The end of a noisy era

[Fred]

Northern Lighthouse Board has gradually been discontinuing fog signals and officially from 23rd August 2005 the last fog signal (Skerryvore) at Scottish and Isle of Man lighthouses will be discontinued.
Calf of Man fog signal is supposed to finish on or about the 16th August,but since I'm not scheduled to get there until about the 25th that might have the distinction of being the last?

[Terry_Pepper]

Fred, I am Saddened to hear this news. Do you have any ideas as to what will be done with the equipment after shutdown?

[Fred]

Terry,at the moment nothing has been decided,but NLB does these days take note of heritage issues.
We had one of the engineers at the Point of Ayre earlier this month doing a survey of the fog signal and associated equipment,noting any removal problems etc,things are not quite that simple as the Point has a standby generator in case of mains supply failure,primarily to supply power for the fog signal as the station batteries would power the light for a minimum of three days,so do they remove the generator as well?
At stations like the Calf of Man where they use cycle charged generators.ie,run them two or three times a week to charge the batteries,at the moment they use 115 volt batteries to power the invertors,where without the power requirment for the fog signal they could utilise 24 volt batteries charged by solar panels.
So,though the decision to discontinue the fog signals has been made other decisions could take a time?