I haven't been on the forum much, I would have replied sooner otherwise!

Your first link to the CU Highway in Calton Road. This column dates from late 50s or early 60s - you can tell this by the more slimline base than later Highways. There may also be a date code on the column to give a more precise date. The lantern is a Phosware and may not be original to the column - tungsten GEC Wembleys were used until the early 60s. There are still a good number of these columns and lanterns left in Edinburgh, especially in pockets of the New Town, many of which have outlived newer Highways, particularly late 70s vintage columns. so these beasts are obviously better designed and were built to last. 50+ years for concrete columns is very good indeed.

Your second link is to one of "mini-Macs" in Waverley Bridge, only about 6m high but with full size brackets and 90w SOX lanterns. There is another at the south end of Waverley Bridge, and these two may be the last in existance!

The third link is the cast iron columns on the ramps to Waverley station (two on each ramp). These are also a Mackenzie design. I'm not sure of the identity of the lanterns, Graeme and Steven know more about that. These days they run SON lamps, but may have been mercury or tungsten originally.

Why have one lantern when you can have three! I bet it will be fun being the CCTV operator, the camera image will be smeared. I do think that the image was taken during replacement, hence why there are three columns, unless of course the three columns are still there as of 2012.

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

That is messy! I can see exactly what has happened here: David Webster casually replaced the SRS201 with a ZX2 but forgot to remove the former. Then the road became properly schemed, and obviously the lighting design specified that a new Arc would replace both installations, regardless of how new the ZX3 was!

It is coming up to 6 years since David Webster started their PFI contract. I can safely confirm that there isn't much in the way of SOX left in the borough. The only non-Arc lanterns that survive are the Beta 79s, ZX1/2/3s and SGS203s used by Enfield Council in the early '00s. You will occasionally come across a close that is still lit with Beta 5s, but they won't be around for much longer.



The street view screenshot dates back to 2008 but if you navigate further along, the street view changes date to 2009 and all the old columns have gone.

That happened in Southampton a couple of times in the past. For example, there was a 6m sleeved Eleco concrete column with a Sapphire 1 fitted, and next to it was a replacement 6m CU steel column with a Sapphire 1, and next to that was a replacement 8m CU steel column with a ZX2.

Or this example in Portsmouth, left like this for over 5 years and which also seems to have escaped replacement by the PFI.

The funny thing about lanterns is that they can also be fitted to existing columns without having to have a new one up!

_________________

What's more annoying is that none of these lanterns look particularly old.

In Wiltshire, new and old columns are sometimes stood next to each other for months till the transfer takes place. In Ceredigion, the old column gets removed, and the new column gets added in the same hole and then receives a transfer.

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

Durham tend to be quite quick with replacements unless Northern Power Grid have to do the connection and disconnection. If the supply can be isolated by the teams then the column will be in and out within a day.

Sometimes the disconnected columns can stand for months waiting to be pulled. Concretes seem to stand for longer than the steel ones so whether there more difficult to remove or whatever the reason I don't know.

It all depends on who and how the service transfer is done. If the supply can be isolated from a feeder pillar it is a switched supply and so the power from the pillar to the columns is "client side" as it were, so the local lighting crew is normally authorised to change supply. If the local lighting contractor is authorised to do "supply side" service transfers then 1-for-1 replacements can be done the same day. It's when you have to have an external contractor come in to do the transfer that things get messy and take ages...

In Wakefield, Amey are authorised to do service transfers and at least two operatives are trained for doing that (one of which was doing lantern replacements in York in 2010); in York, NEDL do not authorise Amey to do service transfers and so an external contractor (normally Morrison Utility Services, sometimes CE Electric) has to be used, and they can take months. Columns near the rail station waited for a service transfer for at least 8 months, but I think it was closer to 10... and the last time there was a 10 month wait it got into the local papers - and it just happened to be a junction near my house
http://www.mazeteam.co.uk/lighting/go/?to=news2.php

_________________