I remember visiting Mike's a few years ago with a number of other collectors and being awestruck by his collection and the way he has displayed it. There was stuff in his loft that I hadn't seen since I was a small kid.

On a side note (this is sadly off-topic, but bear with me), I have to agree with the artist Chris Cyprus featured in the report. The juxtaposition of sodium street lighting against a blue dusk sky (or blue dawn sky if you're up early enough) really is a thing of beauty. Many of my non-photography friends think I'm daft when I suggest dawn or dusk is the best time of day to photograph a street scene with impact. I won't fill this thread up with off-topic pictures, but I will share a few to illustrate where the artist is coming from.


Thornwood in Colchester is lit with 35W SOX Phosco P107s. Here is a photograph of the road in daylight taken in December 2017.


A few hours later the same scene looked like this. Photograph taken in December 2017.

The reason why SOX lighting and a dusk sky appear to look good together may be explained by the colour wheel, where colours diagonally opposite each other are considered as complementary.


A second example of SOX against a blue dusk sky. These are old-style Philips MA90s (with the streamline shoe) in Mason Road, Colchester photographed in December 2017.

As the colour temperatures of SOX and SON are close together, SON lighting also complements a dusk blue sky...


These SON-running Thorn Gamma Sevens light the access road into Colchester General Hospital. Photograph taken in December 2017.

Even MBF gets in on the act. Blue and green are considered to create an analogous harmony on the colour wheel, and this makes the combination of mercury lighting and a dark blue sky also pleasing to the eye...


One of two Phosco P177s that I know of in St. Osyth, near Clacton-on-Sea, which escaped being replaced with SOX in the 1980s. Photograph taken in October 2017.

Or perhaps these colour combinations look pleasing to our eyes because we are just glad to see them. You'll notice that the centre of the colour wheel - which cannot be readily paired with anything - is pure white ...or LED as we know it!

I do feel for the artist Chris Cyprus featured on the One Show. He has the much more difficult job of painting these scenes when even a street lighting enthusiast with a camera would be seriously pushed for time under such circumstances. The blue sky of dusk always fades to black within 15 to 20 minutes.

Back on topic, the music video to Billie Piper's single "Day and Night" features a fluorescent Thorn Beta Two in the opening scenes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9LjOQVBFmA

Ch5's InterCity 125 documentary telling the story of the iconic HST, included some rare vintage film of the train and its construction as well as these gems from a street lighting perspective.

Thanks Simon, I spotted those too. I think the first image is the A40 (M) in London.

The first picture is the elevated M4

The acclaimed Nordic noir, The Bridge is currently showing series 4 on BBC2, having gone mainstream and transferred from BBC4.

The opening title sequence features aerial night shots of the Øresund Bridge a combined motorway and rail bridge linking Denmark and Sweden.

In the titles for the first 3 series, the bridge was lit with SON using typical Danish styled lanterns.

However in the latest titles, it is lit with LED. They get everywhere...

Thanks for the link, I had no idea this had been televised. Good to see Mike Barford on the camera and glad to see he was sporting his usual sense of humour that often shows through in his Youtube comments.

Spotted on tonight's Great British Railway Journeys at a linen mill near Scarva in Northern Ireland is this Siemens lantern on a failed CU column.



It looks to be too short to be the Kuwait lantern that used 5ft tubes, especially on a 15ft column and looking at Simon Cornwell's site it may be either of the incredibly rare Carpenter that used 3ft or the Crawley that used 4ft tubes.

Almost worth a trip over to rescue it!

The gates remind me of those that used to be common place especially on schools built in the 1950s and 60s!

It is a Crawley to my eyes. The Crawley used 2 x 2ft 40w tubes, it was the Court that used 3x4ft, 40w tubes.

From BBC4s,  Jet - When Britain Ruled The Skies, the Rolls Royce Aero engine factory, presumably in Derby during the 1960s, and a super shot of a fluorescent lantern using 80W tubes on a 25ft Stewart and Lloyd column, together with Concrete Avenue 2D columns with possibly, Metrovick SS51 lanterns.