Railroad Forums 

Discussion of the past and present operations of the Long Island Rail Road.

Moderator: Liquidcamphor

 #1497424  by MattAmity90
 
Yeah, I heard they were Mercury-Vapor and the reason they will be gone by the time I'm 40 (which will be in 2030), is because the new lighting you see on platforms after they have been rehabilitated use LED, have solar panels, and obviously do not contain carcinogenic properties. The lights' half-life is longer, and are more compact. Still I think they can make a mushroom-shaped light with solar panels. Hopefully they put one in the LIRR museum in Riverhead. I'll never forget the 22.3-mile run I did along the entire Babylon Branch and having someone take my photo in 2008. Made me stand on a garbage bin holding the sign with one hand and my ticket in the other on a mushroom light.

But getting back to the subject...hopefully it can be preserved and not fall into despair like East Williston.
 #1497459  by MACTRAXX
 
nyandw wrote:
MattAmity90 wrote:"...I know they have to go because they are not environmentally friendly, are those symbolic mushroom lights that adorned the platforms of electrified territory for over 50 years..." Matt, please inform on the environment issue? Is it a LIRR, resident, political, etc. driven impact? Thanks.
Steve: In the subject of station lighting no one mentioned the huge change that the use of sodium
vapor lighting has brought to the LIRR.

With the brightness advantage that sodium vapor lights offered the LIRR discovered that they no
longer needed as many lights at stations as with mercury vapor and the other earlier lighting types
that they replaced - beginning in the late 1970s/early 1980s era began to install "flood" or "tower"
lights at some stations. In some cases the same previous lighting fixtures were used.

With the use of LED lighting by the LIRR in recent years I have noticed that they are not as bright
as sodium vapor lights even with the increase in light fixtures installed on platforms.
In a way this is actually a step backwards in terms of station lighting.

I wanted to address this subject of station lighting without going totally off the Hewlett Station
topic. This subject of LIRR station lighting may have enough interest to be its own topic.

MACTRAXX
 #1497499  by MattAmity90
 
MACTRAXX, I think we can start a topic on that sometime this week.