Low pressure sox lighting

[Ladder23]

I'm sure I've worded it right but please correct me if not!

I come across a Facebook page recently in relation to low sodium sox lighting across the UK, it was by total surprise. Its not something I have ever searched for til then, but I looked and it really bought me back to my younger years as a child. Being outside til dark and having a constant orange glow across the streets, which I remember coming through the house at night, something which is now almost completely gone with the replacement of LED fixtures and modern lighting assets, everything now being very very bright, and white!

I do a lot of driving at night (as a rail worker) and have since been keeping an eye out for any estates or lanes along my route to see if any remain and I've actually come across none, though there is one single lamppost I am aware of in a local village with a old low sodium fixture still in situ and working, though all the others around it have been replaced.

It has made me wonder, when was the big push for lighting upgrades accross England? Was it a sudden push for all councils to get this done around the same time or has it just been a slow upgrade which has happened without me realising?

Any info or discussions would be welcome, even story's or photos!

 

[Crossover]

There are definitely pockets around - I came across some on my way home from Oxenhope station a few weeks ago (and one of the nearby side roads only lost theirs a few days after I passed!)

Like you, I remember when they were commonplace

 

[ABB125]

I imagine this topic has been discussed at length somewhere on SABRE: https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=1

When I started at university (over 4 years now!) there was one random street which still has sodium lamps (not sure if they were low or high pressure, but definitely orangey-yellow), but I've not been that way for a while so couldn't say if they're still the same. Maybe I'll have a look if I get around to it!

 

[edwin_m]

it really bought me back to my younger years as a child.

At the age of about three, if taken for a walk at the "wrong" time I apparently had to wait until each and every lamp had gone through its initial pink to orange.

I don't know for sure, but I feel pretty certain the answer is that LEDs are so much more energy-efficient (and probably also longer life) that replacing older fittings en masse makes financial sense. I believe there companies would finance the change out of the savings, so councils didn't have to find the capital. Round here there were some high pressure sodium luminaires fitted that were replaced with LEDs after only five years or so. I believe a typical LED fitting is around 100 watts, so if the sodium fitting is significantly less efficient you can see how the savings would stack up considering how many lamps there are.

 

[jon0844]

We have a number of roads on a 'new' build estate (now around 22 years since built) that are still not adopted as they're not up to the required standard, and they have the original orange sodium lighting. Many lights don't work and it can take weeks or months to get the developer to fix them, whereas the adopted roads all have LED lighting that works fine*.

* There were two that stopped working after being hit by vehicles, but that's not quite the same thing!

 

[John Webb]

One reason for the fairly rapid swing to LED streetlights is for maintenance reasons. Firstly it eliminates the expensive replacement and handling of bulbs containing sodium, secondly the LEDs have a much longer life, so access is needed less often.
It is also possible to 'dim' LED fittings (or even turn them off) during the early hours of the morning when roads are less used.
My local church has a lamppost in the churchyard near its entrance as we have no highways lighting in the short road leading to the church. It was fitted with a 55W SOX low pressure lamp, but was converted about 5 years ago to a 15W LED general purpose lighting bulb by removing the SOX lamp control gear. We've just replaced that bulb for the first time at less than a fifth the cost of a SOX lamp. It's not quite as bright, but the white light is much better for seeing one's way.

 

[swt_passenger]

I imagine this topic has been discussed at length somewhere on SABRE: https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=1

When I started at university (over 4 years now!) there was one random street which still has sodium lamps (not sure if they were low or high pressure, but definitely orangey-yellow), but I've not been that way for a while so couldn't say if they're still the same. Maybe I'll have a look if I get around to it!

Here’s a direct link to the Sabre SOX discussion. Been going since 2017!:

SOX street lights, which areas still have them? - SABRE

 

[Ladder23]

Here’s a direct link to the Sabre SOX discussion. Been going since 2017!:

SOX street lights, which areas still have them? - SABRE

Fantastic thread thanks for this, I'll give this a read

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Nov 2024 ==

At the age of about three, if taken for a walk at the "wrong" time I apparently had to wait until each and every lamp had gone through its initial pink to orange.

I don't know for sure, but I feel pretty certain the answer is that LEDs are so much more energy-efficient (and probably also longer life) that replacing older fittings en masse makes financial sense. I believe there companies would finance the change out of the savings, so councils didn't have to find the capital. Round here there were some high pressure sodium luminaires fitted that were replaced with LEDs after only five years or so. I believe a typical LED fitting is around 100 watts, so if the sodium fitting is significantly less efficient you can see how the savings would stack up considering how many lamps there are.

Yep, correct the savings are immense! You can see why it's all been changed, its just funny how such a nationwide project to upgrade them all has been done without even realising!

 

[Ediswan]

LEDs are more efficient than SOX. Say 50-100%. By itself, worth having. @John Webb has listed some other advantages. Here are a few more:

The smaller LED luminaires are cheaper to make. Unlike SOX, LED is close to a 'point source', which allows for much better control over where the light falls. That in turn allows lower output lamps to be used for the same design lighting levels.

