Great photos, its a shame about that SGS203 going, I liked them on those curved brackets.

Today's Colchester Gazette has hailed the new LED lighting in Colchester a resounding success, with a little help from a UKASTLE member.

As always, it's the online comments section at the bottom that generates the most mirth.


Colchester Gazette,Tuesday 10th March 2015


Colchester Gazette, Tuesday 10th March 2015

The whole of page nine of today's paper is given over to the subject of street lighting - something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. But seeing three of my photographs used in the newspaper was particularly pleasing. And UKASTLE members got to see them first of course!

The article details things I didn't know - Colchester is getting a staggering 920 of the 1,700 LED street lanterns being installed in Essex County Council's LED trial - representing 54% of the total lanterns ordered and more lanterns than all the other LED trial sites put together. The LED trial is a lot more extensive than I first thought and covers some roads that are well away from the town centre - roads which I understood to be under the part-night lighting regime and, by default, excluded from the LED trial. It's a heck of a lot of vintage ELECO, GEC, Philips, Phosco and Thorn lanterns that are now heading for the scrapheap.

The three Alpha Sixes on and next to the Spring Lane roundabout could be on the endangered list (although no LED has appeared here thus far), and if the LED trial spreads as far afield as Stanway and Mark's Tey, another half a dozen Alpha Sixes could go (although no LED has appeared here either).

^ well, that came true!

The two smaller articles detail attempts by Colchester Borough Council and its neighbour Tendring District Council (which covers Clacton-on-Sea, Frinton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze and Harwich) to pay Essex County Council money out of their own budgets to keep all the street lights in their area on all night. The online version of the Colchester Council article is here.

A night view of the same scene. Photograph taken yesterday (10th March 2015).


Another night view of the Alpha Ones on borrowed time. The scene is almost reminiscent of the 1970s when energy costs trumped colour uniformity and SOX casual replacements started to appear in MBF/U-lit streets.



the same scene at night showing the ELECO HW745 with the W-shaped bowl and the GEC Z9455 with the smashed bowl hanging on in there. This photograph was also taken on 10th March 2015.

Is there any reason the ELECO HW745 with the 'W' Shaped bowl and the GEC Z9455 with the smashed bowl have not yet been replaced, if they are do you think anyone will be able to save the ELECO HW745 or the GEC Z9455?

Nice David, although I do hope the paper sought your permission to use your photos.

The ELECO HW745 with the 'W' Shaped bowl and the GEC Z9455 are both top-entry lanterns, and the Urbis Ampera isn't available for top-entry fit. Unlike the side-entry lanterns, which are a simple lantern-for-lantern swap, the top-entry lanterns would require the end of the brackets to be cut off with a disc cutter and a spigot adapter fitted (as was done on many of the town centre columns when their original open GLS lanterns were replaced with Alpha Threes). As far as I can tell, the LED conversion crews are working at night at the moment, so there would be an issue with noise near to residential properties.

I imagine sourcing such spigot adapters could also be a bit of a faff and the council could be considering their options - either a brand new column to replace these ageing Stewarts & Lloyds columns or, for a more temporary fix, they could cheekily cut off the bend and mount the Amperas post-top, as they did when that Z9455 next to East Gates level crossing kept having its bowl smashed - the bend was cut off and an Iridium was mounted post-top.

Similarly, I haven't seen any old concrete columns with Amperas yet - and these should be an simple lantern-for-lantern swap. Again I wonder if the council is considering whether to replace these columns with new. But having said that, many side-entry Stewarts & Lloyds columns, like the ones on North Station Road, have had new Amperas fitted.

As for saving the lanterns, I did have a contact on the street lighting crews a few years ago, but they moved on. I think the LED conversion is being done by a separate company as they are motoring through the conversions at the rate of a road or two every night, and if it was the usual crews doing it, they wouldn't have any time for their normal work!

Yes, it was all above board. They contacted me after I shared the same two photographs I posted here on 4th March on the Colchester Gazette's Facebook page. I also shared the same two pictures on the Keep Chelmsford's Street Lights On Facebook page.

Zoe (the senior reporter) even conducted a short telephone interview with me and one of my answers (about the immediate improvement in CCTV picture quality) made the article. When she spoke to me on Monday morning, she said that she was preparing an article about the LED street lighting trial coming to Colchester, but she hadn't seen pictures of the new LED lighting like mine. Her most difficult question was why would I take pictures of street lighting like this in the first place! But irrespective of that, I still think my "before" and "after" photographs illustrated her report perfectly.

I shared a DropBox folder of the photographs at their original size with her at lunchtime on Monday, and the newspaper hit the news stands on Tuesday morning!

The third story from Tuesday's Gazette has now appeared online.

Oh yes that one (post top Iridium), I wondered why it was like that, I think the curved brackets look quite nice.
I'll have to go into town to get some photos of before and after the LED conversions soon.

Of course what they should have done with those S&L columns was just cut of the finial and then the Iridium could be side entry mounted. It (in my view) would still look awful but not as bad as that post top example, and at least the lantern would be at the correct height.

Yep that would look better, and save the curved brackets.

Yes that's the one - an iridium with a 7 metre mounting height.

You'll have to be quick on your feet with your photographs though - the crews are motoring through the conversions at the moment. In addition to the 10 roads listed last weekend (North Station Road, North Hill, Head Street, St. John's Street, Osborne Street, Military Road, Magdalen Street, Wimpole Road, Brook Street and East Hill), LED lanterns have appeared in Halstead Road and Essex Yeomanry Way (the dual carriageways either side of the A12 at junction 26), the Albert roundabout on Cowdray Avenue, the Tesco roundabout at Greenstead, the Eastern Approach Road through the Hythe, the B&Q roundabout on that road and at assorted junctions and zebra crossings across the town (i.e. in roads where the lighting goes off at midnight with the exception of the junctions and zebra crossings). And they're only the locations I have spotted myself! As far as I know, Balkerne Hill, Southway and the High Street are currently untouched (the High Street is untouched as the vast majority of its lighting is on wall-mounting lighting control boxes).

This is the same scene now. Photograph taken on Thursday night (12th March 2015):




Sadly, the Alpha Six went before the LED conversion in an ongoing column replacement programme along Halstead Road. This photograph was also taken in March 2015.


The LED replacement programme stops at the Colchester boundary, but the ongoing column replacement programme continues along Halstead Road into Eight Ash Green. Photograph from March 2015.


A daytime view of the above scene from April 2013, with the removed Alpha Six still in situ.

That old concrete is arguably famous in UKASTLE circles for its amazing triple sleeve that almost reaches the ground:

And just to be even more unusual, the last time I saw it lit at night, it was running a 90W bulb!

The lighting at this junction before this column appeared was even more strange.  Claire sent me an e-mail a couple of weeks ago linking me to this image on flickr showing a clearer image of these ESLA open-sodium lanterns that used to be all over Colchester up to the 1980s. Furthermore, Colchester used to have the side-road version of these ESLAs too. Sadly, no open sodium lanterns remain in service today.


Yesterday's Essex County Standard ran a report about Colchester's LED lighting, again with two photographs that originally appeared on UKASTLE.