Local Philips MA 50s (SRS 201s)

The MA 50 is very common in this area and can be seen in both integrally and remotely-geared variants. Gear-in-head examples were still being installed into the early 2000s, although Thorn Alpha 4s were more popular in Derby itself.

This 1970s' remotely-geared example can be seen attached to a somewhat rusty 10 m steel column on the A511 Burton Road in Woodville.

These early variants can be recognised by the short aluminium shoe between the bracket and the canopy.

The lantern's GRP canopy is adorned with considerable moss growth, but then again, it would have seen around 40 years' service at the time of photographing, in April 2015.

This gear-in-head-in-lantern MA 50 located on a roundabout in Hilton was installed in 1996/7.

A damaged gear-in-head example could be seen on the A51 Hopwas Hill in Lichfield, Staffordshire, owing to a vehicle having collided with its column.

The jolt has resulted in the bowl and lamp having detached from the lantern. Surprisingly, another MA 50 was fitted to the replacement column, although that was positioned (rather wisely) at the back of the pavement.

Time was almost up for the last two geared MA 50s in Findern in April 2022. By then, only the foreground lantern, and the one two columns to the left remained; the rest having been replaced with Thorn Isaro Pro-S 65 Watt LED lanterns. The only reason that these lanterns had not been changed was that their Stanton 1810 concrete columns required replacement.

The clean lantern interior demonstrated the effectiveness of the lantern's sealing when the bowl was in place.

While the MA 50s seen above were hanging on borrowed time, amazingly, a new (seemingly, old stock) MA 50 with the lamp control gear housed in a separate base section appeared at the end of the A38 northbound exit slip road at the A610 junction in Lower Hartshay, near Ripley, in June 2022, complete with a new 10 m column - the installation serving as a replacement for a column that had been knocked down some time earlier.

The shiny lantern complemented the (equally-shiny) unpainted galvanised column - with this style of MA 50 being used, a sight that may not have been seen in the last 30+ years is recreated.

Only the modern SELC / Westire 8480 photocell proves that this I don't have ability to travel back to the 1980s, though as the 841 photocell resembled this shape for many years from the 1990s onwards, maybe I have travelled back a slightly shorter amount of time!

Oddly, only weeks after this lantern was installed, it disappeared, and a WRTL Arc was installed post-top to the column instead.