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My New Addition: 1990 Series 113
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7566449,-71.4930888,3a,66.2y,92.15h,94.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1b3QKjOYLnv-avg7xWhfcw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en] This light was installed on this pole. [/url] As you can see, it got a new refractor at some point. This fixture was FILTHY! Full of dead wasp nests, dirt, dust, and spiders - both dead and alive. 

The lamp is a 2006 Philips Alto and PC is a 2010 Sun-Tech. The fixture was "red capped" in early 2010 and reinstated later that year as part of Cranston's trial of shutting off certain lights. That's why the PC is newer than the lamp.

I passed this fixture almost every day of my life. It hasn't worked for years so I thought the ignitor was junk but turns out the fixture is just fine! Just needs a really good cleaning. BTW the black stuff on the housing is mold. I took some bleach-filled paper towels to the exterior of the light and burned all the mold right off, revealing an almost perfect paint job underneath. As you can see from the streetivew link, the light was pretty much under the tree canopy so the paint was protected from intense sunlight.

This light and its arm were removed off the pole and stood up against the pole with tape for some reason. NGrid does that since they no longer own the light. But I dunno why they had to remove it though. they usually onlt do that with pole renewals. At any rate, it was probably slated for re-installation but Cranston is going LED so this would have gotten scrapped anyway (though the arm would have been reused). So I suppose I should have left this but I see it as rescuing the light since it was slated for LED'ing in the next month or two.

I've seen this done a couple of times before and never took those lights, though they ended up disappearing within a day or two (tape left on the pole) so I assume someone else took those to either sell on Craigslist or more likely, to scrap. But I'm pretty sure NGrid's plan is to reinstall the lights.
Keywords: American_Streetlights

My New Addition: 1990 Series 113

This light was installed on this pole. As you can see, it got a new refractor at some point. This fixture was FILTHY! Full of dead wasp nests, dirt, dust, and spiders - both dead and alive.

The lamp is a 2006 Philips Alto and PC is a 2010 Sun-Tech. The fixture was "red capped" in early 2010 and reinstated later that year as part of Cranston's trial of shutting off certain lights. That's why the PC is newer than the lamp.

I passed this fixture almost every day of my life. It hasn't worked for years so I thought the ignitor was junk but turns out the fixture is just fine! Just needs a really good cleaning. BTW the black stuff on the housing is mold. I took some bleach-filled paper towels to the exterior of the light and burned all the mold right off, revealing an almost perfect paint job underneath. As you can see from the streetivew link, the light was pretty much under the tree canopy so the paint was protected from intense sunlight.

This light and its arm were removed off the pole and stood up against the pole with tape for some reason. NGrid does that since they no longer own the light. But I dunno why they had to remove it though. they usually onlt do that with pole renewals. At any rate, it was probably slated for re-installation but Cranston is going LED so this would have gotten scrapped anyway (though the arm would have been reused). So I suppose I should have left this but I see it as rescuing the light since it was slated for LED'ing in the next month or two.

I've seen this done a couple of times before and never took those lights, though they ended up disappearing within a day or two (tape left on the pole) so I assume someone else took those to either sell on Craigslist or more likely, to scrap. But I'm pretty sure NGrid's plan is to reinstall the lights.

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File information
Filename:031217_001.JPG
Album name:Mike / American Streetlights
Keywords:American_Streetlights
Filesize:363 KiB
Date added:Mar 12, 2017
Dimensions:2048 x 1536 pixels
Displayed:137 times
URL:http://www.galleryoflights.org/mb/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=21572
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Comment 1 to 15 of 15
Page: 1

HPSM250R2   [Mar 12, 2017 at 02:26 PM]
Nice save. I'm hoping nobody saw you do this? I'm usually worried that I will get caught. Plus since there was a guy at LCEC who used to help me out, he may know it was me if the linemen go back and tell him that a light was stolen.
ZarlogH46   [Mar 12, 2017 at 07:38 PM]
Is this HPS or mercury vapor? Nice score btw.
HPSM250R2   [Mar 12, 2017 at 08:31 PM]
@ZarlogH46,
Check the description, it says the lamp is a 2006 Philips Alto. There is also another picture of the lamp Wink
streetlight98   [Mar 12, 2017 at 10:39 PM]
@ Zarlog: Thanks! This is a 50W HPS, 120V.

