It was fabulous to welcome Phosco152 to my corner of Essex last weekend and to spend an afternoon looking at old street lights (many of which I couldn't identify, but Phosco thankfully could), and I can't believe how fast Phosco created his excellent Essex gallery!
We did really well and got to see most of the more unusual stuff in and around Colchester before it got too dark. I have added some of the other stuff we got to see, and some of the stuff we didn't quite get around to seeing, to this post.
Funnily enough, that Alpha One with the broken opticell still works to this day, even though its opticell has been broken since September (I have the photos to prove it!). I did, of course, report it to my contact all that time ago, but while it is still in light there's not much chance of it being picked up by the night spotters.
As for Colchester's Alpha Ones, this might be the year the town loses a great deal of its stock...
Essex University's population of seventeen Alpha Ones, all on
Boundary Road, will surely go when a new Science Park is built on the University's grounds (this photo taken September 2008).
And Phosco152 also saw the impending destruction to this stretch of seven Alpha Ones on his visit last weekend, when the replacement columns were already in place for a road widening scheme (this photo taken July 2007).
This week the lanterns went on, which I guess are SON lanterns (I can't imagine the council insisting on MH
when SON is seen as the way forward). However, I don't recognise the new lanterns, which suggests the replacement isn't being done by the local authority, or my contact.
Added together, the two new developments will wipe out 24 Alpha Ones - almost a third of Colchester's surviving Alpha One population.
And we still lose a few every now and then thanks to other circumstances
(photo taken October 2009).
Nearby Clacton on Sea has just eight Alpha Ones left (Indust had the ninth!), including the early Atlas Alpha One in Phosco's Essex Gallery, which is the only one left in Clacton. Clacton also boasts an Alpha One with a rather unusual, and possibly quite rare opticell...
Again I have only spotted this one example, but this opticell has the words 'ATLAS OPTICELL' etched into the bottom corner. Has anyone else seen this before, or even aware that Atlas did this to some of their opticells? (photo taken December 2008).
Phosco and I also passed this old cast iron column, which also came from local firm Lewellen's, although sadly sporting a Thorn Beta Five casual replacement (photo taken November 2008)...
The column looked even worse when Phosco and I passed it last weekend. The swan-neck had vanished and a post-top Phosco P567 had been put on the column. It looked such a sorry mess that I may have to return and get a photo of it.
On our Clacton drive, we passed scores of Concrete Utilities 'Utility Major' columns with GEC Z5641s and GEC Z5671s. I wonder whether the round shape of this column makes them impossible to sleeve, and hence the complete absence of sleeving of side road columns in Clacton on Sea. This is in stark contrast to nearby Colchester, where every side road (and main road) concrete column, apart from one or two, has been sleeved. I guess the decision to use the Utility Major in Clacton all those years ago has helped to preserve so much of Clacton's mercury stock well into the 21st century!
Most of Clacton's concrete columns have a definite green colour cast, which I hadn't noticed until Phosco pointed this out. With just a little more time, we would have also hunted out this column...
This is the last Concrete Utilities 'Utility Major' column with a concrete bracket on it. (photo taken December 2008).
The town used to have many of these in the days when the GEC Z5641 was seen as adequate for residential streets, but the slightly more important roads like the distributors needed a little extra help, and got side-entry Concrete Utilities 'Utility Major' columns with GEC Z9480s instead. This column originally had a GEC Z9480 on it.
Also on the itinery for our drive was Clacton Town Centre's relighting scheme. The town centre's GEC Z8430CMs, mounted in a staggered arrangement on Concrete Utilities 'Avenue 3DNN' columns were culled a few years back in favour of new gawdawful metal halide lanterns mounted in an opposite arrangement...
I complained to Phosco that the new 'opposite' lighting arrangement makes the roads look like a very long Zebra crossing! (photo taken December 2008).
Furthermore, the council didn't have enough money to replace the town centre's entire stock of GEC Z8430CMs, and only the important roads in the middle (the busiest shopping streets) got the new lanterns. As a result, there is now a significant 'doughnut ring' of SON-running GEC Z8430CMs between the new gawdawful metal halide lanterns in the town centre and the SOX lighting of the suburbs!
Phosco and I also passed by a car dealership (former petrol garage) with early Atlas Alpha Threes on them (with two bowl clips on each side instead of one) still running mercury and still in good working order. But another former petrol garage in nearby Colchester has these (sadly not working) lanterns...
They look like a highly unusual, or extremely old, version of the Alpha Three. The bowl looks like it's been riveted to the canopy and the whole thing detaches from the shoe! (photo taken November 2008).
On the subject of Turtles, Clacton Railway Station still had, up until quite recently, a great number of mercury-running GEC Z8526s lighting its works, sidings and car parks. Many are still there although some have been replaced. Sadly by the time we had finished in Clacton, it was too dark to get to Colchester Clacton Railway Station to photograph their as-yet-unspoilt installation of mercury-running GEC Z8526s and GEC Z8536s.
Colchester Railway Station's mercury-running GEC Z8536s (photo taken February 2010).
As for more modern lanterns, I guess I am used to seeing SGS203s used as side road lanterns (instead of the more intuitive SGS201), so it was a surprise to me when Phosco152 said this was not usual practice.
Yes, the Iridium is beginning to show up in Colchester and Clacton now, but thankfully not in the sheer weight of numbers that horrify some of you guys. Unless Essex is subject to PFI in the near future (let's hope not!), the Iridium will only ever be used for minor relighting shemes and casual replacements. This has been the case for all of Colchester and Clacton's favoured lanterns over the past 50 years, and this practice has led to the rich variety of lanterns that both towns have today.
And a big thank you to Phosco152 for adding so many of them to his Essex photo gallery!