69CF. Stone Street, Eve Hill, Dixons Green, Dudley, West Midlands With thanks to Dwight for informing me of these Survivors. Located along this street within Dudley Town Centre are five wall-mounted GEC Z8426 lanterns, dating from the 1960s, and when new, would have run a 250 - 400 Watt MBF (mercury vapour) lamp each. Today, however, all now run SON (high pressure sodium) lamps of one of these two wattages instead, using a mixture of tubular and elliptical lamps. As the lanterns were optimised for the coated elliptical MBF lamps, the use of tubular lamps would create a more glary distribution.

The first Z8426 was to be found a short distance down Stone Street, near the High Street.

This example's bowl is missing, and has been since (at least) June 2009. Its absence would make the tubular lamp especially dazzling to look at after nightfall.

The lamp control gear is housed in an enclosure made by AC Ford - given that the company was based in Dudley, the use of a local supplier is encouraging.

Tracing the Mineral-Insulated cable feeding the gear enclosure back along the wall takes us to this rather sorry-looking cast iron fuse box (possibly, a Revo design). As well as having the initial indignity of being installed upside down, the box now sports a damaged door that isn't even secured in any meaningful way. Where the metal is broken, an asbestos rope seal is visible.

On the opposite side of the road, a dayburning Z8426 was to be seen.

As can be seen, an elliptical lamp is used here.

Keeping to the same side of the road, the next example to be pictured is the first one to be intact and not to be obviously faulty.

Unlike the later Z8526, the Z8426 incorporates an over-canopy casting, to which the main lantern body attaches. Access into the lantern is gained by undoing a rear clip, allowing the whole canopy and bowl to swing forwards as one complete unit...though in the case of the first example on this road, this process is unnecessary!

A trait shared with the (earlier) Z8526s is the use of a white diffusion spot painted on the section of bowl that falls directly below the lamp. Later versions saw this method replaced with prismatic refractors moulded into the plastic.

Crossing over to the other side of the road once again, this Z8426 is installed at a relatively low mounting height, owing to the limited height of the building to which it is attached. I assume that the Lighting Engineer at the time when this scheme was installed chose (or was told) to avoid installing columns along the Town Centre thoroughfare to reduce the amount of street clutter - the disadvantage to this being the varying heights of the structures that would be used to support the lighting along here.

The bowls are Perspex, and have become slightly translucent through age.

The height was better for the final installation, though this lantern was dayburning too. A Telensa Telecell was positioned alongside the AC Ford box here; this was (either) faulty, or had lost its wireless connection to the base station that would, otherwise, have sent a signal to it to switch the lantern on and off as required.

Although the central apex of this building provides a symmetrical position for the bracket, attaching the bracket to the decorative fascia must have been quite challenging.

A tubular lamp is also employed here, and the 50 Hz frequency from the ballast caused my camera to pick up a strong flicker, which led to it struggling to focus on the lantern initially.

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