I got a question regarding incandescent streetlight from the past. I know that in north America most installations were series circuits and the bulbs were specially built for that but what about Europe and the rest of the world? Were there special light bulbs for use in street lighting? Were they using bulbs with reinforced filaments like in Switzerland? We had in the past special bulbs with with the “S” marking from 25W up to 1500W. Their life was elevated to 2500h and their envelope was larger than of regular GLS.

I wo der how it was because in catalogues like Philips, Osram and other I can not find any traces of such bulbs.

When I was about 5 and first got interested in lighting, our street in Essex was lit by 500W incandescent lamps, I don't know if they were any sort of special design. They were changed shortly after for 250W MV and those were still there when we moved out of the area in 1972. As far as I am aware, series incandescent lighting was never used in the UK, but I may be wrong.

I have a book on a company in UK called PETTER, they made stationary engines for domestic and industrial applications, and it was written by a long serving engineer.
Anywho, there’s a section in there about town lighting, this was before the grid, and most towns would have an ‘engine house’, with a large Petter oil engine that only ran at night, and the street lighting crew was a mechanical engineer that would start/run and look after the engine and two electrical engineers that went round the town with a box of Tungsten lamps and a ladder, looking after the town lighting!

What a cool job, and interesting that there was a dedicated engine and generator JUST for the town street lights!

Yeah sounds interesting! I imagine how it was for my former colleague and friend of mine. He had the job which I have now in the utility company and he told me that when he started to work here we had still a large amount of incandescent street lights and he was taking care of them. Almost twice a year he had to replace dead light bulbs on each lantern.

I have a book on a company in UK called PETTER, they made stationary engines for domestic and industrial applications, and it was written by a long serving engineer.
Anywho, there’s a section in there about town lighting, this was before the grid, and most towns would have an ‘engine house’, with a large Petter oil engine that only ran at night, and the street lighting crew was a mechanical engineer that would start/run and look after the engine and two electrical engineers that went round the town with a box of Tungsten lamps and a ladder, looking after the town lighting!

What a cool job, and interesting that there was a dedicated engine and generator JUST for the town street lights!

The only high wattage incandescent street lights I relamped was in the city of Bern. Back in 2001 and 2002 there were still hundreds or span wire fixtures in the old town taking bulbs up to 1000W for big squares. Later on in 2003 I did help to refurb all these lanterns and put them back in place with CDM-T 150W lamps. Now these same lanterns are again facing a change, they are getting LED lamps.

When I was about 5 and first got interested in lighting, our street in Essex was lit by 500W incandescent lamps, I don't know if they were any sort of special design. They were changed shortly after for 250W MV and those were still there when we moved out of the area in 1972. As far as I am aware, series incandescent lighting was never used in the UK, but I may be wrong.

Yeah sounds interesting! I imagine how it was for my former colleague and friend of mine. He had the job which I have now in the utility company and he told me that when he started to work here we had still a large amount of incandescent street lights and he was taking care of them. Almost twice a year he had to replace dead light bulbs on each lantern.

I always think if you knew you were going to be a street lighting engineer, it’s would have been best if you were born in the 30s!, because by the time you had done your electrical apprenticeship, and entered the job, it would be the 50s, and you would get to work on all lamps, from GLS to mercury, and sodium and retire in the 90s before any LED would have come in!, you therefore would have served your job in the golden years of street lighting! 

Actually I’m a lucky bloke because in all the years I did work with all different street lights and their lamps. Starting removing incandescent street lights in 1993 as 11 years old boy, then relamping large fluorescent streetlights from 1995 till 1997 as a teenager. Back then when I had free afternoons without school I helped the crew of street lighting engineers to do the work and sometimes I could get the lanterns. Then as mentioned above I did maintenance on incandescent street lights after my apprenticeship in Bern. And as well I repaired a couple of SOX street lights and installed new fixtures for MV lamps. And so on till now with the LED thing...


 

I always think if you knew you were going to be a street lighting engineer, it’s would have been best if you were born in the 30s!, because by the time you had done your electrical apprenticeship, and entered the job, it would be the 50s, and you would get to work on all lamps, from GLS to mercury, and sodium and retire in the 90s before any LED would have come in!, you therefore would have served your job in the golden years of street lighting! 

@monkeyface: What I can tell for the streetlighting in Germany is after WW2 weren't such special lamps available of German lamp makers.
Normally were in use "normal" light bulbs in streetlights but most lantern manufacturers advertised the HWA (later HWL) blended lamps instead of ordinary light bulbs. Philips made some special light bulbs see lamptech.co.uk : http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Documents/Catalogues/Philips%20-%20Catalogue%20-%201940%20DE.pdf (page 16) . Same lamps in 1955 catalog: http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Documents/Catalogues/Philips%20-%20Catalogue%20-%201955%20INT.pdf (page A22)
However streetlights with incandescent lamps were the longest time used by the Deutsche Bundesbahn. Cities often used HWA/HWL lamps and many lanterns got later extern ballast boxes for mercury vapour lamps. (Best still existing example: Bremen/North Germany)
The only special incandescent lamps I know for German streetlighting are the Sofitte-Lamps for Autobahnschilderbrücken up to 2m length.

We used to use radial waves on the older shitty cascade control system which can still be seen although it has been disused. At the substation the ran a switch wire along with the other 3 phases and neutral. The switch wire was typically on the Red phase (1) and controlled with a contactor via a 32A fuse.