A Poor Handrail

 

I took this picture as I walked back from the Imperial War Museum North to The Lowry of the lights in the underside of the handrail on the lifting bridge.


You will notice that lights have been placed in the handrail at intervals. I wasn't sure if they were low energy or not, but it is certainly an expensive solution in that wires have to be run to each light.

If it was designed now, it should use a solution based on ropelights.


This picture shows the installation at my stud, Freedom Farm. More details on how the ropelights are used is given here.

If you were using ropelights in such as the bridge installation, you would create a handrail with a slot into which the ropelight would be placed. Power would only need to be provided at one end, which saves a lot in building costs.

Obviously, for reasons of safety at night, you would build some redundancy into the system, using say two ropelights with one in each handrail, preferably fed by power supplies from either end of the bridge.

I believe strongly that handrails with ropelights underneath the actual rail can be used in all sorts of places to give affordable, safe, reliable and environmentally friendly lighting.