Thorn Europhane Pilote T2
Thanks to Danial Thomas for letting me have this lantern. The Pilote is quite a rare lantern in the UK - it is made in France by Thorn Europhane, however a dual-carriageway (and its associated sliproads) near me uses them on group-switch control. The design is similar to that of the Alpha 2000 but has been around for longer. The T2 is the medium sized version; with the T1 being the smallest (designed for 70 - 100W SON-T lamps) and the now discontinued T3 being the largest (designed for 400W lamps).
The Pilote looks very large in this photograph, but it still is beaten by the size of the SGS 204. The NEMA socket is dated 06/92, which gives an idea as to the age of the lantern.
This Pilote uses a flat glass cover, however the ones on the dual-carriageway near me have deep bowls. This side is in need of a clean - it is very dusty. It appears that a 'no cover' option can be used as there is a label on the opposite side to the "Thorn" one that reads "Ferme (firm) - IP66" or "Ouvert (opened) - IP23". There would usually be a device to hold the lantern to a bracket in the gap at the back, but it was in a bad way and couldn't be used.
The canopy is hinged at the front and secured by two clips at the back. The red sleeving is connected to the NEMA socket and plugs into the black terminal block on the gear tray, however an identical plug had been inserted into the block so that the socket was wired out. From here, the ballast can just be seen here - it's the white object below the yellow earth wire.
On this side, the ignitor and capacitors can be seen. The gear tray looks grey, but it is actually black! It's just covered in dust.
The tray can be easily removed to allow the gear to be changed, should it need to be.
This shows how the lantern looks without the gear being fitted. The middle section has a lever that allows the lampholder to be moved up and down inside the lamp area, depending on the wattage of the lamp being used.
I removed the NEMA socket so that the canopy could receive a good wash; and I discovered just how much the fibreglass in the rest of the canopy had faded from its original beige colour. I also removed the entire canopy from the rest of the lantern although this proved to be quite difficult as the two front locking pins could only pushed out when the canopy was in a near-horizontal position. The picture above shows the canopy following a heavy cleaning.
The inside of the canopy required much less of a clean - I only had to wipe it out and it was fine. The fibreglass here was still the original colour, as obviously it was not exposed to the sunlight when in the lantern was in use.
The glass cover was also removed and cleaned as there was a grubby mark around it where the rubber gasket had pressed against it. Again, this only required a simple wipe and the dirt went away. Being glass, fingerprints can be left very easily, and so the panel will be given another clean before it is re-attached to the lantern.
The insides of the lantern were not too hard to clean, as they required nothing more than a quick dusting-down.
The reflector was polished up and the mud in the bracket area was removed.
A quick re-fitting of the glass cover and the reinstating of the lamp, and the lantern is ready to be powered up.
The lamp seemed to have a fairly lengthy transition between the silvery start-up colour and the golden second colour but I think this was probably due to it not being in use for a while. Once the lamp had warmed up to full power however, it was much brighter!