The only people I know in favour of SOX are astronomers.

Curiously, the current Scottish Power green energy 'Bumper Car' TV advert finishes with a street light that looks very SOX.

Image is of a bumper car on a residential street, wiith an orange street light ahead.

 

[3141]

Fantastic thread thanks for this, I'll give this a read

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Nov 2024 ==


Yep, correct the savings are immense! You can see why it's all been changed, its just funny how such a nationwide project to upgrade them all has been done without even realising!

Perhaps we didn't realise it was nationwide because it was done by local authorities. Hampshire did it as a PPP (Public/Private Partnership) scheme round about 2010. Much lower fuel consumption and maintenance costs as you and others have said.

But I'm interested in the fact that the white lighting provided by LEDs is promoted as an improvement, because I remember that in the 1950s, when sodium lighting replaced mercury lighting or more basic systems, the yellow glow was stated to be safer than the lighting it replaced.

 

[The exile]

Perhaps we didn't realise it was nationwide because it was done by local authorities. Hampshire did it as a PPP (Public/Private Partnership) scheme round about 2010. Much lower fuel consumption and maintenance costs as you and others have said.

But I'm interested in the fact that the white lighting provided by LEDs is promoted as an improvement, because I remember that in the 1950s, when sodium lighting replaced mercury lighting or more basic systems, the yellow glow was stated to be safer than the lighting it replaced.

Think the issue then was that the white light caused “pools” of light with dark patches in between - not good for drivers’ vision and very good for those up to no good. The SOX light was more diffuse.

 

[route101]

I actually prefer driving when its Sodium, darker and harder to spot things on the road when its LED.

Not much sodium around now. Glasgow still has some but its disappearing fast. Edinburgh not seen any for years now. Liverpool appears to have some too.

 

[edwin_m]

I actually prefer driving when its Sodium, darker and harder to spot things on the road when its LED.

It would be easy enough to make LED luminaires of a size and colour equivalent to sodium lamps, and they would probably be a bit cheaper to build and operate as they could use the native emission from the semiconductor instead of needing a phosphor. The fact nobody does so (or if they do they don't sell very many!) suggests there is no demand.

LED also has the advantage of being white, so objects of different colours are more distinguishable.

 

[DelW]

Surrey let a 25 year PFI contract for street lighting in 2009, starting from early 2010. The contractor (Skanska / Laing) inherited a wide variety of equipment including sodium lamps, and quickly replaced the great majority of it with a small number of standard designs. Most of these used short fluorescent tubes.

Innovate, Inspire, Impact | Skanska in the UK

Partner with us for sustainable construction projects across the UK. Discover our latest news and insights. Build your vision with our expert team today!

www.skanska.co.uk

(Press release about the contract)

The client for the project is Surrey County Council. Under the contract, the Skanska Laing Consortium will be responsible for the design, build, finance and operation of the stock of lighting columns across the Surrey County for a period of 25 years starting in March 2010. The design, installation and ongoing operations will be carried out by Skanska.

In around 2020 they began a programme to replace the heads with new LED fittings.

 

[Ladder23]

Surrey let a 25 year PFI contract for street lighting in 2009, starting from early 2010. The contractor (Skanska / Laing) inherited a wide variety of equipment including sodium lamps, and quickly replaced the great majority of it with a small number of standard designs. Most of these used short fluorescent tubes.

Innovate, Inspire, Impact | Skanska in the UK

Partner with us for sustainable construction projects across the UK. Discover our latest news and insights. Build your vision with our expert team today!

www.skanska.co.uk

(Press release about the contract)


In around 2020 they began a programme to replace the heads with new LED fittings ut.

I did wonder if it was head replacements or whole units, because looking around where I am they appear old with modern “heads”, so makes sense!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Nov 2024 ==

I’m not a fan of the bright white the led gives, i love the sodium but that’s just a nostalgia thing.

sodium definitely plays tricks with your eyes though, grass appears brown for example!

 

[edwin_m]

sodium definitely plays tricks with your eyes though, grass appears brown for example!

Sodium light (certainly low pressure) is essentially monochromatic. Anything yellow or white will appear yellow but any other colour will be somewhere between yellow and black.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Surrey let a 25 year PFI contract for street lighting in 2009, starting from early 2010. The contractor (Skanska / Laing) inherited a wide variety of equipment including sodium lamps, and quickly replaced the great majority of it with a small number of standard designs. Most of these used short fluorescent tubes.

That lot very quickly fitted a sideways shield on one in our road that was shining straight at our upstairs windows from a corner location; for some funny reason they seemed to prefer fitting the shield to having the pants sued off them...

 

[ABB125]

Surrey let a 25 year PFI contract for street lighting in 2009, starting from early 2010. The contractor (Skanska / Laing) inherited a wide variety of equipment including sodium lamps, and quickly replaced the great majority of it with a small number of standard designs. Most of these used short fluorescent tubes.

