Gas street lamps

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] wrote on 03/08/2009 :

Now you mention it, I half remember a wooden lattice tower affixed on the back of flat wagon.

[Andrew Gabriel]

[Pete Verdon]

Any idea how the clockwork lighter-uppers worked? Some sort of flint&steel arrangement? Seems a bit haphazard for something that needs to operate automatically.

Pete

[Harry Bloomfield]

[Harry Bloomfield]

I remember them going round, winding the clocks up and cleaning the glass. My bets guess on there operation would be an always lit pilot light and that the clockwork simply turned the gas on/off to the mantle.

Sometimes the valve would stick and that's where the kick helped.

[<me9]

I remember them having a permanent pilot light, like the manually switched ones.

[Andy Dingley]

Clifton, Bristol still has a few and they're in odd back lanes, not even touristy bits.

Bath probably has boys with links and whale oil torches who'll light you from your sedan chair...

[John J Armstrong]

Oakworth Station (as seen in "The Railway Children") on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway is still lit by gas. The lights have a permanently on pilot light. As well as clockwork arrangements for putting lights on/off they have some amazing "switches" so that you can enter a room and put on a light from the doorway. There are also some gas operated anglepoise-type desk lamps. Well worth a visit.

[Pete Verdon]

Ah, that makes more sense. Cheers.

Pete