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RARE: Silver M-250R with Tumblatch!
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That means this light is from 1965. The M-250R had a thumblatch and was painted silver only for a year. Prior to that, there was no thumb latch and after 1965 the lights were gray, not silver. Joe told me "So anytime you see a silver one of these with a thumblatch, you can be certain it's from 1965". This one had its original tall white Ripley PC until recently when it was relamped with a nice fresh lamp and got a new dark Sun-Tech photocell.
I've never seen this light at night before or after it was relamped so i don't know if it was out or dim before. I don't know if it works now either. It likely does but GE apparently had MV lamp issues so there's a 1/100 chance this one has a dud lamp... Anyways, it has to be 100W MV or it would have been replaced, not relamped. It's in a trailor park right alongside Bald Hill Road behind a car dealership.
See the streetview here. in the streetview it has its original PC still.
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I never used to think there were really any of these left but there are a few scattered here-and-there. All the ones I've seen have been silver. I personally like the silver ones better since the gray ones sort of look like a modern M-250R2 with a quick glance or from far away. The silver ones look more vintage. I perfer the ones without the thumblatch piece jutting out too but I heard the ones without it are much harder to open.
It seems 100W MV and 50-70W HPS is more common than 175W MV and 100W HPS. The 100W mercs and 50W HPS in the NECo area replaced incandescents and the 70W HPS in BVE (and some of the 50W HPS in NECo) replaced 100W mercs, which had replaced incandescents. Many areas in the Narragansett Electric Co area went right from incandescent to 50W HPS in the early 90s. From what it seems, BVE got rid of most of their incandescents early on whereas NECo only put in low wattage mercs for larger cities and for new installations. When they replaced the incandescents here in the 90s they replaced the arms too. You can always tell where an incandescent light used to be because that was the only time they ever used steel mast arms. Any other time they've used aluminum. The arm these used was GE i think and they looked like this.
nice that you know of at least a couple mercs but too bad there aren't any more. are those 175W MV B2227/R37s still around?