I-20 in Bienville Parish has the last collection of original BGSs from when the interstate was built...until now. A sign replacement project underway is bringing these old signs down. These older signs have had newer "overlays" applied in years past to bring them up to the then-current reflectivity standards. You know that under the overlays are old Louisiana outline shields! I wish I could be there when they do come down just to see if they take the overlays off to haul the old signs away. Of course the new signs are "corrugated" and smaller than the old signs. Speed limit signs and reassurance assemblies are also being replaced. Sadly, the reassurance shields are neutered. :-(
I started a discussion about "flat panel" vs "corrugated" a few years ago:
https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=4173.msg91552#msg91552
I have a flickr album with the old and new signs, and the dates written on the back:
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmcSicqd
I looked at your Flickr set. In the mileage sign pic, the bigger one is old and the small one the replacement? If so, the smaller one is too small compared to the bigger one, as far as high-speed quick readability.
The new one is smaller. Louisiana is making all of their mileage signs too small for readability.
Kentucky put new flat-panel sheeting over extruded-panel signs along I-64 between Frankfort and Lexington several years ago. Some of those signs are slowly being replaced with new extruded-panel signs.
It appears that the last signage upgrade for I-64 in Illinois involved placing new panels over the existing extruded-panel signs.
There used to be quite a few examples of such on I-70 in Ohio west of Columbus; as they aged, sometimes the new facade would fall off in places and you could see the shadows of the old letters on the old background. I have to look for the photos of a couple such examples that I got some years ago. All of them have since been replaced.
Indiana has some recent signs that look suspiciously like what is described in Kentucky; there are quite a few actually just on US 24 between Huntington and Logansport, carrying onto 25. Other examples exist on I-469 of refaced signs on the old metal. All of the signs in question seem to suffer from bad margins, odd spacing, and other things that make me think they would have been better off just putting up new signs.
I always wondered if you could put new panels on extruded sheet signs. Now I know. Some of the signs being replaced in Bienville Parish were newer extruded sheet signs that may have been 5-10 years old.
During the 1990s, WVDOH did a lot of Interstate sign upgrades where they mounted new flat panels to the front of existing extruded panel signs. One giveaway, if looking from the back, was you could see the ghosts of mounting hardware where the exit tabs used to be center-aligned. In newer replacements, WVDOH has installed new entirely extruded signs.
Quote from: Bitmapped on June 04, 2018, 11:05:13 PM
During the 1990s, WVDOH did a lot of Interstate sign upgrades where they mounted new flat panels to the front of existing extruded panel signs. One giveaway, if looking from the back, was you could see the ghosts of mounting hardware where the exit tabs used to be center-aligned. In newer replacements, WVDOH has installed new entirely extruded signs.
Not only that, but they weren't vertical posts, they were angled. I first noticed this on the old button-copy signs on I-64 near the state line.