I remember you mentioning that system, and how part of it had TrueAlert speaker/strobes and 4903 horizontal speaker/strobes. I think the latter signals replaced older Federal Signal speakers and 2903 lights, and the 4251-30 pulls you mentioned are most likely the addressable version. And I recall quite a few Simplex technicians online saying that Simplex 2120 systems are a hassle to work with and are still supported by the company. Here’s a video a technician recorded and uploaded onto MySpace of a Simplex voice-evac system that had a 2120 replaced by a 4100U. The old Simplex LifeAlarm speaker/lights are still intact, and the 4251 pulls are too. Pretty neat seeing the 4100U slow whoop/voice message come out of a LifeAlarm speaker/2903 light setup…
It reminds me a lot of the system at Brockton Hospital, which most likely also has a Simplex 4100U panel, and they have many of the old LifeAlarm speakers and 2903 plates still intact, and the 4251-20 pulls. Many of the old smokes have been replaced with TrueAlarms, though.
Hopefully that hospital you mentioned will be able to replace that 2120 with a 4100U sometime in the future. They wouldn’t even need to replace the existing signals or pulls! I’m pretty sure addressable 4251 pulls are fully compatible with 4100Us.
Today I went into Quincy and Braintree, MA. I found some interesting alarm systems and found more info on the system at South Shore Plaza Mall. First off is the Presidents’ Place, a combination mall/office where one of my old doctors worked…
They’ve got some kind of FCI panel tied into a newer Notifier voice-evac panel.
The signals for the most part are unknown black speakers behind SAE AV32 light plates.
Pull stations are mostly FCI MS-2s with Stopper IIs over them. I also saw at least one MS-6.
These appear to be the original smokes.
System Sensor 2451TH smoke detector.
Another shot of one of the alarms. One store had an older Wheelock ET speaker with the 7002-style strobe on top. Another had a SpectrAlert!
This is at a huge old Bank of America bank/office building. The panel is a Simplex 4100, and near it was what looked like an old Simplex 4208 annunciator…
The alarms I saw were Simplex 2902-9732 LifeAlarm speakers on 4903-9105 strobe plates!
Pull stations were Simplex 2099-9795s.
Simplex beam detector. They also had the older-style TrueAlarm smokes.
These are at Quincy City Hall…
Looks like Wheelock 34 horns behind Standard Electric Time Co. light plates!
According to the system annunciator, Johnson Controls once owned Standard. This was from the late 1960s up until 1978 when Faraday bought out Standard.
The only pull I saw was a Fire-Lite BG-6! Chances are it MAY be the original.
One of the alarms was missing its lens!
The next pics are from South Shore Mall in Braintree, MA. I know I’ve shown you this before, but this time I found more info about it too!
The Simplex annunciator for the parking garage.
The alarms are the unknown electronic horns behind SAE AV32 strobe plates.
Pull stations are Simplex 2099-9754s behind sounder-less Stopper IIs.
The smokes are Simplex 2098-9201 heads on 2098-9211 bases.
The parking garage’s alarm panel is a Simplex 4005. It was in Trouble mode when I saw this today, and was making a continuous irritating piezo buzz as a result.
Battery case for the alarm panels.
The panel setup for the main mall. It’s a Simplex 2500 NDU command center! Never heard of these before. If I recall, this is supposed to be for Simplex 4120 systems. Perhaps a former Simplex tech like Dan B. could help out on this one?
The majority of the alarms in the mall are the vertical Simplex 4903 speaker/strobes. These are typically found in the main parts of the mall and the food court, as well as in a few stores.
The pulls are mostly Simplex 2099-9795s in the main mall areas. A few were replaced with 4099-9001s.
The majority of the smokes are the older-style Simplex TrueAlarms. Several of them are on the larger bases like this (note the concealed sprinkler next to it)…
…while some are on the small bases. Some stores have Simplex 2098-9201 smokes, and others have newer TrueAlarms.
The Simplex 4903-9357 TrueAlert speaker/strobe located near the food court, probably replacing an older speaker/strobe. These are also commonly found in stores at the mall, and even in some kitchen areas in the food court!
2099-9796 pull station with the glass missing in the bookstore. Some stores also have 4099-9001 and 4099-9003 pulls.
EST Genesis horn/strobes in the restroom near the food court! Seems kinda funny seeing these alarms in a Simplex system out of all the places to find them (I’ve seen them in a few Notifier systems, but it just seems funny to see these EST alarms in a Simplex system!) Another restroom has TrueAlert speaker/strobes in it.
A TrueAlert speaker/strobe in the Disney store (I suppose the Goofy figure gave it away?)
The annunciators to one of the main entrances.
