The Lamp Room

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ma ... r-35133088

This is one of the guys off of The UK Street lighting Facebook page!

Shame it's a led!

Probably a dead one!!, saying that they can afford to keep buying them, so I don`t suppose their loosing a lot.

Tbh this is nothing new tbh. Just wigan council trying to get some good press. I have had depot visit and lanterns off crews before

Just spotted this, reminded me of something.

When I was younger, I was after a Thorn Beta 5. They were removing some in my road, so I contacted the electricity board (who were doing the service switch and who I assumed were responsible for the streetlighting) to ask if I could have one. They messed me around for weeks, before finally telling me they only did the service connections and that the lights were owned by Surrey County Council. So, out with the Yellow Pages (oh the days before the internet and Google).

Phoned the council and eventually got put through to streetlighting, where I spoke to the guy in charge, a guy called Ian Joss. He said he'd have a look around the yard and see if he could find one that had been removed. He called me back a few days later and told me he'd found one and I could come over to the depot in Merrow to collect it. Got the parents t give me a lift one Saturday morning (yes, they even worked Saturdays back then) and rang the doorbell on the office at the depot. Out comes the guy in charge of streetlighting with a box, in it is a brand new (boxed) Thorn Beta 5, pre-wired for a 2-part cell (the standard in Surrey those days) also enclosed is a spare (new) 35w SOX lamp and a Royce Thompson relay for the cell! To say I was delighted would be an understatement! I must have been around 13-14 at the time. He could have just given me a second hand lantern and I'd have been perfectly happy. I still own that lantern in my collection.

Good work, sir

Not sure I'd even get the time of day if I called them today...... To be fair, he could have just told me to get lost, he didn't have to give e anything at all, so the fact I got a brand new lantern, was amazing.

For years afterwards, I used to phone him with all the column numbers in the local area that were out. A few years later they were replacing the rest of the columns in my road. One had been moved slightly to allow for a new access and the developers had removed it and left it laying on the pavement. A quick phonecall later and its mine. Soon had it home and re-painted, me and my mother carried it back down the road....... Still own that too, however it stands in a field the other side of a wood at the back of my house and holds my Sky dish now.

I was lucky, back in the 80s my auntie Christine lived right next door to street lighting contractor, David Linington`s yard, in a big waterways house, back then there were no cameras, no locks on the gate, and no security!
During the summer holidays me and my cousin Jonny use to just raid the place at the weekends!

You could just walk out with anything you wanted off the scrap pile!, lamps, lanterns, gear, you name it!, we use to do midnight raids on it in school holiday time, armed with tools and a good deal of stealth , it was all quite exciting back then!

But did you manage to get much away, more importantly, how much of it do you still have?