14|03|10
Here's my Thorn Beta 8 lantern and a medium Lucy bracket.

13|03|10
Before continuing with the Thorn catalogue, I thought I'd publish some more pictures of items in my collection. Today it's the extremely rare Z8256 and a medium sized Lucy bracket.

And here's some pictures which really should've remained unpublished.

12|03|10
... and the Beta 9 completes the Group B range.

11|03|10
... the Beta 8...

10|03|10
... the Beta 7...

09|03|10
... the Beta 6...

08|03|10
... the popular Beta 5...

07|03|10
... and with the Beta 2 and Beta 3 both discontinued, the next lantern is the Beta 4...

06|03|10
The side road lanterns begin with the Beta 1...

05|03|10
... and the main road range wraps up with the Alpha 10.

04|03|10
... and there was no Alpha 8 in 1972 so we skip onto the Alpha 9 ...

03|03|10
... the Alpha 7 ...

02|03|10
... the Alpha 6 ...

01|03|10
... and there was no Alpha 4 in 1972 so we skip onto the Alpha 5 ...

28|02|10
... and the Alpha 3 ...

27|02|10
... and the Alpha 2 ...

26|02|10
And we're off with the Alpha 1 ...

25|02|10
Considering the complexity of Thorn's numbering system, it's a miracle any lighting engineers managed to order a complete lantern. Collectors don't use this system either and switch to the less precise descriptive language i.e. "deep bowl Alpha 3".

24|02|10
And the street lighting section of the Highway Reference Book concludes with a sample of Sugg's Lanterns.

23|02|10
The popular (well it was at the time) Maxilla lanterns from Parkinson are next covered in the Highway Reference Book.

22|02|10
The gas section of the Highway Reference Book now moves onto Keith Blackman Ltd.

21|02|10
The gas section of the Highway Reference Book now samples some of the range by William Edgar & Son Ltd.

20|02|10
A new section brings all the previously published pages from the Highway Reference Book together. There's also an introduction to gas lighting but it appears incomplete so I'll chase up the rest of the article. The underlying principles outlined for the design of gas lanterns are also the same for the electric ones.

19|02|10
Lee Gale is back and has been taking pictures of ancient concrete columns found around North London.

18|02|10
The electrical section of the Highway Reference Book concludes with a section on the Siemens range of Wilton-Sieray Fluorescent lanterns.




17|02|10
A selection of previously unpublished REVO Lanterns are next featured in the Highway Reference Book.

16|02|10
Highway Reference Book moves onto the Metropolitan Vickers lanterns and helps flesh out their range. (And note how many of their lanterns were actually made by ELECO).

15|02|10
The GEC and Holophane entries in the Highway Reference Book have been published before, but they've now been reformatted and tidied up. The Lucy section is new.

14|02|10
The Highway Reference Book moves onto the ELECO range. This fills in many of the existing gaps, including the Golden Ray Mark I and Golden Ray Mark II lanterns, and completes the three different versions of the Welwyn. Other lanterns appear for the first time.

13|02|10
The Highway Reference Book is next to be tackled. Dating from 1951, it includes pictures and descriptions of street lighting equipment from many of the major manufacturers. The first page includes examples from BTH.

12|02|10
And the Phosco catalogue concludes with the Wall-Mounted Gear Box And Bracket, Installation Photographs and the back cover.

11|02|10
The Phosco P212 is the first high mast lantern featured on this website.

10|02|10
The last "standard" street light in the Phosco catalogue is the P211 Cut Off.

09|02|10
The various different versions of the P140 have now been added.

08|02|10
The P142 ushers in a small range of post top fluorescent lanterns.

I believe the mystery of the P141/mod has also been solved. Phosco redesigned many of their original enclosed sodium lanterns (the P120 - P128) at some point in the 1950s with smaller bowls, smaller canopies and with Oddie keys repositioned the side of the bowls instead of housed in a protrubing lip. This new range was called the P152 - P157.

The P141 was also similarly redesigned, now appearing as the P141/mod.

07|02|10
Unfortunately there isn't much information about the P141/mod: it's a modification of the P141 but there isn't any explaination for the changes nor where this lantern would be used.

06|02|10
The Phosware catalogue starts the fluorescent range with the P141.

05|02|10
Unfortunatley, whoever scanned the Phosware catalogue omitted pages 18 and 19, so the P.154/5 and P.156/7 SCO are missing from this record.

The P160/1 SCO(S) lanterns have added an element of confusion to the Phosco catalogue. The lantern pictured (a 150W SOX lantern) is strikingly different from the previous version, illustrated in a different catalogue from almost ten years previously (see below). Hopefully this difference will be explained in time.

