This, and 2 others are still down, probably havent been repaired yet. Even without ballast repairs, the remainders could be raised to light up the trucking yard, or if the electric bill was to high, disconnect a few lights.
What do you mean? By lowering them? Yep all highmasts have a lowering device for servicing. you open up the base of the pole, unplug the light assembly, plug in the winch, lower the assembly, change the bulbs or whatnot, raise it back up, unplug the winch, and plug the assembly back in. My friend worked on some highmast poles at a sewage treatment plant and said it's a crude system though. He said the winch is either all or nothing so when the lights get to the top they slam into place and half the time one of the bulbs would break. He said the three flags at the top would sometimes get stuck too so when the winch was taken out the light assembly would sit crooked (there's three flags at the top that flip out and support the lights when in normal operation so the lowering cable isn't stressed by the weight except when lowering/raising). To unstick the flags, you have to lower the assembly slightly and lift it back up again, which slams the lights to the top each and every time increasing the risk of breakage. Granted, the ones he was working on appeared to be early Holophane models from the 70s or 80s so the technology has probably come a long way but he said he hates them. He'd much rather go up in a lift to fix shoeboxes or cobraheads any day.
All the Best
Colin
Is that the normal way they service those?