29A. Birch Street, Wolverhampton, West Midlands With thanks to AgentHalogen_87 for informing me of these Survivors. Attached above the entrance and exit gates for a multi-storey car park are two Thorn Alpha 7 lanterns, intended for running a single 250 - 400 Watt MBF (mercury vapour) or SON (high pressure sodium) lamp. These particular versions of the Alpha 7s incorporate the required lamp control gear within the lantern bodies, although Thorn produced separate gear versions too. I suspect that they date from the late 1970s, and were probably fitted when the car park was new. There are also some Philips MI 50s (or SNK 70s) attached to the exterior walls of the car park structure, which are likely to be of a similar age.

The Alpha 7s are spaced closely together; the idea being to provide high levels of illumination to vehicles entering and exiting the car park.

The lanterns are wired in Mineral-Insulated cable, although as this is cut, with both lengths hanging beneath the wall brackets, there is certainty that they are no longer operational, and probably have been in this way for some years.

Both lanterns appear undamaged, and lamps still appear to be visible inside the glass refractor bowls.

The cable for the foreground lantern appears to pass behind the bracket wall plate, and out underneath.

In reality, however, it passes to the side of both brackets, and enters the lantern through the side of the canopy, as shown here on the other lantern.

Returning to the first lantern, this unorthodox cabling method becomes more obvious when the lantern is viewed from above.

One of the MI 50s is around the corner from the car park entrance.

The flat door from a concrete column has been used as a replacement for the original door to the wall box. As can be seen, it is slightly too short to cover the aperture completely.

A Zodion photocell is fitted in the MI 50's NEMA socket.

The underside of the bowl shows slight discolouration from the heat build-up.

Unusually, a tubular lamp is fitted, suggesting that an external ignitor is employed in the lamp control gear circuitry, as the MI 50 normally ran internal-ignitor lamps, which are most often seen as elliptical types. The gear could be housed in the wall box.

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