GEC Z9464
Lantern acquired in April 2003.
This is an early design for the gear-in-head version of the Z9454 (the '6' denoting the presence of gear), and fortunately the original gear is still present in the lantern, and even still works! Although the lantern's canopy is larger, to accommodate the gear, the lantern can easily be identified as being part of the Z9454 family due to the familiar, triangular-shaped bowl. Due to age, the plastic used to make the bowl has clouded, and is very brittle.
A 'floor shot' of the Z9464. This shows how bad the clouding of the bowl is. You can just see the gear tray where the bowl is clearer and it is covered in spots of rust. Eventually, I may sand blast this down and repaint it, but for now, I'll keep it as it is.
I decided to have a look under the gear tray to catch a glimpse of the control gear. I'm amazed at the size of the components compared to the Alpha 1's control gear, for example. The Leak Transformer is obviously the big rusty object on the right with the coils of wire being covered by tape. The tape as you can see has started to crumble, and soon we'd be down to bare wire if this was outside. Even the capacitor is enormous, and probably very dangerous - I'd imagine that it contains a substance called Polychlorinated Biphenyl, or PCB for short. This substance is no longer used in components as it was found to be harmful when released. I am therefore very careful when moving the lantern, to ensure that the seal on the capacitor doesn't get damaged.
A shot of the connections in and out of the leak transformer. The yellow object behind the plaque is a piece of 'fossilised' card that shows different voltages the leak transformer can operate under. I describe it as being 'fossilised' as it will just snap if you try and pick it up (and it appears someone in the past has also tried this - a corner of it is cracked and broken, but fortunately, it was still in the gear tray when I opened it.) I think it's too late for Pritt Stick! If anyone is interested, the plaque says:
After a lengthy warm up, I ended up with this. You can't tell where the actual lamp is, you just get a yellow glow. The lamp support can just be seen, but that's about as much as you can see. The gear gives off a great old noise when it is running - this is due to the exposed cores on the transformer.
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