Thorn 8W Mini-Pack with Atlas Tropical Daylight 8W T5 tube

recently I was fortunate enough to win a large lot of lamps off ebay (some of which can be seen in the background!)

in the lot lamps was 2 NOS Fixtures a 12V Atlas Nomad (which im quite pleased about I have wanted one of those for a while! especially in 12V)

and a Standard Mains voltage Thorn Minipack, also a fixture I have wanted for a while, but what I was not expecting was the fact the Mini-pack came with an Atlas Tropical daylight 8W T5 tube and is marked for Export

Tropical Daylight is your standard halophosphate Daylight 765, but it was only ever sold in the UK in a 15W T8 size for X-Ray viewing boxes, Our colour "Daylight" known as British Daylight was 4300K what you would call cool-white today, otherwise our high colour temperature tubes where generally of the "deluxe" high CRI kind known as Colour matching or Northlight (Colour 55)

now I knew that British lamp makers did sell Tropical daylight tubes in other sizes for export to other countries where there was more of a demand for them, but this is the first time I have seen an 8W Tropical daylight tube! (and thats probably why the export label, but how it remained in the UK im not sure!)

it would be interesting to know the date of the tube, the fixture is wired in Harmonised brown and blue colours (with a note in the instructions warning about the transition) so that may help date things, I switched the standard starter out for an EFS120 electronic starter as I did not want such an unusual tube instant starting and sputtering on me! (for whatever reason Thorn always included a 155/400 30/40W Starter in their Mini packs which is entirely unsuitable for an 8W tube)

its now swirling away after being lit for the first time in who knows how long! as Thorn tubes often do (quite a quick swirl, always reminds me of a guitar riff when tubes swirl quickly like this LOL)

so its currently enjoying a nice long run to burn off any impurities and stabilise :)