Is UK streetlighting becoming MORE continental in style?

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Gram587
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Re: Is UK streetlighting becoming MORE continental in style?

Post by Gram587 »

autosignguy wrote:What is this lantern - haven't seen any in the UK!
Looks like an Urbis Altra to me.
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A303Paul
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Re: Is UK streetlighting becoming MORE continental in style?

Post by A303Paul »

Gram587 wrote:
autosignguy wrote:What is this lantern - haven't seen any in the UK!
Looks like an Urbis Altra to me.
Looks like an LED lumiaire impersonating a low pressure sodium lamp :lol:
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wallasey
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Re: Is UK streetlighting becoming MORE continental in style?

Post by wallasey »

I think Staffs use them...and the WRTL equivalent.
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DunsBus
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Re: Is UK streetlighting becoming MORE continental in style?

Post by DunsBus »

wrinkly wrote:
Gareth wrote: Which reminds me, when did SON arrive? I've heared conflicting dates. Some have claimed it came in as long back as the seventies and I think I've heard people on here say it's from the late 80s, but all of Liverpool's Alpha 3 stock was already wholesale converted SON-T from my earliers memories (mid/late-80's). Perhaps the SON-E bulbs for mercury lanterns weren't as old. Certainly, Liverpool still replaced mercury bulbs with mercury before the early nineties.
I'm not an expert on lighting terminology so be gentle with me. Many years before I encountered the terminology SOX or SON, I heard the terminology low or high pressure sodium.

I'm assuming that

SON = high-pressure sodium = pinkish-white light

SOX = low-pressure sodium = orangey-yellow, almost monochromatic light
(actually I think it's mainly two nearby spectral lines).


There was a long interval from the time when SON first appeared to the time when it began to be fairly commonplace, and a further long interval before it became almost universal on new installations.

As far as I can recal, SON first appeared in the 1970s (maybe the mid-70s?), but SOX continued to be the usual type of lighting on new trunk road installations.

SON began to be fairly commonplace in the early-to-mid 80s (e.g. used on the A55 around Bangor/Llanfairpwll) but there were still a lot of new SOX installations even then.

And SON became universal on new trunk road installations around 1999.

When SON first appeared, I think I read something about high-pressure sodium being more efficient than low-pressure and giving better colour rendering, but being dependent on new types of glass to resist attack from the sodium.
In Edinburgh the first SON lanterns - GEC Z8526 "Turtles" - appeared in 1972, on Leith Walk. The survivors of this installation are still in-situ today.
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Simon
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Re: Is UK streetlighting becoming MORE continental in style?

Post by Simon »

Here are some dates for you:

1963: Prototype high pressure sodium (HPS) and mecury iodide (MBI) lamps are demonstrated at the annual conference of the APLE (Association of Public Lighting Engineers).

1965: First trial installation of mercury iodide (metal halide) lamps take place in Shaw, Manchester.

1966: The GEC install a prototype installation of HPS lamps in East Lane, Wembley. There are 15 400W Mark I hand-made Solorcolour lamps installed in conventional Z8526 lanterns.
1966: The 400W HPS Solorcolour is demonstrated at APLE's conference.
1966: City Of London starts to trial HPS lamps.

1967: The first HPS installation in the UK is at Southend-On-Sea, Essex by the GEC when the new ring road is lit by 54 Solorcolor lamps. (The lantern isn't specified but is probably the Z8526HPS).

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Simon
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Gareth
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Re: Is UK streetlighting becoming MORE continental in style?

Post by Gareth »

Great stuff, Simon.

I take it we're talking about the SON-T ones that need the remote gear rather than the SON-E ones that have the gear built into the bulb? I take it SON-E was later and purely for changing the bulb over in existing mercury installations? The colour quality of these has always seemed inferior; being less of a bright pink and more of a lucozade orange colour.

What also confuses me is Liverpool's Atlas/Alpha 3s. As far as I know, most of them were made in the sixties and would've been mercury, but from my earliest memories (1980s), they've always been SON-T. So what's the story there? I know the Alpha 3 was still made well into the 80s, so perhaps they just retrofitted like for like. Or is it credible for them to have just added SON control gear to the exising installation so it could take SON-T?
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