Here's a bit of now and then from Ilford, after I stumbled across these photos of the town in 1970-80 on Friends Reunited last night:
Greengate (named after the pub - now McDonalds - across the road) in Newbury Park was lit in 1970-80 with
GEC Z9564s. I think the Z9564s you can see opposite the pub were replaced with MA50s on double-brackets installed on the traffic light islands, before they were replaced with the current MRL6s in the mid 1990s, as I seem to remember them in about 1992/3 when I was just a toddler. The MRL6s have retained the double-bracket arrangement on the crossings. The columns you can see on Horns Road in the background in the Streetview (one with a ZX3 and its original bracket, the others with Furyos with their fancy brackets - all the columns would have looked like the ZX3 installation before the Furyos) must date to the 1980s (probably when B&Q on the left was constructed) as I can't see them there in the 1970-80 view.
Ilford High Road, like many of the other roads in the town centre, were lit with Alpha 3s installed on what look like 1950s S&L columns. These installations are now long gone - they were replaced with Urbis Saturns identical to
these in probably the late 1980s, before being replaced with
Philips Metronomis Oslos in the mid 2000s. Even the Metronomises are not here anymore - over the last few months they've been retrofitted with Philips Citysouls. Knowing how ahead of its time Redbridge is, I reckon the Alpha 3 was the "in thing" at the time!
Ilford Broadway had the same Alpha 3 installations before being replaced with Urbis Saturns identical to
these in about 1994, which were then replaced with
Philips Metronomis Oslos. Most of these have been retrofitted over the last few months with
Furyos due to their slightly poor condition. The Thorn Gammas you can see on the central islands in the "then" photo were replaced with Urbis Stratoses, which themselves are now gone due to the junction realignment scheme a few years ago, where the Metronomises replaced them.
These globe lanterns still largely remain, but it looks as if most of the brackets were chopped off when the Exchange shopping centre was built in the early 1990s, as the columns now only have
two or
three brackets on them. The light output from these columns must have been extremely excessive and caused hell of a lot of skyglow at night (probably why they've been downgraded).
Ilford Lane was lit with what look like
shallow-bowled Thorn Alpha 5s on 1950s S&L columns. These were replaced with
bowled SGS204s in the early 1990s, which themselves have now been replaced with
these, which I believe to be Urbis lanterns.
More Alpha 3s here on what used to be Ilford Lane but is now a dual carriageway called Winston Way (Ilford's ring road), which according to a source I cannot recall opened in 1985. The original installations to the new road were MRL6s on double-brackets, but these have now been retrofitted with
Sapphires and
Philips Milewides have replaced them on the roundabout.
These I remember well!
GR150s on 1950s S&L columns with long brackets used to grace Ley Street, but they were replaced in Redbridge's mass replacement scheme in the mid 1990s with ZX3s, which
still stand today.
Before the Exchange shopping centre was built, it looks as if Ley Street once ran all the way through to Cranbrook Road by what was then C&A.
Either GR150s or Alpha 5s on S&L columns used to light the road, while
Alpha 3s lit Cranbrook Road and what was then a traffic light junction.
The view today is barely recognizable! Some modern post-tops (just visible in the background) were installed very recently in front of the Exchange.