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PostPosted: Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:44 am 
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Noticed whilst in Ilford yesterday that two of the 1980s spheres on Oakfield Road outside the Town Hall have been retrofitted with LED lanterns fitted post-top to the existing "candelabra" brackets, which looks absolutely dreadful! Why Pilzeos couldn't be used, like on columns further down on the High Street I don't know - I've not seen any installed on the candelabra brackets, but have seen some fitted to the actual columns themselves with the brackets sawn off and they look great! I was with my manager at the time and so didn't take any pictures, but next time I'm in Ilford on my own I'll get a shot.


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PostPosted: Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:30 pm 
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I drove through Redbridge Roundabout again today and the LED upgrade is now almost fully complete with the post-top Teceos - only this integral-geared MA50 remains, although perhaps this lantern is going to be done next - the crews may have run out of time during the night at this point. The SGS204s on the main line A12 are now also all gone, but the ones on the old road still remain (for now at least) (but these may not be included in the scheme as I have a feeling the road may now belong to Redbridge Council since it was de-trunked in the late 1990s - the Sapphires lighting the signalled junction with Wanstead High Street, which retrofitted SGS204s, give me a big clue on this, as Redbridge replaced SON at several busy junctions with MH Sapphires in the mid 2000s). This MA90 also still remains as it's right on the border between TfL and Redbridge lighting. These MAs still stand, although they won't be here much longer as the ZX3s behind them have fallen victim to the black LED lanterns that have been used further down between Aldborough Hatch and Romford.

Meanwhile LED replacement seems to have stalled on the A406. These two Iridiums and the post-top Trafficvisions still remain since the Iridiums between Redbridge and Beckton were replaced about a month ago. It seems as if the roads are all being started on at once, instead of one road being done at a time, resulting in partial completion of the scheme on all of them. Looking at how the A12 is being done, it looks as if there may be two separate crews doing the replacements and they're meeting up in the middle. It all just seems very unsystematic to me!


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PostPosted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 4:15 pm 
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Drove along the A12 between Gallows Corner and Romford today and can confirm that these MA60s, these GEC Bricks and MA60s, as well as the MA60s in the rest of that stretch have all been retrofitted with the same black LED lanterns as have been used further along towards London. In this stretch of Iridiums after the MA60s there has been the usual case of sloppy workmanship, with some lanterns being missed. Also, this eclectic mix of MRL6s, SGS203s and a Trafficvision have all had their brackets chopped and Phosco P851s retrofitted.

On the A127, even WRTL Lumas are not safe from being retrofitted, which is incredibly pointless, wasteful and downright insane! This may be the first time in history for many of you that LED lanterns have been replaced, albeit with more LED lanterns! These Iridiums have followed the same fate, but yet again quite a few lanterns have been missed. Here the SGS203s on the central reservation have been retrofitted with LED lanterns but the SGS203s on the hard shoulder still survive, as do the Iridiums on the other side. Then everything up until the M25 still survives. Everything from the M25 onwards is then owned by the Highways Agency, which includes the famous GEC Z9554s which somebody had as POTM on the UKASTLE home page for a while, which means that they're safe from being retrofitted  (ahem!)

It looks like these ZX3s on the A13 at Wennington could be in a spot of trouble as roadworks (which is looking like carriageway widening works) have just begun, with completion due in March 2016, which could see the installation of new LED lanterns. The road would still fall under TfL at this point (although I haven't seen any P850 retrofits to suggest they will soon be upgraded to LED), so we could see P850s or P851s lighting this road next year. That we will have to see!


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 2:10 pm 
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Drove through Newbury Park again today on the A12 and saw that these MRL6s have received the same treatment as those outside Newbury Park tube station and have had their brackets chopped with Phosco P851s installed in their place. This is strange and sloppy practice as the first three lanterns from the shops heading towards London behind the camera were fitted with the black LED lanterns (which look similar to P851s but have a longer canopy and several arrays as opposed to one in the P851) used on previous sections towards Romford and did not have their brackets chopped. So that's four different kinds of LED lanterns I've now seen used for this scheme (P850s, the black LED lanterns that look like this, Urbis Teceos and now P851s, as well as several different bracket lengths. So much for the P850 trial and workmanship these days!


