Most of the SGS203s round my area are starting to look scruffy now despite having only been installed for around 5 - 8 years. Some actually look older than the Alpha8s and MRL6s which are knocking out nearly 25 years service. Most of the bowls have gone brown despite only running 150W SON.

As for the ZXs in my area I am not impressed with them at all. The deep bowled ZX3s on the A167 have bowls that are yellow and contain large amounts of sediment and really warrant replacement. But despite this Durham County are still installing deep bowled ZX2s and numerous examples have had to be swapped due to canopies being ripped off or gear failures. It's about time Urbis pulled the plug on the ZX range and then maybe we would have main road Oracles too.

The albanies in Durham city are starting too look awful now and there are in abundance. Some examples have moved on their bracets so numerous examples now look wonky and they run SON which makes them automatically worse.

The Thorn Pilote has to rank amongst the worst looking designs ever.

You see, it appears that most street lighting enthusiasts dislike the Thorn Pilote, and although I can see why (especially in flat glass), I do admittedly have a soft spot for this unusual lantern because it was one the first lanterns i remember, and liked back in my childhood, plus I think that they look good on Purley Way and in Dartford.

However my personal least favourite lanterns have to be the:

> Philips SGS306 / Traffic Vision
> Thorn Triumph
> Thorn Riviera (especially with a deep bowl)
> WRTL Vectra (especially with flat glass)
> WRTL Pathfinder (has all the aesthetic appeal of a toilet bowl... it certainly looks like one)
> Urbis Sintra
> Siemens/ Siteco SR range (this example utterly ruins a nice part of chislehurst and looks really ugly, like a cheap replica of the WRTL MRL6, on steriods).
> Urbis DZ15
> Holophane QSM
> Thorn Jet

Even though these above are my least favourite lanterns, I am personally not all that keen many others, for instance the:
> Thorn Gamma Basique
> Urbis Onyx
> Urbis ZXU1
> Philips SGS201
> Holophane QSS
> GEC Z9454
> GEC Z5713
> CU Phosco P680
> CU Phosco p700
> WRTL 2 Tone
> Philips Malaga/Streetfighter
> Holophae Estilo

I'm not with you on the anti-SGS203 front, though it could be improved by a metal canopy and possibly conversion to LED.

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I thought I'd update my views on lanterns!

Urbis Sapphire
Oh my word, this is probably my least favourite lantern out there at the moment, I don't find them aesthetically pleasing in the slightest and they just seem to follow me around. The reason why I borderline hate them now is during my third year of university, the county of Ceredigion have gone Sapphire mad on the side streets, installing LED Sapphires running part-night everywhere. LED versions are very glary and bad at lighting roads evenly and not to mention the variety of lanterns they replaced. I also find them ugly, and now Wiltshire are installing them at 10m post-top on a roundabout I live near, replacing 135w SOX on Fakikat columns and upcranked brackets. Not impressed. Aberystwyth even have a Sapphire 1 post-top at 10m running an Induction lamp. They are just awful. The examples used in West Sussex before the PFI, fitted post-top and bowled to concrete columns and metal sleeves would be nightmare inducing if I lived there.

Urbis ZX range
I don't MIND ZX3s with deep bowl or flat glass, but the shallow bowl ones are, in my opinion ugly. As for ZX1s or ZXU1s, they are so bland and boring, the deep refractor bowl is also ugly. I think there are better lanterns available for side streets than this outdated design.

Holophane QSM
Something about this lantern just annoys me, I think of it as a fat dove and it does look a little different, but the QSS is a lot more interesting.

Phosco P700
Just no. It's kind of like a P567 prototype gone wrong but they thought "Hey, we'll try to push it and see what happens anyway" The lamp types are limited as well, which, perhaps we should be thankful for meaning that they aren't very popular. Here's an example I photographed in Dorset.

These are the ones that spring immediately to mind. I quite like Thorn Pilotes, I think they look neat and tidy from the example I've seen flat glass on the M4 as you head into Wales. The SGS203 is not such a great lantern, the design is alright and tidy, but then weathering sets in and they go scabby after just under a decade. Beta 79s seem to stay nicer for longer, but once they start deteriorating, they end up looking worse for wear pretty quickly.

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

I agree with you there, Indust, RE: Sapphires. Okay, us enthusiasts tend to have a propensity of not like over-deployed street lights, but I really do find the Sapphire pedestrian. I would much rather see a low-profile bowl Iridium... which sparks controversy in itself!

The standard casual replacements for 8 metres in this part of Wilts at the moment are 'Small' Iridium SGS252s with a deep bowl, side entry. They actually look quite in proportion to the bracket and the column, where as SGS253s at that height look bulky and ugly IMO. Rather controversially, I like the Iridium's appearance (and the Arc) more than Sapphires.

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

I tend to agree regarding a small Iridium with standard bowl vice Sapphire. The Sapphire seems a bit bulbous. I don't like miniridiums though: horrible horrible glaary things.

As for Arcs, there's nothing offensive about them but then again nothing to make them really stand out either. In both houses I've lived in, the column that is to the right of the room my PC is in has had an Arc fitted (at this current house it replaced a QSM which had a failed ballast), and in both streets it has been the odd one out... at my last house the street was lit by QSM's all except the arc on a base hinged column, and this street is lit all by 2600s all except the Arc which is on the 2nd newest column in the road (the newest column got a 2600 refitted, as the column had been a knockdown right at the time Amey had no budget for new lanterns). The light output from the Arc is more balanced than from the 2600s, with less glare, but I couldn't tell you which streets in York are lit by Arcs simply because they don't stand out enough to be noteworthy.

I do actually like both the QSM and QSS designs, but in black. Although stubbier and a bigger inventory of parts is required due to a different spigot needed for either post top or side entry, the QSS is actually the better designed lantern of the two. Both lanterns use electronic gear, but on the QSM the ballast is stuck on by a foam pad - this reduces heat conductivity/dissipation and leads to premature ballast failure, and was why Amey discontinued use of the QSM and shifted to the QSS. The QSS mounts the ballast directly to the aluminium chassis of the lantern, inside it's own little compartment which is sealed away from the optic assembley when the canopy is closed, and the underside of the chassis has been designed with integral heat dissipation fins. In addition, the QSS gets noticed more - a lot of times because it can look contraversial when mounted side entry to an older bracket or a swan neck!

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Arcs.

They're... EVERYWHERE!  

At the end of the road there is a GEC Z5590 on a concrete column with bridge bracket. Time and time again I have asked the local authority to replace it (both when it is not working but also when it does work), but all they do is tweak it to make it work, but then they also make it brighter so I've just given up. And.. SBC have sinced transferred the streetlight responsibilities to NYCC which is in Northallerton, and when I email them they're like, WHERE is this column?

SBC missed out our road when it came to the concrete column replacement scheme, maybe because the columns are spread out rather than being close together, and because we're not all concrete columns, a mix of metal and concrete columns. A few of them are concrete columns with a metal bracket on top when they came round in 2004 to deplete the swan neck legacy. According to the Parish Council, this scheme will take 10 years as of 2012, meaning it maybe until 2022 until I see a metal column outside my house and even on the street.

I also don't like one of the columns because again it is concrete, but because of it's position, that being in front of a brick post between two driveways, so if they were to remove it and replace it it would be very tricky, because one of the driveways belongs to a man who runs his own dial-a-ride service and so needs to get his bus in and out all day long.

It may be they just leave that one and let it fall of it's own accord.. just my prediction.