The Original You Might Say

[Mark]

I'll let you off (although I was frantically hunting for the alledged posting!).

Is it me, or has your avater suddenly aquired a comet?

[ironageman]

I've been wondering about top lamps (evidently not much else going on in my head at the moment) and whether police-box style lamps were ever used on things other than British police boxes.

This is a Danish police post lamp:
and this is a ship's lamp with a similar housing:


These things
were made by Ericsson, were they? They're on a lot of police boxes, of course, but did they appear in any other contexts?

But most of all, I wondered about the strange lamp on the very first of the Tardis-style London boxes.

Surely this wasn't constructed just for a few police boxes? Does anyone recognise it? Someone suggested to me that it could be a type of aircraft guidance lamp...

[Mark]

Certainly have no idea about the Wooden prototype lamp, it's very odd to say the least!

The 'standard' type lamp (with the mesh around the lamp) doesn't appear to have any maker's stamp on it at all.

It does have some number's cast into it and the words GPO written inside the bell gong.

Not very helpful, sorry ironage :-/

[ironageman]

so: it's made for or by the GPO, which made me wonder whether they used them for any other purpose. A little googling got me... nowhere, but I found this lovely and entirely irrelevant picture:

Yes, I know I'm off topic. It IS fab, though.

[Mark]

reminds me of a toy car I once had, you know the wooden type with painted windows etc?

[ironageman]

Ah, showing your age there, dude...

To make amends and get back on topic:

>>I've always thought that the famous Trench plans are "fake" or "retro designs"...? (purple blancmange, near the beginning of this thread)

In my reply I said (among many other things) that: 'I've yet to see a picture of a concrete Met box that has just the word 'police' at the top (the wooden type has it of course, in stencil style: and the Dinky toy has, for what it's worth, and there's a picture of a so-called 'Mk 3' that has it) - can anyone help with this?'

Well, I've at last tracked down such a picture:

The implication may be that the Trench blueprints with which we're familiar were not for the first concrete box but for a later run when the word 'public' had been added to the top...?

[Mark]

Yet another nice find Ironage.

The Trench plans have a few references to a tender, such as "top lamp fitting not to be included in tender". From this I believe that this set of drawings were in fact Trench's submission for the chance to design the box.

Obviously by the time the boxes actually got built, many modifications and improvements would have been made. G.Foyle made a comment on the Builder's Guild chat room last week about having discovered "exactly when the signs were changed from 'Police' to the public call ones".

[Scarfwearer]

Check out this page on Glen's site, if you haven't seen it already.

There are some interesting pictures of old boxes there, including a Glasgow box with the old 'Police' sign.

Crispin

[Mark]

Cheers Crispin, I had seen this, but I do random keep checking back to see if anything's changed.

Am I right in thinking that the Scottish versions of this box always had just the word "Police" on them, (except for the Avoncroft "restoration")?

[ironageman]

By the references to the tender, I assume that these plans were sent out to various companies interested in fabricating the boxes. It's still not certain, I think, at what stage these plans were prepared, and the 'police - public' sign may be a clue or a red herring.

Yes it struck me how similar the London and Glasgow 'Police' signs were. They even seem to be framed in the same way, though the picture that I found is a little hard to make out.

I think that the Glasgow ones all just said 'POLICE' - didn't they? I'm hoping that the Avoncroft one will be corrected sometime. The present fake sign is wearing out.

[Mark]

Is it just the recent pictures, or is the Avoncroft Glasgow box looking a little shabby?

Hoping to get down to the museum before the end of the year.

[Mark]

Well, once again i was feeverishly googling for police boxes ( ) and I discovered the BRITISH PATHE Website.

This site is brilliant for anyone who likes to look at Britain during it's past times, and the films can be viewed (lo-res) or by stills, both of which are available to buy (you get hi-res if you buy).

Of interest to me was this
[noIMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y194/Mark7081/th_99_07_121.jpg[/img]

The box was on Wimbledon Common (perhaps this is where Ian and Barbara were heading for in the Novel of "Doctor Who and the Daleks"?)
[noIMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y194/Mark7081/th_99_07_115.jpg[/img]
If you check out the bottom of the windows, the line-up of the sign boxes and the roof stacks, they're all consistant with the Crich box type of box (compared with Barnet.

[Mark]

On the subject of Britsh Pathe, I also stumbled upon this police box too.
[noIMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y194/Mark7081/th_1174_29_75.jpg[/img]

It was part of a road safety initiative back in the 1930's, and was part of a children's playground with 'roads', crossings and even had working traffic lights!

Looking at this box, it has dimensions similar to the 2005 box and panels akin to the half size mutant moldings! Which plans were they using......

[TG]

That site is a great find Mark!

Lovely to see the Wimbledon Common police box looking so new
- great clear pictures.

TG

And I forgot to reply - my picture is Halley's Comet, on its last visit in 1986

[Mark]

I happened to be on my way home from London yesterday, and due to an accident on the M1 northbound, I had to travel (very slowly) via the A1.

The point of this rambling is that I had to travel along the Barnet By-Pass, home to the last serving met box (or so I'm led to believe?)

Now despite seeing plenty of pictures of the Barnet By-Pass police box, can anybody actually explain (preferably on a map) where the box actually lived?