train horns on fire truck and vehicles

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Unless I missed something, I didn't hear any train horns. The normal electornic and mechanical air horns, yes, but nothing that sounded or looked like a locomotive horn.
 
Jim, around 4:00 there's what sounds to be a 3 chime, followed shortly by a single chime diesel truck air horn. Again at 4:54 and 5:36 the 3 chime, sounds kind of like a K3. I'm quite surprised, wonder what motivated them to use a multi-chime horn vs. a standard blat single chime?
 


Man, I'd love to see the electical system in that thing. A Federal "Q" siren, two regular airhorns, and a Nathan 5 chime locomotive horn. :eek: That doesn't even take into acount all the lights hung on that engine. They must have enough generating power for a small city on that truck.
 
Josh, I'll never understand firefighters. That big Federal "Q" siren alone needs 100 amps and #1 gauge wire to work. The two standard Buell airhorns in the bumper take 18 amps to run the 12 volt compressor and you need to find room for the three gallon air tank. I can only imagine the power you need to run the compressor for the five chime and what size storage tank it must need. That doesn't count the multiple electronic sirens and 5,200 lights on that rig. :)

We used to have the siren mounted on the roof of our patrol cars. It was a "Q" siren when I first started and then electonic sirens when we went to lightbars. After about 20 years of this, OSHA found that cops were losing their hearing from being exposed to so much loud noise and mandated that all sirens be moved into the grille, away from the passenger compartment. The Federal "Q" alone puts out 123 decibels. I would guess that all that noisemaking equiment on that fire truck puts out about 200 decibels if it's all sounded at once. 160 decibels normally produces instant perforation of the ear drums. I have no idea how they pass an OSHA inspection.
 
If you have that much volume around you and you STILL can't get people to pull over then what?!?!:eek::eek::mad::mad:

We have a lot of that up here---we have a 3 chimer up at the fire station just in behind us and it is amazing what some people will do to NOT hear it.:mad::confused:
 
Actually, the problem is too much volume. Between the mechanical sirens, air horns, and the phaser sounds from an electronic siren, we make it more difficult for a driver to tell where an emergency vehicle is. If there are any buildings around, the echo and sound bounce makes it seem like a vehicle in back of you is in front of you. There was a very good study done in 1991 on the issue of siren effectiveness that, although somewhat dated, is still not being followed by most emegency services today. If you're interested, you can read it at http://www.emergencydispatch.org/articles/warningsystems1.htm.
 


UP2CSX said:
Man, I'd love to see the electical system in that thing. A Federal "Q" siren, two regular airhorns, and a Nathan 5 chime locomotive horn. :eek: That doesn't even take into acount all the lights hung on that engine. They must have enough generating power for a small city on that truck.
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It's a P5 horn in the fire truck.
 
That's a good example of why more isn't better. Tell me if having that many sirens makes it easier or harder to tell how many emergency vehicles are approaching? I would have thought at least two, maybe three. The idea is to let the public know there's one truck behind them, let them pull over and out of the way, and then resume travel. I probably would have sat there for another minute wondering where all the other trucks were. It's fun for firefighters to have all those noisemakers but they aren't accomplishing their goal of traffic clearing in a safe manner.
 


UP2CSX said:
That's a good example of why more isn't better. Tell me if having that many sirens makes it easier or harder to tell how many emergency vehicles are approaching? I would have thought at least two, maybe three. The idea is to let the public know there's one truck behind them, let them pull over and out of the way, and then resume travel. I probably would have sat there for another minute wondering where all the other trucks were. It's fun for firefighters to have all those noisemakers but they aren't accomplishing their goal of traffic clearing in a safe manner.
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From Twitter:@EngineMedic @jodfie our med 6 has dual sirens as well as air horns.. Nice and loud... But people still don't move..Dumb@$$e$
 
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