traffic-light-man wrote:I have a feeling they were installed in that envelope between the discontinuation of lettered red lenses and the Mellor lantern being replaced, hence the non-lettered polycarbonate red lenses and the tin red/green man lights. I'm not sure if they discontinued lettered lenses with the Warboys report or not, though.
Not sure if that actually matches up. There's no way that the 'STOP' lenses were discontinued as early as the Warboys Report. All the rest of the tin lanterns I remember had 'STOP' on them and I'm sure that most if not all these installations will have been post-1964. Indeed, the box signs on the ones I remember had post-Warboys regulatory signs on them. I'm not even sure the Warboys Report applied to traffic signals. Certainly, where the stripey poles were replaced on standard road signs with monotone grey, the traffic signals kept their stripes for a few more years, though around this time, they'd reduced the white to the bottom half of the pole, leaving the signal head completely black. I'm pretty sure the 'STOP' lenses went in 1969. This was the year that the mellor was meant to be released, along with the pelican crossing. The 'STOP' was to be removed and the poles were to be painted grey to line up with normal road signs. The mellor was delayed for a year or so and so there was a very small window where tins lanterns and SGEs were installed complete with grey poles, no stop lenses and the modern yellow push buttons which are still with us. This would've been a very short inbetween period and I remember no such installations in Liverpool, though perhaps the Calderstones set were installed right on the very death of the old system, meaning that it somehow became a hybrid of old (stripey poles) and new (plain red lenses). That's the best theory I can come up with and would perhaps suggest they were installed in 1969 and thus had an innings of 32 years.
Here's a link to the first pelican crossing. SGES, grey poles and an experimental version of the yellow push button...
https://www.britishpathe.com/video/pelic ... uery/marsh
traffic-light-man wrote:I think the red/green man came in legally with the Warboys report, did it not? So it would have been after that that a lot of red/green men appeared.
IIRC, The heads were actually a slight bit shorter than the RAG heads, but don't quote me on that.
Around the time of the Warboys Report does make sense. Like I said, it was around this time that they stopped painting the stripes all the way to the top, including on the signal heads. Also, the ill-fated Panda Crossing was modified to use red/green men in September 1964, so surely it wasn't long before they spread to junctions. As for the heads, I'm sure what you're seeing is an optical illusion. I believe the red/green man tin heads were just a modified version of the old wait/cross now heads, but with a longer aspect so that they covered most of the amber aspect too.
traffic-light-man wrote:Here's a great picture (sadly only of the back) of a RAG and box sign assembly at Charlotte St in Liverpool, before the area to the right of this became pedestrianised.
It may surprise you but I remember those signals. At least, some of them. Elliot Street from the right of that junction was pedestrianised in the mid-80s, leaving the L-bend that's there today. I have no memory of it pre-pedestrianisation. What's weird though is that those signals weren't removed. They simply took out the ones on Elliot Street, leaving the Great Charlotte Street ones to act as a pedestrian crossing. Even that farside secondary remained, I think complete with no left turn arrow (a movement now no longer possible anyway). It confused me because of this and that they seemed to cycle automatically. I have a feeling they were linked to the signals at the next junction at Lime Street. Around 1990/91 they were replaced with a normal mellor pelican crossing (which in turn was replaced by the existing mellor pelican crossing for reasons unknown). Why they didn't put in a pelican crossing once Elliot Street had been pedestrianised is a mystery.