Philips JPS 573 (SGS 203)

Lantern acquired in March 2025.

This lantern was converted to 125 Watt MBF (mercury vapour) by Jeremy, prior to its installation on a short access road leading to a small car park off Stratford Road in Chaddesden in December 2007; the thinking at the time being that this would offer whiter light, along with an expected long period between lamp changes. With Derby's Street Lighting PFI creating a uniform street lighting appearance across the City, just about all of Jeremy's 'special' lanterns were lost. This one, however, survived, as although it would be maintained as part of the PFI, its ownership falls under the separate Derby Homes company, making it exempt from the requirements of the PFI. Noticing that it wasn't lit in February 2025, I contacted Balfour Beatty Power Networks (the PFI's contractor), and asked whether it might be permitted to be retired into my collection, explaining its history, and why it was important. They then arranged for exactly this to happen, for which I am very grateful - a second-hand 60 Watt CPO-TW Iridium was used as its replacement. Thus, this last known piece of Jeremy's involvement with Derby's Street Lighting Department is preserved. Philips did produce official MBF versions of this lantern; these were branded as the HGS 203, however. The open sections of the platforms on Derby railway station were lit with 1990s' HGS 203s (as this video shows) until refurbishment work in the mid-2000s saw them removed.

The lantern is pictured on a dreary day in December 2007, not long after it was installed.

Eighteen years of service later, and the lantern looks a little more weathered.

The photocell is a Royce Thompson Monostar 1000. While these were Derby's preferred photocells in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this example is a later type, dating from 2009, and replaces the original photocell used. Although the GRP canopy is grubby and flaky, it isn't too bad, considering the length of time that the lantern spent outdoors.

The use of the MBF lamp has exacerbated the speed at which the polycarbonate bowl has yellowed. While a lamp is still visible within the optic area, this is actually not a 125 Watt MBF lamp at all, but a 70 Watt elliptical high pressure sodium (SON-E) lamp with an internal ignitor, owing to mercury lamps not requiring an external ignitor, and the original SON one being removed as part of the original conversion. Naturally, I will be changing this 'wrong' lamp back to the 'correct' one!

The lantern interior is clean, and free of any major dirt accumulations.

Surprisingly, the lamp also appears to have affected the reflector, with the normally polished aluminium finish looking rather dull here.

The lantern was assembled at the UK Philips factory in Hamilton, Scotland, in December 2002. Rather ironically, this makes it the newest of my SGS 203s, despite being wired to run one of the oldest discharge lamp types. As can be seen, it was built as a 50 Watt SON version.

As would be expected, a 125 Watt MBF ballast is installed on the gear tray in place of the original 50 Watt SON one; however, the factory-fitted 8 µF capacitor, produced during Week 11 of 2002 (the 11th - 17th March), was re-used.

The canopy was removed from the chassis for cleaning and painting. The chassis itself was also cleaned.

Rather than re-use the discoloured bowl, I decided to use the flat glass cover from another SGS 203, for variety.

As with my 150 Watt SON version, the removed canopy was jet washed to remove any light dirt and loose fibres, before being painted a coat of grey primer, followed by three coats of Rust-oleum Mode Cream Ultra High Gloss paint.

The flat glass cover was slid into the chassis, and a new, old-stock Philips HPL-N (MBF) lamp inserted into the lampholder.

The slightly oxidised parts of the chassis' underside wasn't severe enough to warrant painting this too.

With the canopy re-added to the chassis, the lantern was affixed to a waiting Pudsey Diamond 1004 'Universal' wall bracket.

Surprisingly, despite the lamp being unused, when powered up initially, it didn't display the vivid mauve glow that new MBF lamps emit ordinarily, prior to warming up to full brightness. This was more pronounced on subsequent operations, however.

Full output only took a few minutes to reach, however.

Although the reflector fitted is (understandably) optimised for SON-T lamps, and genuine HGS 203s employed a slightly different type of reflector, the lamp's output doesn't appear especially glary.

Testing with my energy monitoring device revealed the following results:

Mazda (Philips) 'Modena' SGP 682 |

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