Sadly some of the UK sites are gone. I think UKASTLE has gone that was gone last time I checked unless it had issues.  ATL has gone. And a lot of the UK street light collectors personal websites are now gone like Claire’s and a few others. Some of the forums being gone are down to how they’re run how they are to navigate and contribute to, how they’re looked after, traffic and Facebook.  so visitors have decreased. Also cost as well. It’s such a shame … so sadly LGs links to other sites page is becoming full of dead links now. I hope this never goes the same way though it’s got too much useful info on it.

@Danny it is possible to make a script that automatically checks links for "deadness' and automatically searches the wayback machine for snapshots of said link. also it can be manually done but that is quite tedious unless we hosted a day of it where everyone looked for dead links and relinked them to the wayback....


I am guessing A lot of UK sites have recently gone down due to a certain.... high profile... person that's been on international news A lot lately.

@HomeBrewLamps was the uk based lighting site you're talking about ukastle, lamp room or ATL? Some of the sites may be here.

it was either Lamp Room or ATL. I cannot remember if i used this username. I cannot log in to TLR so. Maybe they deleted my account due to inactivity. it is a nice site. I just have issues keeping track of multiple same subject sites.

Lamp Room is up, but it is at a weird TCP port on an IP address wit no proper domain name. I forget what it is. But it is up and running!

Yes lamp room was originally set up as a private forum that was hidden from Google searches. This was mainly only for a temporary period! But it’s become a big site now with some very active permanent members so it is now staying!  this was for a few reasons but the main one being that back in the day when it was first set up some collectors / enthusiasts had no where to go, some disliked ATL, some disliked LG. Some disliked FB groups. So TLR was set up to get everyone to come together again as the originals were split between sites and not all together, plus it was set up as private as some collectors work in the electrical industry and did not want their pictures being on Google.

I am one of the 4 admins on Lamp room, and some day we hope to get it running online. But the original webmaster who still has it now has had enough of running it and we’re currently looking for someone to take over the webmaster role, the host role etc. but are yet to find anyone interested. The original webmaster built his own server from scratch for it so it’s currently hosted by himself rather than an external host.

GoL first started similarly, at first it was started with a small group of former LG members that left the site due to differences in opinion, some moved on fully to GoL while some posted to both sites. It was always pretty small but there was enough activity to sustain itself and it seemed to have started forming a niche focusing on mostly North American streetlighting although there were a few UK members.

It started declining after members started to move on, some moved on from lighting forums altogether either going to the FB groups or from lighting in general. Some slowly transitioned back to LG. Although I think there was still a small group of members on there until site outages made most people lose interest. The last time it was up, there were only about a couple of newer posts. 

Seems like the domain name is still active and the site is still being hosted but there's a config error with the software that runs the site so it's down. Unfortunately it seems like the Webmaster has also lost interest in the site as some members attempted to contact them.

Yeah very much the same circumstances with how TLR started. It’s certainly done its job, TLR has rarely had outages in its 10 years of being online. But we did have an outage a few years back where a small portion of members photos were lost this along with a decline in traffic seems to have pushed a few members to LG. But we don’t mind as LG is where the more technical members are and I myself enjoy LG.

It’s a real shame to hear about GOL. As a lot of members put a lot of effort into that. Although I had never joined up there as this always seemed busier. I did look as a guest from time to time. I do hope one day that there’s a break through for you guys on this thread and the webmaster either puts it back up or offers it out to someone here that can keep it up and running. I do put The Facebook groups to blame for most decline in activity on these types of forums unfortunately.

Who actually runs GOL? Are they here? 

Ian Keder hosted the Gallery of lights.  He has his screen name here at @KEDER

He has not visited here for a few years