It has a minicell eye in it, Mazeteam.

Will see you Friday all being well.

Yep, Friday will be fine.

Right, well something has happened which I thought may happen. I stepped down on checks of Strensall and Old Earswick due to their distance from the house (and that I'd have to cross the A1237 at a busy junction with a box of lights after having walked about 2-3 miles from Strensall down a narrow path), they were stepped down to once every 1-2 weeks (priority 2 checks)... checked today and everything's gone. Well, almost.
All that is left is a good few GEC Z5675 tall cone mercury post tops (sadly not the Siemens one with the awesome clear bowl), and ONE Phosco P106 (with an opaque bowl). The P106 is on a path and so the Skywinder will be needed, and will likely be done the same time as New Earswick - hopefully by the same crew.
Otherwise, all the GEC Z8896s with Nema cells on Barley Rise, and the AC 850's (4 in Old Earswick village, one in barley rise) have gone, the P106s including the last octagonal based one have gone. In York, there are now only FOUR P106s remaining (that one in Strensall, three on Greenshaw Drive in Haxby) - and pictures will follow in my post below. Whilst there are some Phoscos on the Army camp, they look like P107s as the support rods are parallel to each other.

Tomorrow looks like it'll be a dry day (I hope so, after two days of rain, I need some dryness!) so I will run my normal loop round the city and then up to Strensall... If anybody wants one, give me a shout and I'll try to get a tall bowl GEC post top or two (according to Simon C's website, they're apparently more rare than the short bowl version)

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As promised, here's pics of York's last P106's. And, unless notified otherwise, I am led to believe these may be the last P106's in the UK.

The single one in Strensall - the skywinder job:
- it's the only opaque bowl one left - so hopefully I'll obtain it.



Haxby next...

Greenshaw Drive, near Glebe Way




At Greenshaw Drive between Wheatfield Lane and Holly Tree Lane stand three forgotten mercury lanterns in a row. This GEC Z5674 is the first of the three. The bulk replacement in Haxby was apparently finished in March 2010 - so these lanterns must have not been on the inventory. In the background, a P106 can be seen - which is shown in the second image below...





Third in this line of forgotten lanterns, this P106 stands at the junction of Greenshaw Drive and Holly Tree Lane. I couldn't hang around for a zoom-in, because some bloke was having a smoke outside the front of his house (quite what was wrong with the back, I don't know), and he was giving me funny looks.




The last of the forgotten P106's in Haxby. This one will have been forgotten because nobody saw it! It is situated on the edge a random and rather pointless patch of grass (only really just big enough for people to let their dogs poop on!) in a triangle between Ploughlands, Ryemoor Road, and Long Furrow. Notice the comedy hole in the hedge that is supposed to allow access to the column door!




So that's it - just these four left... out of Hundreds that were in use this time last year (possibly even over a thousand)

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Oooohhh I wonder when they went?

Hopefully the mercuries in the centre will not have gone yet.

I think they may have gone late last week. The fact that there's a few GEC's still standing in Strensall would indicate to me that the crew ran out of time and left, then haven't been able to restart this week due to the crappy weather.

The city centre mercuries were still there at 10.30am Tuesday morning. Those are on daily checks.

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In Selby a DW Windsor lantern in the Market Place has had its canopy blown open and is hanging after the 100mph winds last night.

There has been no change with the GEC's in Selby either although I have managed to find a shop which will sell 80w MBF's and ?w MH lamps.

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From streetlighting to radio, dance through the night whilst the streetlights are glowing outside.

I'm guessing that blown lantern must have either been a bit lose or had parts that were close to failing anyway... because over here I haven't yet logged any damage to the lights. I expect there will be some, even if it's just a few ZX3 canopies missing - but no whole lanterns blown off!

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It looked like the clip / screw had failed on this particular lantern as the rest were fine.

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From streetlighting to radio, dance through the night whilst the streetlights are glowing outside.

I did a little check round today. There were no replacements today, and although the HIAB was out and about, it was not at Wheldrake. I don't know where it was, as there wasn't any new columns in the places I'm expecting to see some.

New columns appeared a couple of weeks back in Fairway, Rawcliffe, and these are 8m columns with a marker at roughly the 6m point - so I presume these will get sawn to height. These replace concrete columns with top entry AC Ford lanterns, and an Urbis Opalo and a few Thorn Jets (likely the Jets will get reused). Elsewhere in Rawcliffe, Eastholme Drive and Shipton Road areas still have a lot of top entry mercury (which includes Beta 4's and glass bowled GEC's). When it comes round to pulling old columns, it could take three or four days just for Eastholme Drive - especially if the columns are as reluctant to be removed as they are at Wheldrake, One or two columns also have concrete ladderbars on their swan necks.

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The remaining lanterns (bar the P106) at Strensall were changed yesterday (Monday), but I didn't know about it as I didn't have the time to go up there! Today, the terraced streets off Holgate were partly changed to Jets (the rest will be done tomorrow, only about 6 or 7 lanterns to swap). The crew also changed this lantern in Greenshaw Drive, Haxby

And at least one P106 from there was also changed.

The crew is also aware of a P106 that is hanging in there at Poppleton. This particular lantern has evaded replacement by burying itself inside a tree! I'm not exaggerating on that either, it is right in the middle of a tree - the only reason I knew it was there is because I cycle by at night and saw a tree lit up from within. This lantern still evades replacement, because the crew cannot get the bucket in to get at it!
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... 21,,1,4.21

In New Earswick, lantern replacements may temporarily be on hold. This is due to the remaining lanterns belonging to the Joseph Rowntree Trust and not to the council, and so further enquiries have to be made as the lanterns can't be changed until JRT says yes. This could take a while, or they could have said yes this afternoon and the lanterns go tomorrow - who knows...
In Rawcliffe, new column installations are on hold there are present. Due to the sheer volume of top entry concrete columns still standing there, it is hoped that column sleeves can be obtained. As an example, Eastholme Drive in Rawcliffe is almost entirely lit by top entry lanterns on concrete columns - should new columns have been installed and connected, it'd take the HIAB about a week to remove all the old ones! But almost every long-ish road in Rawcliffe is primarily top entry concrete columns, which includes Shipton Road and streets going off Eastholme Drive. At roughly £5000 per new column (the bulk of this cost being service transfer costs), replacing what is essentially 50% or more of Rawcliffe's columns doesn't seem economically viable. To go to such costs replacing 80w (100w true power) MBFU lanterns with 42w (40w true power) PL-T lanterns seems pointless, and so sleeving seems a more viable option. However, the company that was the previous supplier of sleeves has gone bust due to the recession and PFI's.... and so at present there is a search for a new supplier. Should sleeves be obtained, then column sleeving for most of these columns will be done by bucket crews as the concrete brackets are small in size... Some columns do have concrete swan necks with ladder bars though, so they may be a combo bucket/Hiab job.

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