail. I originally thought that this siren had a cubic housing around its motor, but I was later enlightened to the fact that it was actually just a junction box for the heating element, which makes more sense.

We returned in daylight to get some clearer shots; you can actually see that the junction box was only on one side of the siren’s motor, so I have no idea why I thought that it was a motor housing. The controller for the siren is most likely located within the building it sits atop, which is privately owned so we couldn’t see inside to confirm this. This siren is located in South Kingstown Industrial Park in Carlisle, Cumbria. It is confirmed to be a Klaxon GP6.

Wow, it looks great!

Hello again,

I have been doing a bit more siren-spotting recently, and within 3 days I was able to see 5 different sirens! Ok, so it isn't a HUGE number, but since sirens are so sparsely placed in the UK (near my location, anyway), this is a relatively large number for me.

Now, as I was making the most of the opportunity, I took quite a lot of pictures. For some reason, The Siren Board only allows me to upload a maximum of 15 images per post, so I will have to post each siren separately. If you are a member of the Board staff, please tell me if this is ok and also how often I am allowed to post these instalments as not to flood the Board. Even better, is there is a way to upload more than 15 images at a time, I would highly value this information.

I previously mentioned that I have seen 5 sirens, however unfortunately I only could take pictures of 4 of them...
The 5th siren, a Whelen WPS-2903, was located on the grounds of the Unilever factory in Leeds. Despite it being visible from the road, strictly speaking the factory site is a 'no-photography zone', confirmed by the staff. We have NOT taken any pictures of this siren due to this fact.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures I could take!

So, in this post there is the 1st siren we saw, which on the UK siren map by 'Brendan W' is labelled as a 'Gent 4HP'. This siren is located in the 'Hale' area of Manchester, which means that we saw a LOT of luxurious houses, cars and leisure centres as we drove. This siren is located in a car park between two houses, and even has what I believe to be a vintage railway line running behind it! This siren was given listed status as of 2022, as stated in an article in the Manchester Evening News, linked here:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ... n-22928442
According to the article, the siren was installed in 1938.

The siren itself is in a relatively aesthetically poor condition, with paint peeling off on most of it's housing and chopper. There seems to be a large amount of what I think could be rust or mould around the motor cover, with more appearing along the pole too. Interestingly, I think that this siren may still be connected to a power supply or even mains electricity, as there are a few thick cables running from the siren into a brick cabinet with green-painted wooden doors. This control cabinet seems very overgrown and mostly consumed by plants, so I can only assume that the siren controller (if it even in there) will be in similar condition. Interestingly, the siren choppers are fitted with heating implements, which I haven't seen before on a Gent siren. However, these seem to have been hastily fitted, as evident by exposed gaps around the connection of them to the stator. To be honest, I haven't seen many Gent sirens so I don't know if this is a common fitting or even if they are meant to look like this, but they do seem a little insecure in my inexpert opinion.

Overall, this siren is in quite poor condition, the control cabinet even more so. This is a real shame because it is in a very nice location, and it even has listed status now. Hopefully whoever or whatever organisation owns this siren will be able to fully restore it at some point, as if no action is taken it will most likely rust away into nothing.

By the way, I DID take pictures of the controller cabinet too, but I will have to add them later since they seem to have mysteriously disappeared...

Thanks for reading and I will see you in the next post.
-205664

I love the tapered stators on the Type 1474s, I'm wondering if that was done to try and direct the sound more out towards the intakes?

Snowpix wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2023 9:13 pm

I love the tapered stators on the Type 1474s, I'm wondering if that was done to try and direct the sound more out towards the intakes?

Yeah, I love that feature too. I think that the Gent dual-tone sirens are the nicest looking British sirens to be honest. I am curious about the term 'Type 1474', I have never heard that before, I assume you are referring to the Gent but please explain specifically what you meant.
I am not too sure about the reason of the stator's shape, I always just assumed that it was to make the siren look a bit nicer, heh.

Eclipse DDS wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 21, 2023 8:19 am

Snowpix wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2023 9:13 pm

I love the tapered stators on the Type 1474s, I'm wondering if that was done to try and direct the sound more out towards the intakes?

Yeah, I love that feature too. I think that the Gent dual-tone sirens are the nicest looking British sirens to be honest. I am curious about the term 'Type 1474', I have never heard that before, I assume you are referring to the Gent but please explain specifically what you meant.
I am not too sure about the reason of the stator's shape, I always just assumed that it was to make the siren look a bit nicer, heh.

That's the name of that particular model. There's a list of Gents model numbers with the corresponding horsepower ratings, and the Type 1474 is 4HP, which means this is a Type 1474.

https://civil-defense-sirens.fandom.com ... er_Tangent