Did you mean this one ...



I was lucky enough to spot that while on one of my work trips a few years ago. I imagine that after a short trip in the car, the guy who ordered it must have been kicking himself after spotting that purpose-made top entry lanterns were readily available on the market!

There is a similar Group B example in Oldham in Manchester featuring a Beta 5. Thankfully I was again able to grab a quick photo...as my Chinese takeaway was cooking around the corner!

In Clacton, we used to have an elbow-mounted GEC Z9480 on a concrete swan-neck which survived well into the late 1980s. Had the guy who ordered it changed the last digit to a 1, he would have avoided a lot of grief! The other ironic thing was that whoever installed the lantern took the opportunity to extend its reach across the road by putting an unusually long arm on the elbow.

That Opticell looks much more intresting as its a top to side entry (T2SE) than a post topped version. I wonder if any of the PFI's which are happening should resort to a quirky way of installing lanterns.

_________________
From streetlighting to radio, dance through the night whilst the streetlights are glowing outside.

I reckon the site's caretaker had been given the task of replacing some awfully inefficient mercury lanterns during the energy crisis of the 1970s, but he didn't realise there would be a problem with the Alpha One until after it had turned up on site and he had taken it out of the box.

Having seen the problem he'd created for himself, I bet he then contacted Thorn to see if they would do an exchange, but they couldn't because Thorn never made any 90w SOX top-entry lanterns, so instead this was his ingenious answer to the problem. And three decades on, we can certainly see that it has stood the test of time too!


Using pointlessly short stub brackets on SON lanterns that can be post-top mounted is silly enough as it is!

Your picture reminds me a lot of this installation:

I've posted it before - It's the last council owned bracket like this. There is another but the road is now unadopted. The columns are Byway columns, and these fantastic sort of cresent almost style brackets were installed when the door of the Byway was facing away from the road. Later Byway columns (mid 50s) with the Arc brackets were installed with the door facing the road. The sleeves used on both columns date from the 1970s and most use steel clipped Beta 5s, with sleeves for columns which were likely to have cresent brackets are noticably longer than those that would have had Arc brackets. There are a lot more Arc brackets around.

I think the MI50 I've pictured above is acceptable, despite looking uncomfortable because I don't think there would have been space to fit a top entry SOX lantern (which is why an elbow has been fitted) I'm quite surprised that the column hasn't been sleeved at all. Mabe it was forgotten about as it is in a street with a lot of posh houses with most other lanterns/columns dating from the 1990s apart from two at the start which are sleeved concretes, the same style. Maybe they ran out of that style of sleeve and therefore fitted an MI50 for temporary means, but kept it? A few other complete column casual replacements happened in the 1970s which is why it's so odd.

Something that isn't acceptable is this:

It's the second installation on the unadopted road I briefly mentioned above. A top entry Beta 5 could have fitted there perfectly as many other Beta 5s/MI50s are in the rest of the town. What I think happened, is the landlord, when changing the lanterns in the 80s, measured up the space below the bracket on the first installation in the street (like the cresent one above but it has a Beta 5) and assumed the bracket for the second column would be the same. This resulted in two elbow brackets being used in addition to the concrete brackets, when only one elbow bracket/ side entry lantern was needed!

I'm a bit confused to as why the council would install two different brackets/columns differently in the same street, as the lighting and housing makes me believe this was once a council road.

Anyway, I'll stop boring you all now.

_________________
"I used to rule the world... Now I sweep the streets I used to own."
Remembering GEC.

Somewhere in Leeds there was a Beta 5 mounted on what was a very twisted swan neck bracket. Looked like someone had imitated one of them twisty straws....

That's the one! turns out it's between Prestatyn and Fflint, on the Dee Esturary side of the train. it's right next to the tracks so is easy to spot but hard to get a pic of as the train is going at about 100mph. It's odd and yet quirky enough to like. I like it enough that I've emulated it with a mock-up of my own (which will be put up in the gallery in a day or two).

Now... let's imagine that was a Holophane QSM on there!!


Oldham and Tameside seem to have done this quite a lot. I've often over that way to see some lasses I know in that area and so have had time to go around and spot out a few things. Ashton has a few Beta 79's installed in such a fashion (and I have pics somewhere too).

Doing this would save money where a column doesn't need replacing but the lantern does. For example if a top entry mercury lantern is to be replaced with a side entry 42w PL-T Thorn Jet....

_________________

all this talk of top-to-side conversions got me thinking, and so this sunday when I was a bit bored I did a bit of playing around...

Here's something I bet David never thought would be fitted onto a colchester conversion bracket!




Or what about this: imagine the revo box is still fitted but the giant swan neck has failed; and this is the casual replacement, as a 'friday afternoon job'!




And what happens if the Z5590 fails, well it'd be replaced with a Z8691 of course, because that makes total sense!!!!!

_________________

here's a fairly bad installation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fma_IUVT ... re=related

_________________

Most unusually low lantern:

That's a bit low any lower and I'd bang my head on the lantern. It appears to be a WTRL 'PL-L lamped lantern'.

_________________
From streetlighting to radio, dance through the night whilst the streetlights are glowing outside.