horsetan wrote:scynthius726 wrote:horsetan wrote:I've got quite a few Melbourne traffic signal pics too
Should I upload them....??
Well it would save me the bother
Pics uploaded this evening....including one of an early Eagle signal head on a "tin lantern" post.
Found them. Nice pics.
I did go by that school crossing in Springvale Rd, Glen Waverley today. Sadly, I have to report that the neon ped signals have been replaced by the usual red / green man heads. Actually, thinking back to when I went by earlier this year, I think they'd been replaced by then. However, I did see a few other neons still in use elsewhere.
Tin heads. I actually hadn't heard this term before, but I can understand how it came about. They were once common in Australia too. They were labelled AWA here. There was still a full set in use at an intersection / pedestrian crossing in Sydney until last year. A few people had hoped to get them preserved and left in use, but others insisted that there was no place for obsolete equipment to be in use on Sydney's streets. There are LED signals there now.
Melbourne did once have lots of them. I can remember as a child seeing traffic lights with the word STOP on the red lenses. I would not have appreciated it at the time, but I'm sure a lot of these were what you refer to as tin heads. They were mostly gone by the end of the 1980s. They were generally very dull compared to newer traffic lights. In fact I can remember unintentionally driving through a set of them which were showing red. They were poorly placed (low and well to the side of the wide road) and another nearby intersection had newer signals at green. I saw the newer signals and missed the old ones. Fortunately traffic speeds were very low at the time and no collisions occurred. It was very embarrassing though.
The only place I know of where you can still see those tin heads in use today are at the children's traffic school at Kew. The early Eagle that you saw on the former tin head poles are of a type that probably does not exist in use anywhere else in Victoria, if not all Australia. For some reason they seem to survive along some of Melbourne's "Little" streets. Not that we who appreciate old signals are complaining that they are still in use.