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PostPosted: Sat May 02, 2015 8:59 pm 
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Hi all,

For info, East Sussex is going LED by using Urbis Teceos, moving away from Sapphires and Evolos. The lighting in Brighton tends to mirror East Sussex but I personally haven't seen any Teceos in the city yet which new Evolos were still being installed the last time I looked.

Very little of LED in West Sussex, most notably the lighting on the A27 upgraded to Lumas by the HA. If there are LED luminaries installed by the SC PFI then these are probably Lumas as those already installed in some villages in Hants, myself I haven't seen any in West Sussex so far.

Jake


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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2015 3:44 pm 
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I can now report that Ilford High Road through the main town centre is entirely LED lit. All the 1980s spheres on the candelabra brackets have been retrofitted with TRT Aspect lanterns, which look extremely ugly and don't suit the candelabra brackets at all! Even these lanterns (what I believe to be Philips Citysouls) and even the Woodhouse Discs on similar columns which replaced these installations have also been retrofitted with TRT Aspects, which is extremely wasteful in my book, especially as the ones on Riches Road were less than a year old and the Citysoul installations on Ilford High Road are only 1.5 years old!

On the A12, the lighting at traffic light junctions which was missed in the LED scheme have now had their brackets chopped back to the bracket joint (contrasting with the mainline dual carriageway which has only had its brackets chopped very slightly) and Phosco P851s (as opposed to the black LED lanterns used on the mainline carriageway) installed. Very sloppy indeed!


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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2015 6:35 pm 
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I can also report that TfL's LED retrofitting scheme has now hit Woodford Avenue, with these 5-year-old post-top Iridiums and some significantly older 1970s Fabrikats with ZX3s being replaced with post-top Urbis Amperas. The 1970s Fabrikats have been completely replaced but the Iridium columns have been retained with the Amperas retrofitted. The left hand side of the road has almost been completed (a few post-top Iridiums still remain to be swapped) but the right hand side is yet to be done.

It'll be interesting to see what will happen to these high-mast installations on Gants Hill Roundabout. They run SON and so are not very eco-friendly, so it'll be good to see some form of LED high-mast lantern installed (if such a thing exists yet).


Last edited by Rojojnr on Thu Jun 11, 2015 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Mon May 11, 2015 10:50 pm 
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There are two things that I would like to discuss:

Firstly, it is very interesting reading Rojo's observations as it covers parts of Greater London that I like but I rarely visit as I am currently live in West Wickham (in-between Bromley and Croydon). However I gather that Rojo's observations would mainly cover the following boroughs:

> Redbridge
> Barking and Dagenham
> Newham
> Havering
> Waltham Forrest
> Haringey
> Enfield
> Tower Hamlets
> Epping Forrest

(if i have missed out any other boroughs, my apologies Rojo), hence these are likely to be Rojo's "turf"  :)  , and from what it appears, Redbridge , Barking and Dagenham, Newham, Waltham Forrest and Haringey have put less emphasis on LED and focus more on Cosmopolis Urbis products.

For me, I am slightly more focused on the following boroughs:

> Bexley (one of my favourite London Boroughs for street lighting)
> Bromley
> Dartford (great range of modern SOX stock)
> Croydon (great range of older SOX stock)
> Lewisham
> Greenwich
> Southwark
> Lambeth
> Sutton (my other favourite London Borough for street lighting)
> Merton
> City of London (I currently work there)

Are there any other street lighting enthusiasts in London, if so, which part are you from and what parts would you consider to be your street lighting "turf"?

Secondly, London is starting to develop two different (and occasionally conflicting) versions of street lighting:

1 - Local council run Lighting:

Your typical staple lantern for that particular borough, with the contract awarded to different companies, e.g most of South East London is Cartledge/May Gurney territory, (and a rather good job they have done, I may add).

The advantage to this is that the local authorities are noticeably different, e.g. Greenwich (Arcs on short, bracketed, brown CU Phosco columns), Bexley (Urbis ZX2/ZX3/ ZXU1/Axias, Philips SRS201/XGS103 on medium bracketed Dark Green stainton/corus/fabrikat columns), and Bromley (Urbis Axias/Teceos, WRTL Lumas and Philips SRS201s on long bracketed, pale green Fabrikat brackets) are all the Kent part of greater London yet are all very different.

