The railways still have some nice survivors here and there. There are a handful of Eleco HW852 in various states of repair in sidings near Wimbledon depot, like there used to be at a few other locations in years gone by. There are a couple of Eleco (?) open railway lanterns next to Basingstoke station. And the other day, I spotted a couple of GEC Z8260s near the Brokenford Lane footbridge near Totton.

A few weeks ago I was at Leeds station at the crack of dawn. The northern concourse that was a being used as a car park until its restoration as part of the Leeds 1st scheme at the turn of the millennium, has some fine - and original - art deco glass and brass lanterns.



Being so high up, it is difficult to estimate the size of the lanterns but they must be at least a metre long. There was some variation in the shade of the white light, and I suspect they may use MH lamps.

Meanwhile passing through Slough at the weekend, the station platforms although having linear LED lighting (the modern equivalent of fluorescent), it is supplemented by Victorian style heritage fixtures with LED corn lamps. Not the best picture as taken from inside of the train.

Something curious... at St Denys station in Southampton, Eleco aluminium columns with open tungsten lanterns were installed in the 1960s during modernisation and railway electrification. From my memories of the station, I remember GEC Z8260 fluorescents on cut-back brackets. I assumed that perhaps this lantern replacement occurred in the 1970s following the energy crisis, but it appears the GEC fluorescents actually replaced the Eleco open lanterns in 1986. This is very late. Some other stations in the area had already received Urbis ZX1s by the time these replacements happened, such as Millbrook, so it is quite amazing that this earlier generation of lantern was chosen instead of what was being installed elsewhere.

Nearby stations at Bitterne and Woolston also had these aluminium columns and also had the open lanterns replaced with fluorescents. Not been able to verify the year of replacement at these stations, but there is a possibility of them being done at a similar time.

At Worcester Shrub Hill there are 2 cast iron wall mounted columns on the station approach opposite the entrance. They appear to have GEC Brookvale lanterns on Revo swannecks but the canopies seem to be a hybrid between the early and late versions - see Simon Cornwell's site for details.







The other example has unfortunately lost its bowl.

Simon Cornwell has provided the following additional info on the lanterns in my last post.


That info jogged the grey matter, so it looks like the original Beta 4 went through a redesign, which came first, I don't know.





And the version in my collection:

As part of the Transpennine Route upgrade works around Huddersfield, combined wind and solar (the black sleeves around the column) temporary lighting units are being used to light the works compounds. More of the same installations are in use at Huddersfield station.



Courtesy of Sarah Bell.

Catenary lighting 1.

At the end of London Victoria platforms 3 and 4 is a short section of 1980s fluorescent catenary. I don't know if it still works.



Another 1980s relic on Platforms 2/3/4 are the Network South East clocks, still working. This is platform 2.



Catenary lighting 2

On the freight line from Wembley yard to Acton in north west London at Neasden, there is a stretch of what is probably SOX catenary lighting above a siding adjacent to the line.

Image here courtesy of YouTube. Time stamp 4.42



Almost certainly out of use, the lanterns are the same as these Philips SDP253 used in the Netherlands. I couldn't get the picture in time, but the Neasden lanterns have the same "bump" on top of the canopy.

From the same video at time 4.25 a lantern less CU concrete - far right.