Let me kick start a thread about the classic Thorn Alpha 3 with two pictures of an unusual variant:

Full column view
Close up

Don't let the shallower, non-refractor grooved bowl fool you, this type of bowl was an option on the Alpha 3, and the lantern is an Alpha 3 and not an Alpha 30.

Aren't they technically Atlas versions as they have 4 bowl clips rather than 2?

Indeed, they have four clips rather than two, but the columns they are mounted on look as if they were installed in the 1980s, and Wessex Way and the roundabout that these are on was built and opened in the early 1970s I believe, a few years after the Atlas brand was dropped. Furthermore, I think Bournemouth Borough was more keen on GEC products when it was a part of Hampshire, and Thorn started to come along once it moved into Dorset, not that I'm saying Hampshire never used Thorn, because that statement would be untrue. I am also pretty sure that Wessex Way and this junction would have originally been SOX lit. Other sections of Wessex Way were lit with SOX until about 1990 when many of the original columns were replaced, with the exception of through this junction, where the original stepped tubular steel columns still exist and are fitted with Triumphs.

EDIT: Mike's 1972/3 catalogue shows the normal deep bowl variant having two clips but the shallow bowl variant having four clips. Perhaps the lower profile bowl was more flimsy due to its flatter shape, and Thorn thought it best to use four clips?

Alpha 3s were always losing their bowls when they had the standard type too, they should have put 4 clips on that type as well.

This thread sounds like a good excuse to re-post two photos from UKASTLE II. I'm pretty sure we've all seen mercury Alpha Threes hanging on in there on second-hand car showroom and petrol station forecourts, but how about a SOX Alpha Three?


About 10 years ago, the B197 through Knebworth in Hertfordshire used to be almost exclusively lit with SOX-running Alpha Threes, but the last time I visited there was only this one left. The rest had been replaced with SRS201s.


Of course the Alpha Three was never offered as a SOX variant. I believe the discussions on UKASTLE II concluded that the Alpha Threes along this road were likely to have been 250w MBF to begin with, but the energy crisis of the 1970s forced the council to convert them in-house to 90w SOX.

I thought I read somewhere that there was a fully cut-off version of the Alpha 3 on a catalogue, but maybe I imagined it.

The Alpha 3 will always be one of my favourite lanterns, moreso the Atlas type. It's reminiscent of my town centre in the 90s when they were burning mercury on sleeved ex. fluorescent columns. It's nice to still see a few around in town centres!

Funnily enough Colchester Town Centre's Alpha Threes were 1980s replacements for fluorescents on Stewart & Lloyds columns, and even several converted tram poles. Although the converted tram ploes have certainly died out in the town centre now, the Alpha Threes, albeit the SON variants, still light the town centre to this day. And with budgets so tight in Essex at the moment (not helped our leader Lord Hanningfield defrauding us out of money these last few years...allegedly!), I don't think they'll be going anywhere soon.

Brighouse still has Alpha 3's in the town centre sadly most have either been replaced with an Alpha 8 or an Arc, some have even lost their bowls sadly although Calderdale Council could modify them to a "flat glass" variant. I remember them running MBF in 1998 so the conversion must have happened in 1999 to operate SON.

Even Halifax has some near to the railway station, these ones run on SON.

The approach road to Preston rail station has SON Alpha 3's. the road is owned by the rail board, as (from memory) the columns are abacus R&L types.

Sorry to correct you but they're not Alpha 3s they're GEC Turtles (the early type with the dark canopy)