Dartford and the rest of Kent county council uses the same set of lighting stock (Axias, Arc 80s and Iridium 252s, post-top on galvanized CU Phosco columns).

2 - TFL Lighting:

Interesting as this covers all sort of roads all over London,  and is currently revamping all it stock to LED.  Currently, the advantage of TFL lighting, is that since its formation in 2002/2003, some forgotten TFL roads have been trapped in a, somewhat, time warp.

For example, the local borough has been transformed (either in a PFI scheme or just over time), yet that TFL road has remained the same. Bromley's A21 and A232 is a good example of this, whereby the side roads have been upgraded to LED and Cosmopolis, yet the road itself is still SOX). The down side is that these will disappear soon as the LED replacement scheme nears completion. However the LED replacements are, currently, quite good.


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PostPosted: Tue May 12, 2015 7:28 pm 
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Thanks for that update, Ali.

My turf is Enfield and Barnet :P LED up-take is slow round here, although some footpaths are being relit with Axias. I have also seen the occasional Arc 80 LED for retrofit replacements, although I'm not sure whether or not these were just for trial.


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PostPosted: Sat May 16, 2015 9:41 pm 
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In the East Anglia discussion thread, David wrote:
sotonsteve wrote:
SOX lamps are becoming very expensive.
It's perhaps becoming clear that even SOX-stronghold counties like Essex and Hertfordshire are beginning to baulk at the increasing cost of re-lamping, hence the introduction of LED lighting (albeit on a small scale for the time being) to protect against these increasing costs in the future. But what happens when you're a parish council worried by the increasing cost of re-lamping SOX, but also unable to switch to LED due to the prohibitively high initial cost?

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Well, this is Weeley Parish Council's answer!

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Weeley is just outside Clacton-on-Sea and still very rural in nature. Some of the lightly-trafficked roads clearly do not need to be lit to the same standard as urban roads (if they were, they would fall under Essex County Council's control), but an occasional pole-mounted lantern is adequate to provide the needed guidance for pedestrians and vehicles.

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And when it comes to re-lamping, bypassing the original control gear and fitting a domestic compact fluorescent seems an ideal way of converting the lantern to white light without breaking the bank. The above three photographs were taken in May 2015.

Everyone on here will be familiar with the daytime appearance of the classic 1960s ELECO Golden Ray GR501, which was a staple lantern in many UK towns for many years:

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This ELECO GR501 with a 35W SOX bulb was photographed in Clacton-on-Sea in February 2009.

In Clacton, the GR501 was preceded by the GEC Z5671 which was Clacton's staple lantern from the mid-1960s to the late 1960s, and it was superseded by the ELECO GR535 in the early 1980s.

Many of you will also be familiar with the lantern's golden glow when switched on:

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Sadly, I don't have a picture of a day-burning GR501, but this article in the East Anglian Daily Times helpfully contained the above photograph.

Imagine my jaw-dropping astonishment when I was visiting my friend in Luton after work yesterday, and saw this:

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A day-burning ELECO Golden Ray, Luton-style!

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In a stroke of genius, the old 35W SOX lamp has been removed, the control gear bypassed and a new LED array fitted!

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What's particularly pleasing is that the LED array appears to have been deliberately designed to mimic the length of the redundant 35W SOX bulb, and when installed, the lantern looks no different than it did before, except for the colour of the light.

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On the return journey to my friend's house, it was becoming clear that this was an ongoing LED roll-out, with many dozens of Luton's old GR501s being retrofitted with LEDs. And I have to say that it was a delight to see, especially at night. SON casual replacements, previously superior to the SOX-lit GR501s, were now very much the poor relation in the street.

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It's a little shaky in the absence of a tripod, but here's one last night-photograph of a GR501-lit street in Luton, as you've never seen a GR501-lit street before! All the above photographs of the LED GR501s were taken yesterday (Friday 15th May 2015).

Essex County Council won't roll-out LED street lights due to the prohibitively high cost of purchasing LED lanterns. But I think their eyes will light up when they see how Luton Borough Council have solved the very same problem!


Last edited by David on Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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