Forget lanterns with "china hat" canopies... this one's got a sombrero!!
That canopy will be at least 1m in diameter, but probably somewhere between 1.5 to 2m wide.

At the very least, it would have used 5' tubes... but possibly bigger (like the 125w tubes we have nowadays). The column too is very tall, but how good the light levels were on the ground is something we'll never know.

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I think that massive post-top fluorescent in Harlow was a GEC. Blackpool had some similar but smaller fluorescents made by GEC and I've heard these were specially made for the town. Perhaps the 'giant' fluorescent was specially made for Harlow as I believe that GEC did a few special orders in their more prosperous days.

Look at the size of it compared with people on the ground!

I wonder how many lighting engineers it took to put that up and indeed, take it down! I bet it weighed a ton!  

Well speaking of big lanterns and following on from this:



It appears Stevenage also used a supersize lantern of the same basic design.



They look to be fluorescent or possibly SOX with an open base.

Wow, what street lighting!

I expect it would have been fluorescent. One, it's in a town centre on a precinct, and two, you're not meant to burn anything larger than 55w SOX vertically, and the lanterns seem to large for 55w SOX.

Those Stevenage installations are brilliant! They look like somebody has taken a tall column with a post-top fluorescent lantern and bent it in two places  

Very strange indeed, and rather marvelous. It`s hard to work out just where most of the light comes out though. At those angles, if they light from the sides, much of the light will go up in the air or back behind the column rather than along the road, and it`s not clear what`s sticking out at the bottom. Wonder if there were ever any photos of them at night?

I have all three of The Secret Life of the Motorway saved away here, must find some time to watch them, loads of interesting stuff in there by the look of it. Someone put up a photo of the Philips motorway "bricks" on Sabre recently. Don`t think there are any left out in the wild any more so interesting to see them.

Drifting slightly, but I *vaguely* recall seeing the occasional MS1 signal displaying the "0" symbol instead of today`s "End" (or "Eno" as I saw on one with a few too many lamps out) when I was extremely small. Always was fascinated by those things and enjoyed seeing them working. Perhaps not so these days when they sit there flashing "40" but the traffic`s crawling along at a snail`s pace. Would still like to get hold of one some day, but in the mean-time, plan to complete a working scale model using warm white 10mm LEDs to look like the old style incandescent lamps.

But I digress. Sabre photo of the Midlands Philips lanterns on this page, just a shame the one right at the front of the picture got replaced by an MA60.

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Imagine if somebody got it into their collection! You'd need to build an entirely new storehouse just to keep it inside!


What would have really finished things of well would have been some gigantic wingbacked arm chairs next to the lights! and then in one do a statue of an old man with a pipe and slippers reading a book!!

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I would have thought most of the light would come out diffused from the "shade" of the lantern with the result that the light throw would be poor. I suspect that is why they are spaced close together. The lanterns may well have been commissioned specially for Stevenage. My posted image of the Midland Bricks is better than the one on Sabre    and it was about the best screen shot from TSLotM. I have posted another image elsewhere on Ukastle but that was from a picture in a book that was featured on TSLotM. I was lucky enough to get a copy of the book on Ebay.