First MBF, then SOX, now SON!!!

[AngryHorse]

It beginning to sink in how fast HID are becoming extinct for street lighting!, let me take you back to 1981, all our MBF street lights here started to be changed for SOX, (although this was more down to the late 70s energy crisis) than a PFI or basic upgrade!
I was only 9 back then so didn`t take a lot of notice.

Through the years we lived with SOX, with MBF still in other towns around me, but all SOX where I was, then in the 90s the odd one would be replaced with the `new` SON lamp, (new to us anyway).
The years rolled on, and as each one passed a few more SOX would go for SON, as columns would be knocked over in winter and so on, and high pressure sodium SLOWLY started to be the norm for street lighting.

However, it struck me last night that back in March 2015, (just last year), we had 2 LED lanterns in Middlewich!, yes! just 2!
Now here we are in December, just 21 months later and we have about 10 SON left!!!!, and the SOX that remain are only still there because their on the old concrete columns that are not worth putting LED on!

This mass change is happening so fast, I`m willing to bet this time next year, there will be NO HID in Middlewich at all!, none anywhere, (except on our house of course)! (the clapping smilie is for my SON, not the loss of our street lights)!

But just think about that for a minute, we are witnessing history here, the total, country wide extinction of discharge lamp street lighting!, every thing we grew up with, all those things we remember as kids!, all those memories that made us become lighting collectors/enthusiasts in the first place!

How fast have you seen this in your own area?, and what are your thoughts on this?

[Danny]

This area (Durham) is on a 6 year contract. And theres only 2 years left on it now. They were still installing SOX up to 2006 Atleast (the MA50 i rescued in November is 2004) The only SON that still gets installed here is second hand lanterns removed elsewhere for LED that get installed on the faults (areas not LED yet). there's still quite alot of SON & SOX about around here, but its all slowly disappearing, i would say this council are somewhere in between half and three quaters complete. Most of the housing estates, side roads etc are done now. Some main roads are done now. Especially Newton Aycliffe, id say that the Newton Aycliffe Area of County Durham is around 99% complete. However in most areas a lot of the Wood poles still are yet to be touched, also a lot of the Main road 8&10m columns are also yet to be touched. But i think 2017 will see a lot of the main road 90&135w Sox, 100w, 150w and 250w SON 90w & 140w cosmo almost completely. disappear. I think that this time next year the street lights will be complete. The Signs are also to be de illuminated and i reckon theyll need a year maybe 18 months at least to do that within the 6 year time frame.

Although i have only been living in county durham for 12 years, i have a lot of memories of hanging out with the street lighting faultsmen mainly from 2005-2010, and often there would be that many lights out in this area got from the patrolls, id often spend certain free days just hanging around with them watching all the SON & SOX lanterns get fresh lamps, gear & photocells. also noting it all down for my own future reference. (I still have the notes) I feel that once this area especially is complete that those memories will be spoilt. Theyre also memories because the guy i used to hang with was probably one of the best street lighters i have ever known. He was also a good friend of mine and would visit me regularly, keep unusual stuff for me, often have lunch with me. He died a few years ago now. So once everything he fixed whilst i was with him is LED those memories will be gone... I scout this area often as the council no longer bother mainly to keep anything thats left, Lit. The LED lanterns i leave them out. Dont care about those.

Durham first started their invest to save project around the back end of 2010 early 2011 installing Cosmopolis however after just 2 years of installing that, they decided to go LED so that was seized, and LED started to go everywhere else from June 2013. At the back end of 2014, I found out from one of the lads that the Cosmo installed between 2010-13 is also to come out and be replaced for LED. In that 2 years, i think around 12,000 Cosmopolis lanterns were installed mainly across Sacriston, Durham city, spennymoor & Bishop Auckland. So far about half of those have been pulled out and replaced for LED. Even the 55W PL lanterns istalled on New Housing Developments are going once they are adopted by the council. So nothing here is safe.

The sign lights are also mostly being de-illuminated, the fittings are to be removed, the supply disconnected and the top of the poles capped off. However i think most of the Give Way signs will be safe. It wouldnt surprise me if they fitted LED heads to those.