@ Ryan: LOL no I made sure no one was around. It was about 8:30 at night. I had parked in front of the pole with my hazards on and when a vehicle came by I just pretended to be checking out my car tires. I rolled down the passenger's window and tossed it in head-first into my backseat. The pole-end of the arm stuck out my passenger window about a foot and a half. This is like 5 minutes from my house so I just drove straight home after I retrieved it.
HPSM250R2   [Mar 13, 2017 at 01:48 AM]
Lol. Were you scared you could get caught?
I would be worried about what could be inside the light. Who knows what kind of pests could be inside, especially alive. Not only bugs or spiders but birds, snakes, rats. If something was inside the light and crawled out and I saw it or felt it when I'm driving I would crash my car Laughing
I did it once before. I was making a left turn at a light and saw a spider drop from my steering wheel column between my legs and I ended up hitting the curb. There's some road construction going on a few miles from my house and they have taken down a number of aluminum streetlight poles. The arms/lights are laying down in the ditch along side the road. A few different fixtures, FCO AEL 325's, and G.E. M400A2's for sure. They are longer arms though. Possibly 10 feet or more. So I won't be taking those lol. I don't like stealing but sometimes I can't control it. I think they may be getting re-installed anyways. I think they just removed them to put in a sidewalk and then they are possibly just moving them back. They're probably not 120V because these are all controlled on a relay. Probably 240V or something. They're probably MT ballasts though.
streetlight98   [Mar 13, 2017 at 02:08 AM]
I wasn't really scared but I kept the thought in the back of my head the whole time. Yeah I was wondering what might have been inside but since it's been pretty cold here I didn't think there would be anything living inside the light. Certainly not snakes in lights up north! And rats? Shocked There were no openings large enough for birds. Wasps were my only concern and they're not around just yet. Even so, at night the wasps are generally not active so as long as you keep the light closed and don't bang it around too hard they wouldn't get angry. There were a lot of spiders in the light though. Like a dozen living ones. Looks like there was a nest inside that hatched. A couple were a decent size too (about the size of a dime, which was quite a bit larger than the rest, which were all in the 1/8" to 1/4" range. Hopefully none left the light and got into my car. It's supposed to be below freezing for the next several days so hopefully whatever did venture away from the fixture freezes to death lol.

Normally I would NOT take the light right off the side of the road since I know it was intended to be installed on the new pole but because I knew the road was going to be LED'ed in the near future, I figured "Eh what the heck" and saved the light from being scrapped. Of course, I have the arm too, but I wasn't going to waste time removing the light off the arm and more than likely within a couple days someone else would have grabbed it to scrap it. IMO they should tape the lights to the pole a good 10ft up or so. Low enough so they're not near any lines but high enough where people can't grab them (unless they're really desperate and use an extension ladder, but no one in their right mind would go through that kind of trouble for $10 worth of scrap aluminum).

I've seen a few fixtures taped to poles but haven't taken those but every time NGrid does this, the light magically disappears within a couple days (and not by me!). Of course, when they do this in a more urban area, what do they expect? If someone leaves any kind of scrap metal within reach in an urban area it disappears, even in broad daylight! Providence had issues with people stealing traffic signs from neighborhoods in broad daylight! People stealing stop signs from 4-way intersections and streetname signs and removing No Parking signs and speed limit signs. People will do anything for a buck. At least my intentions were to save the light and not make a buck off of it. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have taken this, though it is a "memory lane" light.
ZarlogH46   [Mar 13, 2017 at 02:12 AM]
You probably did the right thing. This would have no doubt been scrapped within the next 3 months if you hadn't snatched this.
HPSM250R2   [Mar 13, 2017 at 02:19 AM]
Are there any employees at the company that services that pole who know you and that you collect lights? If there are they could figure it out pretty easily that it was you. Not to scare you or anything, just saying. That's what I think now, when I took the photocontrols off several streetlights on the ground near me several years ago. I'm surprised the guy I know who used to let me dumpster dive at their facility never said anything about missing photocontrols lol.
streetlight98   [Mar 13, 2017 at 02:55 AM]
There's no way they could prove it was me since anyone could just go up there with a pair of scissors, cut the two wraps of tape, and run off with the light. Took me all of about 30 seconds to get out of my car, cut the tape, toss the assembly light-first into my car, get back to the driver's side, hop in, and take off. I had rolled the passenger window down all the way to let the arm hang out since the arm is too big to fit with the light attached (though naked 6ft arms fit quite nicely inside a car and my mom's car could probably fit 8ft arms with the backseats lowered so the trunk is open to the car).

I'm sure you guys saw, but this light cleaned up quite nicely!
HPSM250R2   [Mar 13, 2017 at 03:00 AM]
Yeah I guess. As long as you didn't leave any evidence behind lol. Like an I.D. card or anything Laughing
I would like to find more lights on the ground to "save". Preferably on 6 foot arms so it would be easier to put in my car. I am trying not to do that anymore though. I usually feel guilty after I do something like that now. Sometimes I can't control it though Very Happy
It may be a bad idea for me to do that now. Since there's that guy there who knows me.
streetlight98   [Mar 13, 2017 at 03:27 AM]
Oh and to answer your question, no one at NGrid knows I collect lights except one of my instructors and one of my former scoutmasters, who works with transformers (I think at substations? Not totally sure actually). He's got YEARS under his belt, working for Narragansett Electric (aka NECo or NEES) long before NGrid took over. In fact, he told me his pay stubs still say "Narragansett Electric Co." on them in addition to the NGrid logo!
joe_347V   [Mar 17, 2017 at 12:10 AM]
Nice save! I haven't saved a lot of stuff from the street but I've saved a lot of fixtures from the trash at school. Pretty neat his pay stubs still say Narragansett Electric on them, maybe it's a thing NGrid does to keep track of employees that were from before the buyout.
streetlight98   [Mar 17, 2017 at 01:55 AM]
Thanks! Yeah might be why the paychecks say that. NGrid used "NECO" pole tags until just several years ago. Now the new pole tags are taller and say "-NG-" on them. But until like 2008 or so they were using "NECO" pole tags. Maybe there was a bunch of them so they were just using them up lol.
rlshieldjr   [Mar 19, 2017 at 03:08 AM]
@Mike: You could keep a can of bug spray and a few trash bags in the car to wrap around the fixture after spraying to control any creepy-crawlies that might be inside.
streetlight98   [Mar 19, 2017 at 02:27 PM]
That's a good idea! The bug spray would create a barrier "persuading" them to stay inside, right?

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