Model Railroading > product idea...feedback requested

First off...I have too many hobbies, I mean I do military vehicle restoration, reenacting, and I hunt and document cold war era sirens....which brings me to this thread...

Here in the states from WWII up till now warning sirens, are one of those little overlooked items that dots the nations cities and towns, from the local volunteer fire department to the long silenced civil defense stations....it also seems to be overlooked in the model railroad area, as every club and layout I have seen lacks this little icon of times past ( at least where I live...the sirens made their last test in the 80's)

So anyway here I am thinking, if I made both static and animated sirens in HO scale, would anyone buy them?

Would love to know the community's feedback here...thanks!

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I'm pretty sure Tony Koester talked about these in a semi-recent Trains of Thought column in MR. Can't remember how he made his, but that was the first that I had heard of modeling them.

- Jeff

Have you seen these?

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeusu2f/


Cheers,
Harry

I think a siren for the firehouse might be a seller. Lots of people have a firehouse on their layout. A controller that sounds it at random (not too often) might be a cool thing. Setting it to go off for the noon test might be neat also. A firehouse siren could span a very large time period also.

In my county the cycles for the firehouse siren are:

once for test
twice for EMS/rescue
three times for a fire call

Good luck!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/12 11:52 by pilotblue.

There are still lots of firehouse sirens in use in smaller communities. In many cases in the Midwest, they double as tornado sirens, so they are maintained even though most fire dispatching is done by radio and cell phone now.

Don't know about the sirens (I do remember them) but I think modeling a noon gun would be super for older era layouts. Besides, it would be a really noticeable way to end an operating session!

Where I grew up we had Thunderbolts that rotated:

http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/sirens/vview/done.jpg

It blew a 2 tone for a fire call for the VFD, and a solid tone for tornado warning.

Mike

A Dunsmuir scene would be remiss without the noon time blat and distant siren back-up.