Sunderland council (the next county to me) had a PFI between 2003 and 2009, they installed New columns and Iridiums Everywhere running SON lamps on magnetic ballasts and ignitors. Earlier this year i found out that they too have joined an invest to waste program and are to rip the lot of them out for LED. That scheme started at the start of October. So is now 2 months in. Thats expected to take about 18 months.

Everywhere is at it now, nothing no where is safe, Leeds are ripping their PFI iridiums out, so are Derby so ive heard! even private installs are getting ripped out im finding Its a massive shame that the SOX / MBF / SON i grew up with is all being ripped out, scrapped and wasted for this awful vile technology that everyone seems far far too obsessed with.

Once this area is LED and the areas of the yards i visit are, and im no longer getting anything new for my collection, i think my interest for street lighting will seize. I already find myself not looking up at ceilings or street lights as much unless theyre a PROPPER light source. Its a sad thing to think about.

[AngryHorse]

Thats an interesting list there Dan, however the exact opposite has happened here!, I don`t EVER remember Cheshire East Council having any sort of PFI scheme, yes they would have mass changes every now and then, (the last big one I remember was all our SLI/Hs going for SON-T back in the late 80s), but then they were in use right up to this summer when they became Amperas.
I do admire Cheshire East for not wasting money in that way, we didn`t have millions spent on Cosmos, only to be removed 2 years later like you read in some threads on here!

For years NOTHING happened here, its more of a shock to me that just in the last 4 months its gone from, fitting new bowls to the Beta 5s, and the odd SON Arc and Sapphire going up, to an all out removal of EVERYTHING HID!!!!
At first it was the posh estates that got LED, then to my total surprise we got them that Saturday!, even the wooden poles along the `sleepy` Croxton Lane by our local tip now have Philips UniStreets on them!

On the LED side though, I am glad CEC have settled for Philips`s UniStreet, and not the ugly Ampera, (sorry Urbis, but it is)! , or the, equally ugly and horrible glare bomb Kiriums!, (two of the first LED units to be trialled here).
I do like the UniStreet, its smart looking, not glary and has a good spread of light.
I always knew we would get LED in the end, I just wouldn`t ever have guessed it would happen this fast, but I think our council went with the best of all of them in the end!

[Kev]

I was gutted when we lost our son and sox to cosmo, my concerns at the time have been proved right with the amount of ballast failures and the cost of lamps, even Cornwall are now looking at retro fits for the evolos which will be shit and probably inspire me to call them again and give them some shit!
I for one will keep installing HID to protect my own working future!
As for your unistreets rich, doesn't surprise me that you are getting a decent spread of light from them, Philips always do seem to give a decent lux level from good optics whatever lantern it is! Plus with the way your council like to leave the lamps until they are utterly fucked the lux levels will be well down anyway!

[AngryHorse]

Wonder if Cornwall will rip out the Cosmos for LED?, that seems to be the norm at the minute, or would that be a financial disaster?
When you say retro fits?, in what form?, I can see the next thing for us, (in the new year), will be a mass column changing program, our original concrete ones date back to the 50s and 60s, so their life can`t be far from over, the 50s Stanton ones are already having the arms snap off causing the old heavy GEC lanterns to dangle by the wire!, and the CU columns are not that far behind them at around 1960s, then there will be no SOX left!

[Dave]

Mercury as far as I'm away wasn't really used here, the only white light we really ever had was fluorescent, all of those lasting till the 70's. Our lighting mainly consisted of SOX on all side roads, first in the form of unsleeved top entry concretes and Eleco HW747's. Many of the main roads (the ring roads in the 70's when they were first lit, were lit with SLI Alpha 5's) With GEC Z8526's and Alpha 3's mixed in for good measure. The SLI lasted till the 80's, being replaced with Turtles, and then we had a massive replacement scheme, for the side roads, repacing unsleeved concretes, P107's went to and Beta 5's and MI26's, and for main roads, the now ageing Turtles replaced with SGS203's, and later ME100's. A seemingly trial installation of Beta 2's was put on the estate behind where i live, but can't have proven popular as its the only installation using Beta 2's. One road of unsleeved concretes and GR100's survived till 2012 sometime, before succumbing to a full relight of new columns and Iridums.

