GE M250R 175watt Mercury Vapor Street Light 

The old lanterns look so nice, I worked for a power generation company back in the 80’s and spent time in the depot refurbishing lantern heads. This usually involved changing ballasts or the refractors. Some of the really old ones were glass before when polycarbonates came along. We also had quite a few low pressure sodium lamps in use, 55 watt and 90 watt fixtures but they were slowly being replaced with high pressure sodium lamp fixtures but sadly the LED technology is taking over the old beautiful gas discharge lamps.

Nice Mercury Vapor street light! I really enjoyed watching these street lights come on back in the days. Thanks for sharing!

I’ve never been too fond of MV’s color, but I’m still glad people are out there keeping some of these old lights alive.

You are so lucky to have those. I would love to get one like this. They are the streetlights of my childhood. Always loved watching them come on at night!

Hey Parrot!! Rick Delair here! 😋 I have a few silver M-250’s myself! Also some grays. You mentioned the 4 way refractors, I have one in use in one of 3 identical 1967 gray M-250’s as my back yard light on a pole that carries 4 conductor ACSR quad-plex to the high bay shop. It is rare on 2 counts (all 3 actually!), that being that they all have the super rare 4 way optics refractors and they are Powr-Doors with NO ballasts,factory equipped for remote ballasts! I took my 1954 Westinghouse OV-20 down and installed this because they have a crummy reflector design that was putting too much light back into the 175 watt clear lamp (in a socket extension) and causing them to overheat and literally shift to green then back to normal 5900K repeatedly! Sadly these are junk designed fixtures! The GE went up last spring and I only had a decent supply of 250 watt /C mercury lamps, a case of 1973 Sylvanias, which I am running (happily) on a 175 watt ballast remote wired (F-can type) and it is great. Yes, 250 watt mercs will run fine on a 175 ballast! Arc tube length is same on both, only arc tube diameter is a bit larger in the 250, and will run with slightly lower current density on a 175 ballast and use a few more watts than a 175. Work’s great! Yes, I have 3 of these 4 ways! I think they were used indoors in an industrial building actually. They came with originally installed GE 250 watt lamps, a clear and a /C. High hour but work. One was missing the lamp. They have Astrodome clear windows over the photo control holes as closure caps, one is missing. Very rare units!! Got one in service! Those M series are the best cobra head street lights in world history hands down, literally the 2-stroke Detroit Diesels of street lights, and those engines were the greatest and best diesels ever, too! Nice unit! The Sylvania lamps aren’t that good though. Average at best, the girder frames like this one failed fast-at least pre-1973 ones-tiny electrodes and a fairly high rate of DOA lamps brand new. Cheers! 😋👍🏻

The circa 1968 GE, M-250R used for primary in residential and side streets. It can fit any glass lens to the door, besides the GE, it also fit the Josyln glass lens that came from 1968-71 Josyln MV-121, Westinghouse Type 15, or McGraw Edison, Model 175, and uses 250 watt Mercury Vapor Lamp. I have seen this kind of this fixture for most of United States and Canada.

These bulbs are better public lighting than LEDs and last for many years.

I have no idea why this video have less views and less subscribers but I still support this guy! This video is informative! Because I like lights!

I remember when my neighborhood had MV streetlights, and when they changed them out for the orange colored ones. As of March this year, they have been replaced by LED lights.

These are very nice. Mine is from 64 so it lacks the thumb tab but is identical otherwise. They also changed the safety catch that keeps the door on its hinge around 66.

Awesome light and demonstration! I really like these types of lights and I hope to collect some in the near future.

The old fixtures were very well engineered for the end user as well as for mass production

What a beauty!

Very nice! Your light was made in February of 1965 and the other (which you should take a video of!) was made March of that same year.

I really like the lights of America high pressure sodium wall light from the good old year of 2009

Very cool. You don't find many mercury vapour street lights around. I have seen a couple in the wild. Do you have any Metal Halide street lights in this style? I have seen them in the wild a couple of times, but they weren't very popular.

Nice!

Long ago my dad would tell me story’s of throwing footballs at the streetlights and getting the glass to fall off and explode, never got how he did it, must’ve been these or a similar design to bump the latch.

idk why I watch videos like this

it could be sliver or bronze

nice. i have covid