04|02|10
More information has been added about the P152 Sodium Lantern.

03|02|10
The huge P169 Mushroom lantern merits only a profile picture and installation shot in the Phosco catalogue.

02|02|10
And the tiny P177 lantern makes its debut on this website.

01|02|10
We return to the Phosco catalogue with the P148 and P149 lanterns.

31|01|10
The Thorn Beta 2 in my collection has now been documented.

30|01|10
And the Phosware catalogue continues with the P104 and P132 lanterns.

29|01|10
The P100 and P101 lanterns are the next two lanterns briefly described in the Phosware booklet.

28|01|10
The next set of adverts from Public Lighting No 109 (June 1960) have now been published.

27|01|10
The P109/10 Georgian lantern is the second of two decorative lanterns from the Phosware range.

26|01|10
The next set of adverts from Public Lighting No 109 (June 1960) have now been published.

25|01|10
Skipping ahead slightly, the Phosco P158 lantern is next to be published.

24|01|10
The P111 Promenade lantern is the first of two decorative lanterns from the Phosware range.

23|01|10
The next set of adverts from Public Lighting No 109 (June 1960) have now been published.

22|01|10
The next few pages of the Phosco catalogue are concerned with various post top lanterns.

21|01|10
I've started uploading the first set of adverts from Public Lighting No 109 (June 1960).

20|01|10
And here's the Phosco P170/1 Post Top.

19|01|10
Dating from the late 1950s, this Siemens Ediswan Orson lanterns is one of the rarest lanterns in the collection.

18|01|10
The next Phosco lantern is the P172 Post Top. (Although this lantern has already featured on the website, albeit it as the Philips MU4).

17|01|10
Keeping with the Phosco theme, here's the Phosco P225 in my collection.

16|01|10
As my knowledge of Phosware lanterns was shown to be lacking, I've decided to concentrate next on a Phosware booklet from 1968.

And, it's amazing how many classic lanterns have yet to be documented on this website. So, we kick off with the classic, and C.o.I.D. winner, P178 Post Top.

15|01|10
A farily modern lantern, and the last low pressure sodium lantern designed by the GEC, is next to be photographed: the Whitecroft SRL35A.

14|01|10
And the final lantern for this range of GEC catalogues is the GEC Z8455 lantern.

13|01|10
I've clarified the various models and options of the Phosco P153 on the Phosco P153 (First Version) and Phosco P153 (Third Version) pages.

12|01|10
The penultimate GEC post-top lantern from this range: GEC Z8454 lantern.

11|01|10
My Phosco P153 posted on the 7th has caused some comment. It seems there were more variants of this lantern than I was aware of. (Many thanks to Simon Brown for pictures of another version).

So, with his information, I've written about the Phosco P153 (First Version) lantern in my collection. Simon Brown has the second version and I documented the third a couple of days ago.

The write-up for the third version will be modified to incorporate these changes in the next couple of days.

10|01|10
We're back to standard street lighting lanterns with the GEC Z8451 lantern.

09|01|10
This lantern was the first I obtained way back in the late 1980s. Rescued from an old derelict factory it's a Philips SXK 55 lantern.

08|01|10
And here's the third and final of GEC's railway lanterns: the GEC Z8290 Under Canopy lantern.

07|01|10
Next from the collection is the third version of the Phosco P153 lantern.

06|01|10
Here's the second of the GEC's railway lanterns: the GEC Z8288 Railway Platform lantern.

05|01|10
My early Thorn Beta 5 is the next lantern in the collection to be fully documented.

04|01|10
This is another lantern from the GEC Clearspace range which isn't directly concerned with street lighting but merits inclusion here: the GEC Z8285 Railway Platform lantern.

03|01|10
My ELECO GR525 is the next lantern in the collection to be fully documented.

02|01|10
Unfortunately, some of the pages for the GEC Z5720 & Z5725 Limpet lanterns is missing so the documentation of this lantern is incomplete. However, there is enough there to determine that this bulkhead lantern took either two GLS bulbs or a single mercury bulb.

01|01|10
The next few lanterns from the Clearspace range are rather specialised. In fact, it could be argued that they're not street lighting at all, but specialised area lighting. However, the GEC included them in their street lighting division (the 'Z' section) so I'll include them here. The first is a lantern designed specifically for Sub-Station lighting, the GEC Z5130 lantern.

The DAVIS Starline GR70 is the next lantern in my collection to be cleaned up and photographed.