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PostPosted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 10:01 pm 
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^ Yes, Essex is a funny county in the way that it is so set in its ways when choosing street lanterns. It's like new technology or alternative options like LED or CFL, or even MH rarely get a look-in, but there may be a reason for that:

There is clearly not the money around to implement proper wholesale re-lighting schemes except in the most exceptional circumstances, so year-on-year (well, almost decade-by-decade) the county's lighting stock turns over at a snail's pace and perhaps only as a result of vandalism, knockdowns, structural failure of columns or the lanterns just expiring through old age and becoming too uneconomical to repair.

As the county has been installing SOX since the 1960s and a combination of SOX and SON since the mid-2000s, Essex's roads still have a cosy warm glow to them. SON appeared in the town centres earlier than that of course, but in the last eight years or so, some SOX lanterns outside town centres have been casually replaced with SON lanterns. The county is still installing brand new SOX lanterns in 2013 - perhaps the last county in the UK to do this!

A SON lantern in a SOX-lit street doesn't look too disjointed to the casual observer, as SOX (amber) and SON (golden) have broadly similar colours at the warm end of the colour temperature scale.

My theory is that the council are reluctant to switch to modern light sources because they are invariably all white or cooler than white, and the introduction of white-light casual replacements into streets currently lit by a warm amber glow will look careless. And with the current slow pace of change, it could be an awkward 50 or 60 years of mixed yellow and white lights before the county's roads are finally converted over to white light. This, of course, assumes that the SOX and SON lanterns being installed today last as long as lights like the GEC Z564x series!

For comparison, scores of side road MBF lanterns from the 1950s and 1960s still survive in towns like Clacton, Frinton and Walton (as in my avatar), and having outlived SOX casual replacements between the 1970s to the 2000s, they would now qualify for a SON casual replacement if they expired or were knocked down.

Furthermore, I've also driven through many towns - especially in Hertfordshire and Kent- where MBF, SOX, SON, CFL, metal halide and fluorescent are all mixed up, making the roads look as colourful as a Christmas tree, so the arguably clumsy use of mixed light sources clearly doesn't bother some councils!

I have never enquired as to what light sources would have been chosen for Essex's (now thankfully cancelled) PFI, but reading the PFI projects on UKASTLE, it is a disappointment that so many have gone for SON.

Back to Chelmsford now, and having included photos of a GEC Z5646 converted to part-night lighting, it would be unfair not to include a photo of a GEC Z5647 as well  :D

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This time the road is not an unbroken line of GEC Z5647s, instead having a few post-top casual replacements of the ELECO/Davis lineage.

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Meanwhile the fallout from Essex's street light switch-off continues, with Rodney Bass - the politician responsible for the switch-off - unhelpfully admitting that he binned the comments of resident opposed to the scheme. You plonker, Rodney!  :lol:

I also had the fortune of driving through Chelmsford on Tuesday night when the lights went out - all within a split second and at midnight on the dot. It was quite a sight. Next time I'll make sure I have a video camera with me, but until then, there is a video of the switch-off in this newspaper article.

I'm surprised that the council went for such a sudden switch-off, instead of a staggered switch-off over, say, a few minutes, which I am sure I have seen in other areas like South Wales. For car drivers, a sudden switch-off is OK, but for pedestrians, it's not enough time to retrieve your torch from your pocket or bag!


Last edited by David on Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 12:02 am 
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I would assume it's tricky to set up a staggered switch-off pattern. If the lanterns had modern electronic ballasts (and suitable lamps) fitted then it would be probable to programme a dim-to-off switching, whereby the lanterns dim over a period of 30 minutes until they're off completely. The problem with the Essex setup is that it is just a retrofit in replacement of normal NEMA cells and not much more.

I am surprised they've gone for a blanket all-off scheme. There are fors and againsts both this and the alternative of leaving 1 in 3 on for example, the main being the argument that leaving the odd lantern still on creates huge areas of shadow where people in houses can't see towards but unsavoury characters in the shadows can carry out their activities in what little light is being thrown from the one lantern still lit; the flip side being in an all-off street that nobody can see anything and so those trying to break in to houses wouldn't be able to see what they were doing and would need a torch and would give the game away.