Innovate, Inspire, Impact | Skanska in the UK

Partner with us for sustainable construction projects across the UK. Discover our latest news and insights. Build your vision with our expert team today!

www.skanska.co.uk

(Press release about the contract)


In around 2020 they began a programme to replace the heads with new LED fittings.

I think I've seen fluorescent tube street lamps somewhere abroad, but cannot remember where. It seems to me to be a bit of an odd choice though - unless you can get "special" tubes, standard T5/T8 tubes aren't especially bright, particularly short ones...

 

[najaB]

I think I've seen fluorescent tube street lamps somewhere abroad, but cannot remember where. It seems to me to be a bit of an odd choice though - unless you can get "special" tubes, standard T5/T8 tubes aren't especially bright, particularly short ones...

Yes, they definitely exist(ed). Growing up in Barbados they were often used on side streets and close to houses since they provided white light, with the sodium vapour lamps on main roads. I'm fairly sure they've all been replaced now as they were very sharp about replacing everything with LED lamps.

 

[John Webb]

Re fluorescent tubes, the former London Borough of Woolwich, where I grew up, fitted numerous streets with fittings using these on both main roads and side roads from the mid-1950s onward. Main roads used, I think, three 4ft tubes, the sideroads two 2ft tubes. I've not been back for many years and assume from 'Streetview' they've all been changed for LED fittings. One drawback was that in very cold weather the tubes took time to warm up or those near the end of their lives would flicker away all night.

 

[Ediswan]

I think I've seen fluorescent tube street lamps somewhere abroad, but cannot remember where. It seems to me to be a bit of an odd choice though - unless you can get "special" tubes, standard T5/T8 tubes aren't especially bright, particularly short ones...

Not that I have ever heaard of, and I believe I would have. The solution to the desire for a compact high output street light was high pressure sodium (SON).

 

[TheHSRailFan]

I live in a late 90s middle-class estate and East Herts has made sure that every street lamp is LED now that there is only one that's still a sodium light because it's situated on a small slab footpath that runs in front of a few homes with a wall of a house behind it.

I also have a few friends who are very interested in them. One of them is a kinda super fan and he has several at his house. One is actually hooked up in his garden, with the back of it leading onto the western approach to Taunton station. So if you ever see a Sodium light in a garden if you look north Arriving or Departing from Taunton on the west approach, that's him!

 

[Snow1964]

We had a few odd ones in our town until about 2 -3 years ago, along with other odd bulbs. Over a couple of months every single lamp had its head changed to white LED style

 

[AM9]

How many here remember the mercury lights with their blu-green light. In the London area, the seemed to prevalent on trolleybus routes, and we're replaced by sodium lights at about the same time that the overhead lines were removed.

 

[John Webb]

How many here remember the mercury lights with their blu-green light. In the London area, the seemed to prevalent on trolleybus routes, and we're replaced by sodium lights at about the same time that the overhead lines were removed.

As mentioned above in post #20, my area of London went in for fluorescent tubes. I don't recall much in the way of mercury lamps, except perhaps in East Ham when I ventured across the river from south to north side?

 

[AM9]

As mentioned above in post #20, my area of London went in for fluorescent tubes. I don't recall much in the way of mercury lamps, except perhaps in East Ham when I ventured across the river from south to north side?

From the north side of the Thames, most of the trolleybus routes from West Ham, Poplar, Walthamstow and Ilford ran along streets largely lit by mercury street lamps that were fixed on the trolley wiring posts. KIn the later '50s, North of the A118 (Romford Road plus various High Roads) and west of the Roding, i.e. in suburban Essex, side roads tended to be sodium lit, and the post war estates north of Ilford, e.g. Barkingside, Hainault and Romford ISTR had some sort of tungsten lighting.

 

[John Webb]

From the north side of the Thames, most of the trolleybus routes from West Ham, Poplar, Walthamstow and Ilford ran along streets largely lit by mercury street lamps that were fixed on the trolley wiring posts. KIn the later '50s, North of the A118 (Romford Road plus various High Roads) and west of the Roding, i.e. in suburban Essex, side roads tended to be sodium lit, and the post war estates north of Ilford, e.g. Barkingside, Hainault and Romford ISTR had some sort of tungsten lighting.

Goodness me! My memory is better than I thought it was!

 

[DelW]

How many here remember the mercury lights with their blu-green light. In the London area, the seemed to prevalent on trolleybus routes, and we're replaced by sodium lights at about the same time that the overhead lines were removed.

Main roads in Birmingham in the 1960s were mercury lamps I think, with mostly ordinary tungsten bulbs in the lamps on minor roads. The yellow low pressure sodium lamps in London always looked very strange to me as a child when we visited relatives there.

 

[InkyScrolls]

I really miss the orange streetlamps - so calming.

 

[Ladder23]

We had a few odd ones in our town until about 2 -3 years ago, along with other odd bulbs. Over a couple of months every single lamp had its head changed to white LED style

Very much the case now everywhere I’d like to have a idea of where still uses sox, I’d travel to see some!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Nov 2024 ==

I really miss the orange streetlamps - so calming.

must agree!!