It still goes down as one of my favourite lit junctions; such childhood memories! I would love to be able to see the Alpha 6s warming up with their mauve (as opposed to red) glow. I must admit I am sorely tempted to buy one or possibly two of those 140w SLI lanterns from
Lampco (thank you for the valuable link Phosco!) and perhaps converting my
previously saved GEC Z9517 SOX lantern back to its SLI days using some 90w SOX gear. This write-up about the
GEC Z9517 on Simon Cornwell's encyclopaedic web site contains a picture of the SLI lamp inside the lantern and reveals the end caps are not fixed in place - instead only the bulb is held in by two lampholders, and the end caps hang loose when detached. Having never seen a SLI lamp in real life, I have no idea what end caps they use and whether they are easy to get hold of (from a fluorescent fitting for instance?) This project would be to once again see the lilac colour of the bulb warming up, just like I remember from my childhood too!
If the grubs are siezed he will probably just disc cut the spigot tube - hammering off doesn't always work anyway.I hope the guy doing the removal thinks of that, although the bracket is one of those uptilt ones so if he cuts it off he won't leave much of the cranked horizontal section to get his SGS203 on! Unfortunately it's not my contact doing the work tomorrow, which lessens my anticipation of a good save.
It looks like the Alpha 6 spine fails at the corner where the shoe follows the canopy contour (top edge of canopy) and across to the bolt hole - see below.Yep that's definitely where it breaks - having a bolt so close to the join was quite a design fault in hinsdight (thankfully they didn't repeat it on the Alpha Four). That's one heck of a clean Alpha Six you have there! I think any saved tomorrrow will require a heck of a lot of TLC.
Hopefully if you get your example, it is a deep bowl variant, where as mine is a shallow bowl version - mine is SLI. Even if you don't want both lanterns assuming they can be removed, I wouldn't mind the other. If one lantern is damaged on removal try and save both bowls - again I'd be interested...Yes they're all the deep-bowled variant around here. I won't be wanting both of them, but having seen previous interest in the lantern I have asked my contact to save what he can of the little stock that remain.
How many alpha 6's can be saved david?
As i know most of us would like some! (Including me!
)
If all three come down in one piece that's one each, but they are such a fragile lantern that this is hard to imagine. The third one in the picture is not due down for a few months. There are about 15 Alpha Sixes left, about half serviced by my contact and half serviced by the Highways Agency. And it seems that both authorities are happy to let them carry on until they are knocked over or snap in the wind
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested....Oh heck, that's four!
Please beware that things just move very slowly in Colchester, so there might be a long wait (like there has been for Phosco152's P157 bowl and P225 bowl, and Stelmer's GR150 bowl). The last big lighting investment to hit the town was when the concretes were sleeved in the 1970s!