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 22, 2013 11:48 pm 
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In September, David wrote:
A trial switch-off commenced in the largely rural districts of Maldon and Uttlesford in 2007 and after being declared a success, the city of Chelmsford and Braintree town were switched off on September 1st. Colchester and Basildon will follow on November 1st, Clacton will follow on January 1st 2014 (that'll come as a shock to those returning from New Year's Eve parties!) and Harlow's lights will be switched off on February 1st 2014.

In the end, Colchester residents had to wait a month longer than expected before part-night lighting came into effect, after the policy was twice challenged  by opposition councillors, delaying its introduction twice, and by two weeks in each case. This pushed back the switch-off date to December 1st.

In nearby Braintree and in the city of Chelmsford, the street lighting was scheduled to be switched off on September 1st, and again this was met with stiff local opposition, but it eventually went ahead on September 16th:

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Daphne Close in Great Notley (near Braintree) photographed in October 2013, after part-night lighting was introduced.

This area of Great Notley wasn't built when Essex last saw part-night lighting in the 1980s, but many of its residents will still remember those days, and also remember that it wasn't a blanket switch-off as currently being introduced by Essex County Council. Instead, about one-in-three or one-in-four street lights (usually those situated on bends or at junctions) were kept on all night.

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Cuckoo Way in Great Notley, also photographed in October 2013.

Cuckoo Way has fewer domestic properties fronting it, and with less porch lights to guide the way and less sky-glow, the stars become visible. The orange glow crossing the road in the distance is from street lighting in an alley way leading off from Chatsworth Avenue. Street lighting in alley ways is currently not switched off for safety reasons.

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Lastly a photo of Charlecote Road in Great Notley, also photographed in October 2013, and even with porch lights switched on, the number of stars in the sky is amazing!

Meanwhile in Colchester, the originally scheduled switch-off date of November 1st descended into farce after maps showing which street lights were scheduled for switch-off weren't published until the day the scheduled switch-off was meant to start, leaving residents with no right of reply and making a sham of the so-called "consultation period" according to opposition councillors.

Until then, residents were only able to make an educated guess as to if their street lighting was going to be on or off from the exception criteria published on Essex County Council's web site. The switch-off date of November 1st was pushed back until November 18th accordingly, to allow councillors and residents to study the maps and register their opposition.

Needless to add, the maps came as a shock to many people, especially those who remember what Essex County Council said when they started trialling part-night lighting in Maldon and Uttlesford in 2007 (that no street lighting within a mile's radius of the town centre would be switched off). The Gazette newspaper published the map below in this article about the street lighting switch-off.

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A map of Colchester published by the Colchester Gazette after it consulted the maps of the proposed street lighting switch-off published by Essex County Council.

The map shows the central area of Colchester, and showed that even some parts of Colchester town centre would be plunged into darkness alongside many arterial roads that are lined with commercial premises. The Gazette also highlighted some inconsistently applied policies, for example street lighting should have been scheduled to stay on in roads covered by Colchester Borough Council's CCTV network, in roads with a high concentration of business premises and on footpaths.

This led to plenty of calls to reconsider a number of these decisions, and the switch-off was delayed by a further two weeks to allow enough time for concessions to be made to the plan. Councillors won a number of concessions - alley ways and arterial roads were the big winners.

The publication of the maps enabled me to look at plans for the Dutch Quarter of Colchester town centre (where I live) for the first time. The Dutch Quarter is the area bounded by St. Peter's Street to the north and the High Street to the south in the above map.

When I moved here in 2005, the vast majority of the street lighting in this largely residential quarter of the town centre was Phosco P111s running 35W SOX lamps on fluted Stewart and Lloyd columns. As these columns have reached the end of their lives over the intervening years, they have been replaced with Phosco P111s running 70W SON lamps on Corus and later Fabrikat columns.

It has been a gradual process, but SON lanterns now hold the dominant position:

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Plans of the Dutch Quarter from 2005 to 2013, showing the gradual replacement of 35W SOX lanterns with 70W SON lanterns.