Incidentally, today when I was there I actually thought the fire alarm was going off at one point! A loud bell rang and I jumped 10 feet into the air with a scream! Turns out it was only some back-to-school shopping commercial playing on the TVs :evil:
Nice pictures. I have never seen a Standard Horn/Light in person. The only vintage light plates I have seen in person are Simplex 4050-80s, SAE V33s, and Fire-Lite retrofit lights. Also, speaking of Fire-Lite, that BG-6 is in excellent condition.
Also, I DO remember seeing that EST Genesis horn/strobe at the south shore plaza.
Also I’ve seen LifeAlarms on 9501 strobe plates at the Prudential Center Mall.
That’s right. When I saw that alarm in there I was like, “So THAT’S the EST Genesis he mentioned that was there!”
And I also remember you mentioning Prudential Mall having those LifeAlarm speakers and 9501 light plates. Seems those 4903-9501 light plates are also often used with 2901-9838s and 4901-9805s IMO.
The panel to the left is an FCI-72, and the newer one is a Notifier ONYX NFS-3030.
Yep, that’s right. In 1967, the company was bought out by Johnson Controls, and in 1978, they sold the company off to Faraday.
4120 systems are networkable, which means multiple panels can be tied together. A 2500 NDU (Network Display Unit) is basically a network annunciator for the whole system.
The school was in two seperate buildings before they had the renovation that connected the 2 buildings and upgraded to the 4903 speaker strobes. The building I attended for grades 1 and 2 had the Simplex system with the 4050-80s and the other (larger) building had a Standard system which before renovation had grades 3-8.
When I entered 3rd grade, the Standard system was replaced, but I knew it was there because I had visited the school for various assemblies as it was just next door.
That’s interesting. I guess the building with the Standard system was from the early-to-mid 1970s, and the building with the Simplex system was an addition in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
BTW, what pulls did the building with the Standard system have? Was it the old round ones like my college had, or was it something else? I know the building with the Simplex system had 4251-20 pulls, now both have 2099-9761/4099-9003 pulls.
The pulls were the old round Standard pulls, and I think they were added in the mid '70s. My dad went to the school in the '60s and he said it was all bells and he can’t remember, but he thinks it may have had old Edwards 270 pulls. this would have been the original system as the school was built in 1958.
The school that had the Simplex system was built in the late '70s which means all the 4050-80s, etc. were all original to the school. My dad said that he remembered watching the school being built after he graduated from the school in the 8th grade.
Anyways, I am quite familiar with LifeAlarm+9501s as the Prudential Center Mall has them. They have 2099-9795s too. As for 9051s, I bet they’re an ADA version of the 9101.
Here’s the fire alarm system at the Temple Beth Emunah, where I went today for a model railroading show. The temple was built in 1964. They have an old Couch system with pretty much everything still intact! Unlike that abandoned medical center’s Couch system, this one is not as unique or interesting, but it still pretty neat. It almost seems like an old Standard system (probably because Faraday bought both Couch and Standard later on.)
Naturally, the pull stations are Couch’s older Chevrons.
I don’t know what Couch called them, but the signals are Federal Signal Vibratone 450 horns behind the flush-mount grilles. That bell you see next to it is a 6-inch Edwards Adaptabel, which is probably used for class-change signaling (they only have the bells in the Sunday School wing; everywhere else it is just horns.)
Chemtronics 500-series heat detectors. I also saw a 600-series one in the room where they had a Lionel train layout setup.
A 9-volt First Alert smoke detector with a light on it.
A Chevron pull with its break-rod missing!
This horn has NO flush-mount grille! Looks like it was removed some time after the building was first built.
That annuniciator high up was odd. I guess the building was small enought that people didn’t need to quickly look at it to locate the fire. The residential smoke alarm was also odd…what purpose does it serve in a building like that? You won’t hear it in another part of the building, and if you were in that part you will see the smoke.
These are the fire alarms at the Ashfield Middle School, which was formerly an elementary school that was built in 1965, but recently renovated for junior high/pre-K purposes. According to user tpirman1982, who went there, the school used to have a Simplex system with 4040 horns and Edwards 270-SPO pulls (identical to Brockton High School’s fire alarm system). But not anymore. They now have a Notifier voice-evac system (sigh…)
This is all that’s left of the old Simplex systems. The 4040 horns have been removed, and the grilles were painted over.
The new voice-evacuation panel. I’m not that great at identifying the newer Notifier systems, but it looks like it’s one of those ONYX-series Digital Voice Command panels.
The pull stations are Notifier NBG-12LXs. The green LED in the middle of the lever was flashing at warp speed!
Perhaps the signals are the most interesting part of the system. They’re SPECTRALERT ADVANCE SPEAKER/STROBES! This is the first place I’ve ever seen them in person (I’ve seen the horn/strobe version many times), and I bet this is the first place in my hometown to have these signals installed. They have these alarms installed everywhere; even in the classrooms!
