Ceredigion uses quite a few Alpha 2000s, and despite some being very near to the coast, all seem to be in a good condition. I think they replaced GEC Z9554s. The ones in Bath are in terrible condition, and despite only being installed a few years ago, a handful have already been replaced by black Iridiums.

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

There are still a few main road SOX lanterns, but these are gradually getting replaced, there a a few old GEC lanterns, Alpha 4s, and the Eleco SOX lanterns, however I doubt the PFI will see the end of theese as the are going to replace just about all of Durham County's lighting stock.(Hopefully all the MRL6s as these are looking very scratty)

In Blackpool there are some Alpha 2000s which run MH in Talbot Square. The odd thing is the A2000s on the opposite side of the square are SON as usual!  

Most of Alpha 2000 you find in France are in very good condition, but I think that this lantern appeared in UK before than in France (Riviera and Alpha 2000 both appeared in 1995 in France). However, I find a lot of Alpha 2000 in a bad condition.

The Alpha 2000 seemed to be marketed in the UK as a tough, robust, all-weather lantern and no doubt this is why they were installed along Blackpool Promenade rather than the more usual-at-the-time MRL6. However, many of the A2000s have been damaged by gales over the years and have been replaced in many places with Vectras (including the whole stretch of Promenade from Bispham to Talbot Square which is a 4 mile stretch!). Ironically, the Vectras have stood up to the weather much better and I've only ever seen one damaged due to the wind and that was an older example further north up the coast.

The bowled examples on Silverlink roundabout, North Tyneside, run 400watt SON lamps and the bowls were brown and they looked awful they were replaced by Sapphires in late 2010.

That must be due to the lamps being such an overly-high wattage. The ones on Blackpool Prom are flat-glass and run 250w SON lamps. The lenses don't look brown on these examples I must admit.

They were the deep bowled versions and mounted on 12metre columns at the least. It is one of the busiest roundabouts in Newcastle so I presume the ran 400watt lamps. They would of been better off using high masts in my opinion as the columns holding the new Sapphires seem to be very closely packed, and are still running SON of either 400 or 600 watt.

Not the best streetview image but you can see the brown bowl. The lamps seem to have literally cooked the bowl. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... ,,2,-35.21

However they are some black Thorn Rivieras in Newcastle that run 250-400watt SON lamps they are the curved glass variety and look very good. None of these have been replaced. These can be found all over the city, some run metal halide lamps and one in the Grainger Town runs a 250 watt MBF lamp. All the wall mounted Alpha 3's down there ran MBF until about 2007 and were replaced however they never replaced the Riviera and must of presumed it SON however its not.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... ,,0,-15.16

High-mast lanterns do seem to be out of favour these days with 'ordinary' lanterns running 400/600w becoming the order of the day.

Interesting that Newcastle casually replaced a mercury lantern with another mercury lantern to keep the light source the same, that is very rare and stopped happening in my area in the late 80s! Well done to them for that!

Yes high masts do seem to be out of favour, well put it this way up here they never seem to install any new ones only in the place of old ones. Durham and Northumberland don't have any high masts at all. They are mainly used in retail parks up here with large car parks and the lanterns are normally GEC Z3430s and the new ones in Newcastle are P655s.

And yes I think they must have wanted to keep it the same light source at the time, well now it stands out somewhat as the metal halide Arcs emit a more harsh light that that of MBF. Only a few alpha 3's remain in the city centre now.