Once replacement of all the 35W SOX lanterns is completed in the next decade or so, the Dutch Quarter could be using just as much electricity to run 70W SON lanterns on a part-night basis as it was using for 35W SOX lanterns running all night long!


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An extract of Essex County Council's street-lighting switch-off plan showing the Dutch Quarter, as published on their web site.

On the above map, the locations coloured yellow retain full-night lighting (notably Colchester High Street at the bottom of the extract), and the locations coloured green were originally scheduled for part-night lighting. This was despite a number of the streets in the Dutch Quarter being covered by Colchester Borough Council's CCTV network, alongside roads with a high concentration of business premises (notably St. Peter's Street, at the top of the extract) and footpaths between trafficked roads.

Although the street lighting switch-off did eventually begin in Colchester on December 1st, and the purple flag on the town hall (which signifies how safe the town is to visit at night) was lowered to half-mast in sympathy*, it turns out that parts of the Dutch Quarter, including my road (St. Peter's Street) are in fact still under review. This means that sometime in the future the lights that currently go off in my street at midnight may start staying on all night, or those that currently, and inexplicably, stay on all night may start to go off!

* This didn't actually happen, although the Council may struggle to retain its purple flag next year as a result of part-night lighting.

Below are two photos of St. Peter's Street. Puzzlingly (as hinted above) some of the street lighting in my road currently stays on whilst the rest go off, and there seems to be no pattern to it. The street lights that do stay on seem rather random and are arguably no help to Colchester Council's CCTV operators.

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A long view of St. Peter's Street looking west to east, as photographed in December 2013. The first street lantern is a bowled Philips SGS203, the second a Philips MI26 and the rest are post-top Phosco P111s.

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The same view after midnight, also photographed in December 2013. Inexplicably, the lanterns on the third, eighth and ninth columns remain lit.

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There appears to be a blanket switch-off in the rest of the Dutch Quarter, although with so many one-way streets in this Tudor-built neighbourhood, the many sign lights take over, creating the fluorescent glow in West Stockwell Street shown here. Photograph taken in December 2013.

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Looking towards the High Street (as here in Short Cut Road), the glow of the street lighting that stays on all night can be seen. Photograph taken in December 2013.

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Lastly, here's the view outside my home before the lights go out. My building has a 70W SONPAK-style flood light illuminating the entrance to the underground car park, the same wattage as the P111 on the pavement outside. Photograph taken in December 2013.

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And the same view after midnight. The lanterns on columns eight and nine inexplicably remain lit, with a further SONPAK-style flood light on a commercial property further up the road adding extra light. Photograph taken in December 2013.

So in a policy change that I never thought would be reversed when it was adopted in the 1980s, I am now back to living under the part-night lighting I last experienced as a 10-year-old!


Last edited by David on Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 2:36 am 
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David wrote:
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Lastly a photo of Charlecote Road in Great Notley, also photographed in October 2013, and even with porch lights switched on, the number of stars in the sky is amazing!


I can make out Orion in this photo, up in Calderdale even with the glare of a 35W  SOX Phillips MI55 splilling into my garden I can still see the night sky.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 4:14 am 
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Those are some fantastic photos which contain the night sky! I'm guessing your camera has a function with very high light sensitivity and long exposure for these night shots....

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 23, 2013 9:10 am 
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BLUE stars?  :o  Error code with Sky: SWITCH #0


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:01 pm 
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mazeteam wrote:
Those are some fantastic photos which contain the night sky! I'm guessing your camera has a function with very high light sensitivity and long exposure for these night shots....

Thank you mazeteam! Although my pictures were taken with a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera (DSLR), I think many of today's smaller cameras would be capable of capturing an unlit street at night. If you put my now very old Canon Powershot S3is (from early 2006) into manual mode, you can make it take a fifteen-second exposure at the lens's widest aperture of f/2.7, which would be enough to capture an unlit street at night.

The pictures above were taken at 30 seconds at f/2.8 (longer exposure, but slightly less light getting into my DSLR, as lower f numbers like f/2.7 let in more light than higher f numbers like f/2.8, f/3.5, f/4 etc).