They also have addressable Notifier smokes; I’m not good at identifying them unless I get a closer look at them (like the ones at my college.)
The nearby Brookfield Elementary School, however, still has most of its old system intact. It was built in 1963, with a gymnasium and new classroom wing built in 1969, and it’s the sister school to the Hancock Elementary School, where my dad went when he was younger. The fire alarms are also identical to the Hancock school too…
Gamewell FlexAlarm panel in the main lobby. It’s an OLD model, and is identical to what the Downey Elementary School has. I didn’t see remains of a previous panel or something, so this is probably the original. If I recall, the Hancock School has this too.
These are the alarms in the 1963 part of the building. They have the OLD 4030-2 horns. IDK what Gamewell called them (but I DO know Benjamin made these, and other companies such as IBM/Simplex and Honeywell rebranded them throughout most of the 1950s and 1960s.) Several of them were tilted like this.
The pull stations throughout most of the school are the older “Local Alarm” versions of the Gamewell Centuries.
The 1969 portion of the school has the older Federal Signal Vibratone 350 horns (same horn as the Simplex 4040.) User TrueAlertSpeakerStrobe mentioned Hemenway Hall at Framingham State College had these in the older portion of the building. That bell next to it is obviously a school bell; it’s an older 4-inch Simplex bell! There are quite a few of these bells inside both parts of the school.
They also have the Chemtronics 500-series heat detectors. Also note the Simplex clock underneath; it’s the same square clock Simplex made from the 1950s to the late 1970s that most of the schools I attended had! These are only in the 1969 portion of the building; the 1963 part has older round unknown clocks (probably also Simplex). The master clock panel is a Simplex 6400.
A modular added onto the school into the early-mid 1990s has what appears to be some kind of Faraday horn/strobe!
System Sensor 2451TH smokes, also in the modular building.
The Gamewell city master box on the outside of the school.
Yep, that looks like a NFS-3030 ONYX panel with a distributed NAC extender above it.
Why the sigh? Notifier systems are pretty good, at least from what I’ve seen. It’s obviously a major improvement from the ancient Simplex system it replaced. Honeywell systems seem to get a bad rap on this forum for some reason, and I’m not quite sure why. I admit, I do sometimes get sick of seeing BG-12’s and SpectrAlerts everywhere, but if I were a tech, I’d much rather work with a Honeywell-brand system than deal with a heavily proprietary 4100U, MXL, or EST2/3. I think the Honeywell companies have a leg up on the competition in many ways.
It varies. The Honeywell stuff is usually a more affordable alternative to EST, Simplex or Cerberus/Siemens. Usually to get the most out of a Notifier system you would probably need an addressable system of some kind, like the one Ashfield school has there.
And I do sometimes get sick of seeing BG-12s and SpectrAlerts (mostly the “Classic” and “Advance” horn/strobes), but this is somewhat of an exception, as I have never seen the speaker/strobe version of the SpectrAlert Advance yet (makes sense; they only came out last year!) And I also often see Fire-Lite/Notifier systems consisting of Wheelock AS horn/strobes and the BG-12 pulls, as well as some systems with 7002T horn/strobes (these usually tend to have Edwards 270-SPO or Fire-Lite BG-10 pulls in my area).
Besides, my college tends to usually stick with the Honeywell stuff these days. An exception is the Faraday Chevron pull stations used to replace old broken ones or non-ADA compliant ones, as well as the addressable Faraday MPC-7000 system in a couple of buildings. Other times, I see a LOT of System Sensor/Notifier smoke and heat detectors installed around the campus, as well as SAE VA4 horn/strobes (OK, SAE isn’t exactly a Honeywell subsidiary, but I tend to see the VA4s more on Honeywell-owned systems than on a Faraday system or something.) In fact, the Student Center building had a computer lab added as a modular construction, and they put in a SpectrAlert horn/strobe, but for some reason early this year they replaced it with a U-MMT horn/strobe! (Ironically, the building has a Notifier/Standard system, but I’ve heard of U-MMTs being used on Honeywell-owned systems.)
I was out shooting railroad photos at the Montello train station, and on the way to the bus stop I passed by the Howard pre-K school. As I’ve said, the school has a Simplex 4208 system (I saw the annunciator at a doorway), and they have Simplex 4051+4050-80s for the alarms, and 4251-30 break-glass pulls. (I know this because my brother used to go here for afternoon preschool.) But outside the building, next to a PA loudspeaker, I found THIS:
It’s a Simplex 4051 horn on a weatherproof backbox!
As I recall, the Huntington Elementary School near my house used to have something like this, on an SAE AV32 light plate, but now they have a Wheelock A-MT horn/strobe in its place.