2600 Photographs

This lantern came from a car park at Derby's Markeaton Park, and I received it on Thursday, 3rd March 2005. It was removed because the car park was to be re-lit with white light - in the form of 125 Watt mercury lamps in Thorn Beta 79s. As the lantern's canopy is of GRP construction, it was beginning to shed its fibres, which was probably why the lanterns were replaced, rather than have the lamps changed to metal halide, or similar. These lanterns were never particularly common in the Derby area; really, their only use was confined to parks and recreation grounds around the City. A quick hop over the border to Staffordshire, however, and the situation is very different - there are plenty of 2600s in use all over that County! The successor to the 2600, the Delta, did see more use around Derbyshire, however.

This isn't the 2600 that went into my Collection, but it does show how my 2600 would have looked when in use. This example is in the car park from which my Disano Sella 1 lantern came. The lanterns were all mounted post-top in both car parks, but side-entry versions are available.

The bowl has a number of different refractor patterns moulded into it to maximise light output. I was surprised that the post-top adaptor was hexagonal but this does mean that different column diameters could fit the one adaptor and be tightened.

As with the XGS 103, the 2600 can accommodate a variety of lamps and gear, and so the gear tray is riddled with screw holes for the positioning of all types of gear.

Once opened, the bowl stays attached to one side of the lantern for easy reinstatement after work has been carried out. It is very clean internally due to the lantern's IP65 rating - although there are a few spiders inside as the 1 mm² flexible cable that was used to power the lantern was not thick enough for the internal sealing gland to tighten on it and so such creatures managed to creep in.

The gear tray is also hinged. The ignitor is dated as being from June 1998 and the canopy is date-stamped to being from January 1998. I therefore estimate that the lantern was probably installed in late 1998 to early 1999. The tapping on the ballast can be altered, in order to allow for a 50 Watt lamp to be fitted, rather than a 70 Watt lamp, as is the current arrangement.

I decided then to get to work on the lantern straight away, and so everything was removed from it. This was a much easier task than I had expected - it only took a few minutes to strip the lantern down into individual pieces. The object above the post top adaptor is the side entry plug - this pushes into place on the bracket entry.

I cleaned the various pieces but the black marks on the canopy didn't really disappear, so I repainted it before rewiring and powering the lantern up. The NEMA socket was wired out at the same time.

After a bit of a sputtery warm-up, the arc stabilised and quickly went the familiar colour of a SON lamp.

The working lamp can be glimpsed through one of the corners of the bowl. These are the only sections where the lamp can be seen, when the bowl is in place, owing to the refractors.

This was an attempt to convey the light distribution beneath the bowl, but the close proximity reduced obviousness of the beam distribution.

The next two pictures show one of the Beta 79s that replaced the 2600s in the car park.

Test Voltage (V)	Current being drawn at full power (A)	Measured wattage (W)	Apparent Power (VA)	Frequency (Hz)	Power Factor	True Power (W)	Difference to rated wattage	Percentage Difference
239.2	0.38	84	91	49.9	0.91	82.72	12.72	18%