Gamewell 2 door 1950's tri-fold???

[yfdgricker]

Ok, the latest addition to my fire collection is a Gamewell 1950's tri fold call box. This one, however, has 2 doors. There is an upper one with the pull flap and activation button. The lower door is typical of a phone compartment door. I can't get the stupid thing open to see what's inside yet. I'm going to try and jimmy the lock this evening when I get home with it (which shouldn't be too hard since I can open the other box I have that way)   I'm expecting to find that there are no inner workings because I think the box was adapted to work on a wireless alarm circuit. Who knows if any of that is still in it.

The box looks to be in excellent condition. The glass window on the door is intack and in fact looks like new.
The only bad thing is someone repainted the box an organish-brownish-red. Whoever expertly painted the box painteed over one side of the Fire/Emergency reflective sticker and missed the area that gets covered by the pull door. Whoever painted it was an excellent letter painter though as the open door, pull down lever is perectly color with white

Located just to the right of the pull door is a small 1950's ish LED kinda thing with a sticker that says "Message sent when lit" or something close to that.

The lower telephone door has the words "Eagle Signal" in raised lettering.

Where the number plate would normally be is the following...


Eagle Signal Corporation
fcc tx data rad 211

 
Very cryptic. Look for photos of it this evening after 1am!!!

Anyone have any ideas about this box or Eagle Signal Corp?

[yfdgricker]

Ok, Check this ad out. The lower box on the bottom flyer shows what I have pretty well!

[yfdgricker]

Ok Thank you 1,000,000 times to http://www.waynealarm.com/antiquecorner/doc_gamewell_radio_callbox.htm

They have the advertisement for the box I just bought.

I've attached their small ad but if anyone has a larger copy, please scan it and send it my way.

[ashkicker28]

If you bought the box around here it sounds like it may be from Sharon Pa.  The key is like the gamewell key except the one side needs a notch put in it. I restored a Sharon box for someone and used their key as a pattern to make one of my gamewell keys work. Let me know if you want to try my key, it might be easier than trying to jimmy the lock.  

[yfdgricker]

Ok, picture time!

Here's the front...

[yfdgricker]

Front with the door down

[yfdgricker]

Inside

[26Maxim]

Any idea what this box is worth?

[almdoc]

Hi,
    Not to be a smart ass but Gamewell called them three-folds. What you have is a Gamewell/Eagle Signal radio alarm box. The radio/electronics are missing (obviously). Eagle Signal owned the Gamewell name for awhile. These boxes used a low band (20-50 mhz) radio to transmit the box number to a receiver at the alarm office which was, depending on the system, retransmitted by an alarm operator or done automatically through the repeater circuits in a form 4 cabinet. The idea was sell these boxes so the municipalities wouldn't have to run new wire to annexed or new developments in a city. "Put them anywhere !" A great sales tactic. It would have been better if the boxes worked well. They weren't very durable and were subject to radio intereference. Another tale of the failure of integrating electronics into fire alarm telegraph. There were several types of these split door boxes. One had a modified three fold mechanism with a handset in the bottom. Some were a public direct line to the FA operator and some had a police lock on the bottom door and were used as police patrol boxes. Some radio boxes had a handle on the bottom door and inside were push buttons to other agencies. ( police, ambulance, etc.) Yours was a radio box which if you pulled the hook it transmitted the box number. I can tell by the pictures that the bottom door in your box was not meant to open. It is connected to the top half of the door and there is no handle or lock for the bottom door. Other than to say you have one in your collection they aren't worth much especially without the radio in it.

[26Maxim]

Here it is with the doors open.