Fire Call Box project (almost) complete!

[Nilsog]

So its been a while since I've posted here, life has been quite busy! Thought I'd post a couple pictures from a project I'd been working on. My Captain gave me an old fire alarm box from my town and it was in rough shape so I decided to refurbish it. It was complete and in working order, just needed to be stripped and painted. The local water district sandblasted it for me and I painted it, took about a day. I have to get a brush and paint the letters on the front door and get the number plate refinished but otherwise its finished. This is one of my favorite jobs so far, I think it came out quite well! My only regret is not getting a before sandblasting picture to compare to.

[Doug Rose]

Ken....outstanding!! Great paint job....Doug

[teka-bb]

Nice job. I have a similar cast iron 'police call box' in my collection.
It's in reasonable shape and can be mounted on the wall with a little help now that I've finally been able to make a key for it so I can get to the mounting holes.

Mine isn't as old as yours.

This 1930 picture suggest yours is from the 1930's:
Do you maybe know how old yours is and where it was used?

[Nilsog]

Mine is from the 1950s/60s area, not sure of the exact date yet. It is from Lincoln, but I've had a hard time finding one of the box alarm cards which would have said where each one in town was. The system was dismantled and sold off some time in the early 1990's.

[dencins]

What needs to be done to the number plate?

Dennis

[Nilsog]

Well the screw heads broke off when I tried to remove it, so I need to drill them out and find a new way to attach it to the door, and it also needs to be stripped of paint and repainted black, then have the paint buffed from the edge and surface of the numbers so the aluminum shows.

[GG]

Excellent job!

That's another part of our civic infrastructure that's been taken away, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't even notice when it happened.  When I was a kid, public fire alarms were everywhere.  Now they don't exist.  "Your Tax Cuts At Work," grrrrr.

And now payphones are suffering the same fate (the excuse being that ""everyone" carries a "smart" phone"), along with benches on city streets for just sitting down, and a bunch of other stuff that contributed to our quality of life in public.  I have to believe that at some point voters will have had enough, and start to demand that public spaces be made not only safer, but functional and even welcoming again.  Reagan's phrase "a kinder, gentler nation" comes to mind. 

[Nilsog]

I know, it really is a sad state of affairs. I would get rid of my cell phone in favor of using pay phones if there were still some around. And these old fire alarm systems are solid as a rock as long as they are maintained. When New York City had its big power outage a few years back these alarm systems were the only way to get ahold of emergency services. The city stopped its campaign to remove them after that incident.