If you want to give it a try, put your camera in manual mode, select the longest available exposure, the widest possible lens aperture (smallest f number) and the lowest light sensitivity to begin with (usually ISO100), to see what happens. You'll need to support the camera in some way, e.g. on a utilities box that adorns some pavements, a garden wall or a tripod, and set a shutter delay on the camera (the setting which takes a picture a few seconds after you press the shutter - usually to allow the camera owner time to get in a group shot, but on this occasion it's needed to make sure you aren't touching the camera when the photo is being taken).

The reason I suggest starting with the lowest light sensitivity is that the picture quality progressively deteriorates with higher light sensitivities (ISO800, ISO1600, ISO3200 etc), so you'd want to know the lowest light sensitivity you can get away with to ensure the best picture quality.

J T wrote:
BLUE stars?  :o  Error code with Sky: SWITCH #0

The stars aren't really blue of course, it's just that the porch lights are 'yellow' by comparison - the circa 2700K of most domestic GLS and CFL bulbs (they only look 'white' to us because our eyes adjust to them and filter out the yellow), and I colour corrected the photo to filter out the yellow in the porch lights, just like our eyes do, and this made the white stars look a little blue!

In September, David wrote:
A trial switch-off commenced in the largely rural districts of Maldon and Uttlesford in 2007 and after being declared a success, the city of Chelmsford and Braintree town were switched off on September 1st. Colchester and Basildon will follow on November 1st, Clacton will follow on January 1st 2014 (that'll come as a shock to those returning from New Year's Eve parties!) and Harlow's lights will be switched off on February 1st 2014.

The Tendring area of Essex (which includes Clacton and Harwich) has had its street lighting switch-off delayed from January 1st to a now unspecified date, again due to the unavailability of maps showing which locations will be lit and which locations unlit. So there won't be a nasty shock for those inebriated residents staggering home after New Year's Eve parties after all! The maps will not be ready for viewing by the public until early January 2014, which was after the planned date of the switch-off.

A similar problem forced Colchester's street lighting switch-off back by a month, even though it originally appeared that Essex County Council wanted the lights to go off and the maps to be published at the same time!


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 3:00 pm 
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Thanks for clearing that up David. Great picture BTW!


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 2:23 am 
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David wrote:
mazeteam wrote:
Those are some fantastic photos which contain the night sky! I'm guessing your camera has a function with very high light sensitivity and long exposure for these night shots....

Thank you mazeteam! Although my pictures were taken with a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera (DSLR), I think many of today's smaller cameras would be capable of capturing an unlit street at night. If you put my now very old Canon Powershot S3is (from early 2006) into manual mode, you can make it take a fifteen-second exposure at the lens's widest aperture of f/2.7, which would be enough to capture an unlit street at night.

The pictures above were taken at 30 seconds at f/2.8 (longer exposure, but slightly less light getting into my DSLR, as lower f numbers like f/2.7 let in more light than higher f numbers like f/2.8, f/3.5, f/4 etc).

If you want to give it a try, put your camera in manual mode, select the longest available exposure, the widest possible lens aperture (smallest f number) and the lowest light sensitivity to begin with (usually ISO100), to see what happens. You'll need to support the camera in some way, e.g. on a utilities box that adorns some pavements, a garden wall or a tripod, and set a shutter delay on the camera (the setting which takes a picture a few seconds after you press the shutter - usually to allow the camera owner time to get in a group shot, but on this occasion it's needed to make sure you aren't touching the camera when the photo is being taken).

The reason I suggest starting with the lowest light sensitivity is that the picture quality progressively deteriorates with higher light sensitivities (ISO800, ISO1600, ISO3200 etc), so you'd want to know the lowest light sensitivity you can get away with to ensure the best picture quality.


Thanks for the advice... I might be getting a proper camera for my birthday (or a beleated birthday gift, seeing as the 'big day' is only 5 days away on the 2nd), and one of the reasons I want a proper camera is for better night/low-light photos. Whilst my smartphone takes decent photos for what it is (one of the reasons I went for a Sony Ericsson model), fully dark night photos have a fair amount of noise on them, low-light photos can only be taken of objects not moving, and on sunset photos the foreground is blacked out.

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 4:45 pm 
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Brilliant pictures there David!  :)

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