Laira Bridge New Lighting
Plymouth
Laira Rail Bridge was constructed in 1887 to span the River Plym as part of the London and South Western Railway branch line to Turnchapel.
Passenger trains stopped using the bridge in the 1960s and it was then used as a goods line by a local cement works. The last train went over the bridge in the 1980s when the railway tracks either side of the bridge were removed, and subsequently the bridge fell into disrepair.
In 2013 Plymouth City Council secured £3.5m from the Department for Transport’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund to restore the bridge and convert it into a new walking and cycling link over the River Plym.
As part of the project, the Council looked to install lighting that would showcase the bridge’s distinctive features and Victorian ironwork, whilst being energy efficient and low maintenance.
Hector Machado of Architainment Lighting Ltd comments, “In coastal environments it is important that equipment is not only functional but durable, so in line with other bridge projects that we have worked on, we chose a Philips Color Kinetics solution”
A total of forty-six ColorGraze QLX Powercore units were installed on the lattice sections of the bridge to horizontally graze the ironwork, and twenty ColorBlast 12 Powercore luminaires are positioned vertically towards the water line to illuminate the pillars.
A remotely operated Pharos LPC1 controller provides simple but flexible control of the architectural lighting, and in automatic mode, a selection of pre-defined sequences are used to bathe the bridge with coloured light. In manual mode the colours for both the lattice grazing units and the pillar wash units can be selected independently from a comprehensive colour palette.
To provide both floor level illumination and ambient lighting, Philips Vaya white light LED luminaires were discretely incorporated into the upper ridge of the steelwork.
Cyclists and pedestrians can now enjoy using Laira Bridge both day and night, and the bridge itself has been transformed into a feature on the night skyline.
