Thunderbolt Sirens At Moss Lake Texas

Thunderbolts at
Moss Lake, Tx

Thunderbolt Siren
Restoration Main
Siren Chopper
Chopper Housing
Rotator
Blower
Siren Controls
Moss Lake

Sirens Main

Civil Defense
Museum Main

Sirens at the lake community of Moss Lake Texas.
In late 2005 I was contacted by the Cooke County Tx. Emergency Management Coordinator about the community of Moss Lake Tx. He said that they were looking for some warning sirens and that he had given them my name and number. It was Cooke County EM who contacted me about the town of Valley View needing help with their siren. After talking with the Moss Lake VFD chief I told him that I had a couple of Thunderbolt sirens that were available. One siren was the Thunderbolt siren I had sitting in my garage after restoring it and the other was a Thunderbolt siren I got from the city of Gainesville earlier in 2005. I told the Moss Lake chief that I still needed to go through and check the Gainesville siren before it could go back into service. That siren was in very good shape except of a smashed rotator box that was damaged during removal but the rest of the siren was almost like new.
Below are photos and a description of what was done with these sirens and their installation at Moss Lake Tx.

Both Sirens After Installation.

North Location

South Location

Here are the 2 sirens after installation. Moss Lake VFD used the standard "air pipe up the telephone pole" method when they installed the sirens. The south location has the blower that was with my restored Thunderbolt with the Horn/Rotator from Gainesville and the North location has the Horn/Rotator I restored with the Gainesville blower. There was only single phase power available at the south location so that siren takes a special startup procedure because there is a static phase converter installed at the sirens power source. The south siren has to have the blower starter first before any other of the motors can be started so it can't be run off the timer. The startup load is just too heavy for the static converter. Hopefully I can eventually track down a single phase blower so the south siren can be run correctly. The north siren location is right next to a large pump house which has 480 volt 3 phase power. An electric company in Gainesville installed a transformer at that location to drop the voltage from 480 to 240 volts and the siren runs great. Click Photos To See Larger

Videos Of The Thunderbolts At Moss Lake Texas

North Location By Marina
Video AVI format 14Mb File Size

South Location
Video AVI format 11Mb File Size

Right click and "save target as" might work best to view these videos.

Condition Of Siren From Gainesville

Horn/Rotator Unit	Old Style Blower	Blower w/Cover Off
Smashed Rotator Box	Smashed Rotator Box	Chopper Motor-Like New

Here are some photos I took when I first got the siren from Gainesville in 2005. The photo at upper left shows the siren in the pile at the city lot. I got a few other older vintage Thunderbolts and a 2t22 at the same time. See the 2t22 here. The Thunderbolt horn/rotator is a late 1970s vintage unit. The blower for the late 70's unit was badly damaged with a smashed blower motor and completely rusted air relief valve so I salvaged just the blower assy. and left the rest up at the lot. There was another earlier vintage blower that was in very good condition so that's the blower I got to use with the Moss Lake siren. The blower appeared have had some work done to it and was pretty clean. This blower had some pieces of steel angle welded to the blower frame so I sits higher than a standard Thunderbolt blower. The cover to the older vintage blower was cut up so I used the blower cover from the late 70s Thunderbolt which still has the original yellow paint and the FS Thunderbolt decals in good shape which was a plus.(Center and upper right photo.) The rotator box had been completely ruined when the siren was removed. (Lower left and center photo.) Straightening was impossible so I had a new rotator box built. (See below) The photo at lower right shows the chopper motor field and armature. The chopper motor condition was amazing being almost like new. Click Photos To See Larger

New Rotator Box

Here is the new rotator box. I had Garland Sheetmetal do the job and it turned out pretty good. They even soldered the top tube joint so I wouldn't leak. Click Photos To See Larger

Early type and later type Thunderbolt siren blowers.
Here's a photo of the early type and later type of Thunderbolt blower units side by side. The difference is obvious from the photo. Federal went to the smaller size blower in the 1970s or maybe late 1960s. I don't know the exact year. The smaller type blower runs at a much higher speed than the larger type. Notice the pulley sizes on each blower. When the blowers are running the smaller one really screams while the larger just putt-putts along. The larger type blower unit is very heavy. I would guess it's well over 600 pounds with the motor on the frame. At the time this photo was taken I had the blower motors at the motor shop for a checkup. Both motors were in good condition. Both of these blowers use 7.5 horsepower 240 volt 3-phase motors. The C-series Thunderbolt used a little different blower configuration. The C-series used a vertically mounted roots blower with smaller double belts. See a C-series Thunderbolt blower here.

Both Sirens Almost Ready To Go
Here are both units when I was getting them ready to go. The new rotator box can be seen in this photo. The paint turned out very nice. I don't have the photos I took of the sirens fully assembled due to a ridiculous digital camera memory card fiasco.

Click Photos To See Larger