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Old 20th Jan 2019, 6:30 pm   #61
YoungManGW
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Peter,
A snap from a little after dusk today.
Yes, SWA, buried in 100 yards of trenching.
Regards,
Richard
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Old 20th Jan 2019, 6:48 pm   #62
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Very nice, Richard. Thanks so much for that

Take another one in daylight tomorrow, please, so I can see the actual lanterns. Do they have photocells on top?
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Old 20th Jan 2019, 7:07 pm   #63
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We had a sodium vapour lamp in the physics labs when I was at school, for experiments in optics -- spectroscopy and the like, or when a monochromatic source was required. The same ballast gear could also power a cadmium vapour lamp, which emits several different narrow lines that can be seen clearly. I remember the latter having a brilliant "electric blue" colour. Probably far too dangerous to be obtainable today .....
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Old 20th Jan 2019, 7:20 pm   #64
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Ooh! You're talking far too technical for me to understand, Julie!
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Old 21st Jan 2019, 9:32 am   #65
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Here you go Peter. No photocells, instead they are (or will be by the end of today) switched. Philips heads mounted atop thick-walled rigid plastic pipes, slotted over stanchions concreted into the ground. Wiska junction boxes, earth clamps within to ensure continuity of earthing of the armour.
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Old 21st Jan 2019, 11:39 am   #66
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Very nice job, Richard! They look really stylish.

Thanks for sending the photo.
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Old 3rd Feb 2019, 10:39 pm   #67
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lancs Lad View Post
I bet they must have been 200 or even 300 watt bulbs. They must have burned at very hot temperatures, mustn't they?

I remember watching them being replaced with new bulbs, and being intrigued by the fact of them being screwed in - they must have been Edison Screw bulbs, and I had only ever encountered Bayonet Cap lightbulbs in our house!

I always wondered what they did with all the (perfectly good) bulbs they took out. I hope they didn't just throw them away - that would have been a terrible waste.
IME, most incandescent street lighting used only 60 watt or 100 watt lamps by the 1960s. Higher wattages had generally been replaced by discharge lamps by then.

100 watt lamps were available with larger bulbs than the household 100 watt lamps. This reduced the surface temperature and increased the chances of the lamp surviving rain in lights with bulbs exposed.

The used bulbs were meant to be thrown away, they were not expensive in bulk and had little remaining life.
Some were no doubt taken home as perks or re-used unofficially.
Whether decades ago or more recently, the labour cost of replacing a lamp generally far exceeds the cost of the lamp.

1960s cost of lamp about a shilling, cost of labour (2 men+vehicle+employment costs) probably at least one pound an hour.
Cost of replacing lamps in street lights one by one as they fail, at least a pound each and could be two pounds depending on distance.
Cost of bulk replacement, whether failed or not, would be about three shillings, presuming 10 lamps an hour replaced at a labour cost of two shillings each and a lamp cost of another shilling.

Todays costs are much higher but still broadly similar in proportion.
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Old 3rd Feb 2019, 10:59 pm   #68
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I wonder how much electricity was consumed to run every individual timeswitch clock motor in every individual lamp column in every town, 24 hours a day?

Can you imagine! It must have mounted up....! I'm amazed the 1970s National Grid coped with it!

No wonder dusk/dawn photocells were adopted so readily
It was not that great, the clocks were about 1 watt each. I don't know how many street lights there were, maybe a million (one for every 50 people) or perhaps two million street lights.

A million watts for time switches sounds a lot but is only 1 megawatt, large power stations of that era had several generators each of hundreds of megawatts capacity.

The early photocells used as much power as a time switch, but only in daylight, they consumed almost nothing at night.
The lamp was switched by the contacts of a thermal relay the heater of which was wired in series with a photocell.
In daylight the cell had a low resistance and most of the mains voltage would be across the heater of the thermal relay which would absorb a watt or so and keep the contacts open.
In darkness, the cell had a high resistance, passed virtually no current, and the relay cooled down, and thus closed the contacts and lit the lamp.

The modern all electronic photocells consume only a minute wattage.

Most streetlights are individually controlled, but in some areas group or central control is used, thereby saving costs, complications and losses at each street light, but adding to infrastructure costs.
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Old 3rd Feb 2019, 11:24 pm   #69
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HI Peter you need to phone (street scene) in your area as its a safety problem.
here is some info for you if it has not been fixed.

Also on this page click on the lighting info on the right hand side you may be surprised.

http://www.blackburn.gov.uk/Pages/Street-lighting.aspx.

Good luck gezza1123
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Old 4th Feb 2019, 1:07 am   #70
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Quote:
Originally Posted by broadgage View Post
The early photocells used as much power as a time switch, but only in daylight, they consumed almost nothing at night.
The lamp was switched by the contacts of a thermal relay the heater of which was wired in series with a photocell.
In daylight the cell had a low resistance and most of the mains voltage would be across the heater of the thermal relay which would absorb a watt or so and keep the contacts open.
In darkness, the cell had a high resistance, passed virtually no current, and the relay cooled down, and thus closed the contacts and lit the lamp.
You are right about those photo bubbles on lamp heads.
I found one and can show what they are made of and how well made they were.
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Old 4th Feb 2019, 1:09 am   #71
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The remainder of my tear down photos.
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Old 4th Feb 2019, 6:44 am   #72
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That brings back memories Ref

The old type with the resistor and bi metalac strip are long gone the new ones use a Diddy photo resistor some transistors and a relay.

Calibration for light level was done by a mist of silver paint over the glass front of the cadmium sulphide photo resistor scraped off until the correct light level achieved (55lux) in our case.

The main failure mode was the flexible wire coming of the thick film resistor attached to the bi metallic strip, probably due to vibration.

The earlier types used a wire wound resistor in a metal cradle on the bimetallic strip.

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Old 4th Feb 2019, 1:34 pm   #73
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The resistor in my one looks like it is printed on some kind of white insulating stuff.
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Old 4th Feb 2019, 1:44 pm   #74
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When I joined Plessey Ilford in 1969, the public footpath that crosses the Ilford car shed railway depot was lit by GLS lamps. One which was noticeably dimmer than the rest, was a carbon filament lamp. It was still burning happily when the lamps were changed to sodium a couple of years later.
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Old 19th Feb 2019, 8:03 pm   #75
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Message from Lancs Lad (Peter) about the fuse found in his garden.

I've no idea how to re-open a closed thread, but just wanted to let everyone know that they finally turned up to fix my street light this morning!

Only 63 days after it was 'tampered with'. And 53 days after I reported it.

I can hardly believe it's taken so long to be repaired.

Hope you can add this post to the thread so that everyone can rest easy! ��
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