Off Market Square, Flint, Flintshire With thanks to LeoLampposts for discovering these Survivors. Installed beyond the current platform limits at Flint Railway Station are two Abacus base-hinged tubular steel columns that still support their (likely) original GEC Z8260 lanterns, designed to operate two 2 ft (600 mm) 40 Watt MCF/A (linear fluorescent) lamps, and very popular around British Rail property in the 1970s and 80s. The areas where the columns stand, either side of the rails, formed parts of the platforms in years gone by, but with the platform lengths reduced, owing to their being deemed unnecessary for the lengths of newer trains that then stopped at this station, these have now resorted to nature (in rather a large way, as the pictures below indicate), with only the old columns serving as a reminder of the original platform lengths. The columns within the sections of platforms that remained open later lost their Z8260s to Philips SGS 203s, though the third image down this page shows the station lit entirely with the earlier lanterns.

Barely visible through the thicket of foliage that has grown around the former westbound platform is one of the two abandoned columns.

Even when zooming in, the Z8260 is only barely visible.

The equivalent eastbound installation is slightly more visible, but I still managed to miss it entirely on my first attempt, and had to resort to bringing up Google Street View to try to locate it!

Even with its canopy painted black, the Z8260 is rather too well camouflaged here.

The two lamps appear very worn - I wonder how old they are, and when they last worked.

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