Yarmouth Southown Station Lights

[AlanMoore]

The wiring looks pretty basic. The right hand connection has 4 wires so presumedly the two lamps were run in parallel. I checked my records and this was in situ at Darsham until 1976. Interestingly it has the same Prov Patent Number as Mathews Yarmouth South Town lamp. 7545-47 so it appears to be quite a common design. Did anyone find out if they date from LNER days? Alan

[NickB]

Hi all,

Ok, these type of lamps are I suspect LNER vintage, I have a photo of Stratford taken in 1950, (with a 306 Shenfield unit) and one is hanging from the platform canopy, they were common along the GE (to ingatestone at least), and as did some stations on the GN, the West Anglia route did not have them.
I have the battered remains of one, (from seven kings) it’s embossed “NORAL” inside, which with some investigation was something to do with the Northern Aluminium company, (the ends are aluminium) alas no dates.

Alan Moore, R Pike, could you tell me the length of the lamp? I have had another end cast for my lamp, but I do not know how long it should be? So I could at least get my one restored, Any help would be very appreciated.

Kind regards,
Nick

[StevieG]

In case of slight interest for help in dating, in 1979 the canopy and building-mounted lights on the by-then, not-in-passenger-use former Platforms 1 / 2 island (now back in use with those numbers), were of what appeared to be the same type light units (unless technically different in some subtle way) as those seen above from Yarmouth South Town and Darsham.
Those at FP were by that time rather old and neglected but were still working (although a few were a bit reluctant at times), whereas the rest of the platforms had been refitted with rather more modern replacement units several years earlier .
Though quite reasonably possible as an LNER design, they must have proliferated through the 1950s, and probably remained numerous through the British Railways period, but by British Rail times better units must have been available.

[Andy W]

IIRC from my ODM inventory taking days, the lights were known to us as "Class B" and the design dates from the late LNER period and they were fitted on ER stations up to the late 1950's. "Class A" were fully enclosed cold cathode fluorescent fittings, a different design dating from the same era and mounted on concrete columns. Both should carry the station name on the diffuser.

As Stevie G stated, the last use of these on the KX area were at Finsbury Park on the former platform 1/2 which had to remain illuminated as a train crew change over point. There was no money for a new works renewal of the lighting so they remained for quite a time. We used to keep a supply of spares, primarily in the main ODM stores at Wellers Court but also, up to it's closure in 1980, in the local ODM bunk at Wells Terrace - a real hole in the wall by the bus station.

Although we had no "Class A" fittings left by that time (early 80's), we did have some later design BR cold cathode fittings on the middle platform at Hadley Wood. They got harder to repair as the years passed by and towards the end we were using spare diffusers we had previously recovered from other stations. Although we peeled the old letters off those diffusers, when they got dirty the old station names used to appear again and that caused a fair bit of confusion! We eventually got the money to replace them with our standard steel Abacus raise and lower columns with more modern fluorescent fittings.

If you want to sample ER platform lighting technology of the 1950's, Sheringham is the place to go and see it.