I've watched the lighting in the town change dramatically, the earliest memories being SGS203's being used to replace all the remaining 135w SOX, changing later to SON and (in places) cosmo Iridums, and as of late, Holophane Estilos running Cosmo lamps. A trial installation of Lumas has been installed but thankfully it hasn't progressed from there. In side roads, SON replacements sprang up as either full relighting projects, or just the odd one here and there, later changing to Cosmo, the very first full relight being round the back of where I live in 2009. The latest has been LED replacements, albeit very patchy. The odd one or two roads have had full relights, again they haven't really progressed, so hopefully it stays that way for now. Even the new build estates are getting cosmo, so for the time being things are looking up. They've also changed spec half a dozen times, so you can always tell how old they are just by what they are. Theres a road near me thats lit with an MI26, then ME70, then MI26, then V-max, then TRT Aspect, then a later XGS103, ending with a cosmo Iridum.

I think right up till now, we've really been lucky. LED isn't a very common sight at this moment in time, though I'm really not speaking too soon here, with the way everywhere's going LED, i won't be surprised if we end up with them soon. I've heard rumours that the council want the whole of the town lit with LED by 2020. I can safely say that our estate, along with many of the roads, will be dangerous when it goes LED, as the columns seem to be spaced further than normal, the already stretched SOX lanterns have small unlit gaps between them, whats it gonna be like when the disease finally hits? Whats installed now is extremely dim, its really dangerous to walk along those roads at night, as the path isn't well lit, and none of the surroundings is it.

I suppose this is one of the perks of having lighting as a hobby, as I have a lantern on standby ready to go on the front if such an event occurs.

[Patrick]

Pretty much no LED stretlighting here as of yet bar a riverside walkway that opened last summer. Also Cosmopolis was never given a chance bar a private car part install. Whilst most commercial places have jumped on the LED bandwagon at this stage, the streets remain HID, for now anyways... hope HID will at least stay until 2020.

MBF has been dissapearing since the early 90's as most housing estates got their post top MBF lanterns changed to GEC/Siemens 70W SRL SON-T's, these are also the standard install on new estates. Main roads got either A4's or Urbis ZX3's, much of these still survive. Think theres only like two old high 125W MBF fittings remaining in the city from the early 70's.

The Arcs first appeared in 2005 when the five mile ring road opened lit exclusively with hundreds of 250W SON Arcs, still there today and not that many out so they must be on mag gear. List time a mass re-lighting scheme took place was around 2008 main road through town went from 135W SOX A4's to 250W SON Arcs, nothing since though.

Still re-lamping SOX here as of last Wednesday, think they blew all their money casually replacing ones with dead lamps from 2009 to 2014 with Arc's or Iridiums. The Iridiums have also been problematic with electronic ballast failures since new. Most main roads are still 95% 135W SOX with the odd 250W SON Arc here and there. Even when they widened the road down from me during summer with new columns they put the A4 SOX back up, and ones with missing bowls are also getting fresh ones tie-wrapped back on.

So I hope they don's jump on they LED bandwagon like the rest of you guys have been unfortunate to witness, hopefully SOX and SON can stay for a while yet.

[amtrakuk]

Just read the first posting and your right. Al thought in Leeds is still mainly SON/Cosmo but it didnt take long for them to rip out the old SON and SOX to replaced with a polish pole and a pole top mounted iridium.

Went down to see mumzy in Yeovil for Christmas and was so sorry to see all the Gamma 6's have been pulled have been pulled and replaced with LED. Looking across the estate that used to be Yellow SON is largely Dark! - Yes dark as the LED replacements don't scatter the light. Such a real shame.

[AngryHorse]

My predictions were right, coming home tonight nearly EVERY concrete column in Middlewich has a little set of blue guards around them, with a hole directly at the front!
Looks like were about to loose our beta fives and the old mercury columns!

[Slyspark]

Have to see if you can save any, especially the mercs!