170BB. Lower Hastings Street, Highfields, Leicester With thanks to Dwight for informing me of these Survivors. Situated along this short residential street are four 5 m Fabrikat tubular steel columns, all with swan neck brackets, and in the case of three of them, still fitted with their 1970s' GEC Z5590-series top-entry lanterns. When new, these are likely to have run 80 Watt MBF (mercury vapour) lamps, making them Z5591/2s, but today, run 70 Watt SON (high pressure sodium) lamps instead, with conversion looking to have been in the early 2000s. The fact that these three columns have avoided further conversion to take LED lanterns is surprising, as although Lower Hastings Street forms part of the New Walk Conservation Area, the street lighting on surrounding streets is to the standard Leicester City Council specification.
The first installation is to be found on the corner of Lower Hastings Street and Tower Street.
The swan neck brackets are of typical functional design, with the final top-entry connection being a 1 inch BSP elbow, fitted with a 3/4 inch BSP reducer.
The next column is positioned to the front of the footway.
The swan neck curves are somewhat larger than they need to be for a relatively small lantern.
As is commonplace with the Z5590 lanterns, the polycarbonate bowl has discoloured from the combined ultraviolet light produced by general sunlight and the former MBF lamp.
Taking a sneaky peak inside this column reveals a Thorn ballast (with Atlas branding) and ignitor are installed. There is no capacitor, and I suspect that this is because of a lack of space in the base - when the MBF lamp was employed, the capacitor may have taken the place now occupied by the ignitor, owing to mercury lamps using their own internal ignitor. The photocell control is a Royce Thompson P42E two-part unit.
The final column to retain its Z5590 is positioned at the rear of the footway, for variety. Just visible in the background is the fourth column - this has been made side-entry by removing the 90 degree elbow, and an ASD Micro Highway Diamond LED lantern is fitted.
An older P42-type detector is fitted here.
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