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PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 9:56 pm 
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Interesting.

I wondered why it said SXK55 Kombipak on the label.

I got mine from Ebay and it was the first ever lantern I got.

Inside is remarkably clean. Doubt it's seen much use and it was covered in cobwebs. It even has a brown cap GEC lamp in which glows with a vivid neon red. Mine has a different ballast in it though:

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 10:02 pm 
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Yep those ballasts were some of the first Philips 35/55W SOX ignitor ballasts after they moved away from Leak transformers in the late 60s/early 70s. That design lasted till the late 70s/early 80s when the long and thin white painted ballasts came into use.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 6:28 pm 
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The Whitecroft SRL35a (GEC 9582), Phosco P178, P225, P170/1, P172 are the latest updates from Simon Cornwell.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:16 pm 
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Simon Cornwell's latest update features the Phosco P158 lantern. The lantern is a mercury/GLS type. Has anyone ever seen one of these?


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:13 pm 
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Phosco152 wrote:
Simon Cornwell's latest update features the Phosco P158 lantern. The lantern is a mercury/GLS type. Has anyone ever seen one of these?


No, unfortunately. I like it, it looks like a 'turtle' lantern but for side roads!  :D


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 5:49 pm 
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Mike's site has had a revamp.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:30 pm 
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One of Simon Cornwell's latest updates has quite possibly solved a thirty-year mystery for me!

In the 1970s, the B roads around Frinton on Sea, Walton On The Naze and the surrounding villages (Kirby Cross, Lower Kirby, Kirby Le Soken) all used to be lit with the same group B side-entry mercury lanterns on concrete 'hockey stick' columns. The energy crisis of the 1970s saw every single one replaced with an impression B Thorn Beta 5 by the end of that decade. I was about five years old at the time (clearly years before I bought my first camera!) so I only had an image in my head to remember them by.

In the 1990s I then saw - rather by chance - an installation of Thorn Beta Threes in Chelmsford and realised they were almost identical to the lights I had last seen aged five in the 1970s. Although I had no idea what they were, I concluded that these were the lights I remember, grabbed a photo of them, and thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward another decade and when the internet and UKASTLE came along, it meant I thought I could conclusively identify the lantern as the Beta Three, thanks to the many fabulous enthusiasts' web sites that exist, but you could imagine my disappointment when I further discovered the Beta Three never had a mercury option!

Fast forward again to Monday, and Simon's update for the Phosco P149 lantern was of great interest to me. Compare Tim Luckett's photo of a Thorn Beta Three to the picture in Simon's update for the Phosco P149. I think they are so similar that I now believe the Phosco P149 is the lantern I remember. Furthermore, if Frinton's prom is lit with P109s, almost every street inside Frinton's (now removed) famous crossing gates is lit with P111s, the less posh area outside the gates has P178s and the nearby parishes got P100s on pole brackets, then it makes sense the P149 would have been my mystery lantern.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:12 am 
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Isn't it the best feeling ever when you have one of those eureka moments and all of a sudden all the pieces fit together!  :D


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:16 pm 
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Well the Beta 3 is rare enough, here is the one I saved almost exactly a year ago, but P149s are even rarer and almost certianly must be extinct by now.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:20 pm 
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Somebody put up a picture of one in Essex a short while back on the Yahoo group. I'll try and find it, as I'm not sure when exactly it was taken.

EDIT: it's an old photo, but here it is:

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