Red and black cables

Arguably, they should have been harmonised at the same time as flex colours.

But the 'how dare they interfere with our heritage' brigade probably kicked up a stink. After all, they'll have had half a reel of house cable lying around which would get wasted.

I think I'd have cut two lengths and pulled through a new bit of brown with the green/yellow in the length I was using. That would probably work with up to 25cm of flex or so.

Which now (for different reasons) sells at a premium on ebay for people who want old colour cable.

Owain

Interesting observation. I have some in my garage that's probably about 30 years old. Does it deteriorate with non-use?

Train drivers too.

Or does not know better.

I was not aware that the cores had a specific RAL

Green sleeving, rather than green/yellow on earths with still exist in plenty of 60's/70's houses, though the fact that it's sleeving on a bare conductor is a bit of a giveaway.

I pushed an image with swatches of the old/new wiring colours through various colour-blindness simulations, the columns are NORMAL, PROTANOPIA, DEUTERANOPIA and TRITANOPIA

Both red and brown seem to suffer similar distortion, so I don't really see how brown/blue can be argued as better for colour-blind electricians than red/black.

I would.

Can we pinch that for the wiki, looks like it could be interesting in the cable colours section...?

Let me knock up a better version then ...

? Could you explain what RAL is, please?

I think I found the background to the colour change at .

It seems the UK was way out of line with the other European countries, especially when the colours are shown clearly - see But the UK and Switzerland were the only countries to show 3-phase colour differentiation. It seems to me the only way the UK could get the other countries to change 3-phase colour was to itself change.

The one I asked did. ;-) He just said 'Well it works, doesn't it?'

Reichs-Ausschuß für Lieferbedingungen

No problem sir.

What colour blue did you want?

Open up a drum of T&E from different manufacturers and the blue core ranges from light blue to mid blue (I suppose it depends on your view of what is a mid/dark blue).

Cheers

Yes, but remember that the daft sods drive on the wrong side of the road no matter what coloured car they drive:-)

Danke!

Flexes were changed first because electrical appliances were being sent to different countries.

Which is one reason I'd advocate changing the shapes of the lamps.

For example, octagonal red for stop - like physical stop signs. Vertical bar for amber. Round or arrows for green. Or something like that. Now we have LEDs, it should be a doddle to achieve.