Spotted one today from Moston (or something like that) between Fflint and chester - a top entry concrete with a top-to-side entry converter, and an alpha 1 fitted! WIERD!Did you mean this one
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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.
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.