12IAB. Green Lane, Rosehill, London Borough of Sutton Positioned alongside and/or opposite the current 8 m tubular steel columns and Urbis Axia LED lanterns are the 25 ft (8 m) Concrete Utilities 'Highway-X' columns and 'Highway' brackets left over from the previous lighting scheme. All are disconnected and disused, with most having had their lanterns removed. Presumably, with Green Lane being a major thoroughfare, attempting to remove these columns would cause considerable disruption, especially given that one lane of each carriageway is given over to residents' vehicle parking, though this then raises the obvious question of how the new lighting was able to be installed and connected.
A small number of columns retain lanterns - here, a GEC Z9454 for 90 Watt SOX (low pressure sodium) lamps remains attached, despite the installation having become disused. The replacement column is visible on the opposite side of the road.
The rear portion of the bowl is not attached to its hinges correctly, resulting in part of it overlapping the canopy.
Another column still topped with a Z9454 was visible in the other direction, as traffic queues to access the Rosehill Roundabout.
This Z9454 is fitted with a newer Royce Thompson Oasis 1000 photocell.
Meanwhile, the lantern had been removed from this bracket, exposing the inner steel pipe.
A large number of inspection doors were also removed from the redundant columns. All ballasts had been taken out (probably weighed in for their scrap value), but capacitors remained in some column bases. Curiously, MK outdoor light switches were incorporated into the wiring. These may have served as override switches when the columns were in use, but there is not enough of the original wiring left to confirm this.
This lantern-less column was installed alongside its successor a little further down the road.
The old column must look quite a sight when bathed in the nightly glow of the Axia.
Only the switch, the remains of a small single module isolator unit, and the capacitor clip remained in this next column base.
The fading daylight allowed the two eras of lighting to be captured in silhouette.
A Philips MA 90 (with the lamp control gear intended for mounting in the column base, once again) was still attached here.
The front bowl clip has detached.
The fitting of the new lantern looks to have seen the gear renewed too, with an ignitor installed on the backboard - the gear that ran the Z9454s would have used ballasts that ignited the lamps themselves.
More abandoned Highway-X columns were on the other side of the road.
Most of the old lanterns here were gone, including on this foreground column.
Further up the road, another redundant column could be seen alongside its replacement, though generally, most of the old columns were in the wide, tree-lined central reservation, which would reduce the effectiveness of the lanterns for much of the year; hence, why the new columns are all installed away from the trees.
Only the switch and the capacitor clip remained in place here, though the witness mark of where the ballast used to be installed is clearly visible on the backboard.
One final photograph, looking up at the headless bracket from ground level.
I was able to liberate the capacitors from two of the exposed column bases - the first, a PED 15 µF came from the first base to be pictured on this page (this rating is too low for providing the correct Power Factor Correction for a 90 Watt leak transformer); the second, a Philips, was taken from the column that supported the MA 90. The PED capacitor carries week 27 of 1983 (the 4th - 10th July) as its production date, which would seem about right for the age of the installations. The stamp on the Philips capacitor is now too faint and scratched for a date to be determined, but it is likely to be a 1990s' product.
BACK TO SURVIVORS IN GREATER LONDON
CLICK HERE TO MAKE A MONETARY DONATION
© 2002 - English Street Lights Online