Local Abacus AM 490s
Examples of the AM 490 could be seen on Derby's Market Place, following the area's re-paving in 1994. Approximately 15 years later, these installations were removed in favour of Philips Urbanscene modular lanterns.
The majority of AM 490s were attached to twin-arm brackets fitted to 8 m tubular steel columns. Other examples, not pictured here, were attached to the structure of the Assembly Rooms building by means of wall brackets. Notice that by the time that these pictures were taken, in July 2006, the blue paint finish applied to the columns was somewhat scratched, owing to the proximity of adjacent tree branches. The installations were repainted (in gloss black) shortly afterwards, although given that they were replaced only around three years later, this move seems somewhat premature.
A couple of nearby examples were dayburning at the time of photographing - the fact that both lanterns were operating in daylight suggests that only one of the lanterns was fitted with a photocell control, with the other being wired as a slave unit. This does allow for the internal construction of the lanterns to be revealed, however - the central vertically-positioned lamp and surrounding facetted optic later being employed by the successor to the AM 490 - the Orion.
