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Lifts and escalators

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Hadders

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How does this work if say your first job of the day is a visit to the stationary cupboard on a different floor or, god forbid tea and no bickies with the boss on another?

You press the button for the floor you're going to in the traditional manner. The display will then tell you which lift to go to. The calling pattern is dynamic, so if 12 people all suddenly want to go to the 4th floor it'll go straight there and not stop anywhere else. I was sceptical at first but it does seem to work.
 

mark-h

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You press the button for the floor you're going to in the traditional manner. The display will then tell you which lift to go to. The calling pattern is dynamic, so if 12 people all suddenly want to go to the 4th floor it'll go straight there and not stop anywhere else. I was sceptical at first but it does seem to work.

This is known as Destination dispatch. It can also be used in systems with two lifts in one shaft which will also add to the efficancy of the lift system.

It will also get rid of the people who don't seem to understand that they should press the "up" button on the floor call station if they want to go up not both the up and down buttons causing a lift to make a needless stop and them making an extra journey.
 

Fiyero

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Did anyone here ever get the chance to use the Montparnasse-Bienvenue fast travelator while it was up and running? Surreal experience, and I did particularly enjoy the high heel protection rollers at either end.

I loved the fast travelator. I only got to ride it once and only came across it by accident
 

philjo

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I remember using a lift when changing trains at Zurich station 2-3 years ago that went diagonally. It was so smooth you didn't really know that it was moving.


There are some that I avoid whenever possible - I'm not good with heights so I hate using the glass-sided escalators - particularly over a large drop. the ones in Debenhams and john Lewis in Oxford street where you can see down to the basement from the top floor are really not good - I always use the lifts there (though the Debenhams lifts have a nasty habit of giving you a static shock when you press the call button!)

Glass-sided lifts are also a problem for me - up to 2 floors is OK but no higher.
 

rebmcr

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I remember using a lift when changing trains at Zurich station 2-3 years ago that went diagonally. It was so smooth you didn't really know that it was moving.

These are popping up in London -- one is running at Greenford station, and many are part of new Crossrail stations.
 

broadgage

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Not necessarily a fan of lifts or escalators but give me a paternoster any day.

I had no idea that any paternoster lifts remained in the UK.
I was under the impression that they had been prohibited, not just a prohibition on new installations but requiring that old ones be taken out of use.

A quick google shows that at least one remains in use at a university. Perhaps the prohibition was only for the general public, with exceptions for non public use ?
 
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Busaholic

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There are some that I avoid whenever possible - I'm not good with heights so I hate using the glass-sided escalators - particularly over a large drop. the ones in Debenhams and john Lewis in Oxford street where you can see down to the basement from the top floor are really not good - I always use the lifts there (though the Debenhams lifts have a nasty habit of giving you a static shock when you press the call button!)

Glass-sided lifts are also a problem for me - up to 2 floors is OK but no higher.

The escalators at Peter Jones in Sloane Square (part of John Lewis, of course) are ones to avoid too for you, then. There was a nasty accident iirc about a year ago on these.
 

simple simon

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The former Parisian high speed escalator, I think this was filmed in 2003. Thankfully the staff seen here did agree to being filmed as part of the overall scene - I asked them before starting to use my camera.

Originally it travelled at 12km/h but at the entry and (especially) exit points too many people were having accidents / falls so the speed was reduced to 9km/h.

PCD13e_187a.jpg


Below is a link to my video of it. The video is hand held, and at times a little unsteady.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBJN1X3LeJw

Towards the end of the video note how the other people leaving the moving walkway stand with both feet firmly on the ground and one hand on the handrail whilst passing through the deceleration zone.

Maybe also of interest:

An escalator with a moving walkway style flat section - seen at a subterranean passageway entrance to an office building in the London Bridge area of London (sorry, photo is slightly blurred, it dates from the days of real film, was hand-held and needed a long-ish exposure).

PCD08_14a.jpg



A double deck lift - This example was seen in Québec City, Canada, in 1987. Exactly where in the city I no longer remember. Although relatively rare, there are still too many locations which use double-deck lifts to be able to name them all.

Double-deck lifts gives rise to questions such as whether the lower deck only serves even numbered floors (and the upper deck odd numbered floors) or if both decks can access all floors - except perhaps that the upper deck cannot reach the ground floor and the lower deck cannot reach the top floor??. Of course such details can vary from building to building, depending on what is logical and practical for the location and its traffic flows.

0692_10a.jpg


These photos come from this page on my website.
http://citytransport.info/Niche.htm#lift

Simon
 
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zuriblue

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Many years ago I recall visiting Porsecheplatz station in Essen Germany where one of the access routes featured a bank of four escalators.

What was unusual however was that these operated as 'express' and 'local'.

There were four outer escalators. Two of these linked the upper two levels whilst the other pair linked the lower two levels.

By way of contrast, the inner pair of escalators directly linked the top and bottom levels.

I just wish that I had taken a photo... this was the days before digital photography so I probably thought that the location would have been too dark to film.

When I did return with an intent to get some sort of image, no matter how good, I found that I was too late as the place was being rebuilt as an indoor shopping centre and the unique escalator layout was no more.

As an aside, the uppermost level was at an outdoor pedestrian area, the first level down was for the bus station (served by motor buses) and the second level down was an underground station which was served by trams and kerb guided trolleybuses.

Simon

There is a similar arrangement under Zürich HB under the main hall where the lockers are. 2 sets of escalators go from the main hall to the S-Bahn level while the other 2 sets go to the intermediate level where the lockers and the (pricey) McClean public toilet are with a second set going down to the S-Bahn level.

I went through Montreal airport once and there was a moving walkway on the way to Customs which started at a sedate pace, once you were on the steps realigned and speeded up to a much higher speed, like the ones in Paris.
 
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33117

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The london transport museum have a mega rare spiral escalator apparently in store somewhere. It's been dismantles for years though but hopefully they could get it working.
 

bluegoblin7

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The london transport museum have a mega rare spiral escalator apparently in store somewhere. It's been dismantles for years though but hopefully they could get it working.

It's at Acton Depot, and can be seen during the open days/guided tours there. Don't get too excited though - it's a handful of segments and equipment and, although plans exist to restore these, it's never going to be a fully working and operational exhibit. There's not enough of it left, before you even start to consider the H&S impacts (which it never met in its day!).

It was originally installed at Holloway Road, was experimental and was more of a spiral walkway than escalator. On all accounts, the few pictures of it that exist suggest it to be a rather lethal (and Heath Robinson-esque) contraption.
 

LiftFan

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I remember seeing something online which was at a train station somewhere in Europe or Scandinavia that was a normal lift which goes up, then sideways over a bridge, then down again.
 

BestWestern

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One of my biggest fears has always been getting stuck in a lift! :o I guess for a lift fan it's probably quite cool?! Anybody got any 'stuck in a lift' tales? :)
 

Dai Corner

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One of my biggest fears has always been getting stuck in a lift! :o I guess for a lift fan it's probably quite cool?! Anybody got any 'stuck in a lift' tales? :)

There is a lift in the school I used to work in. It was only for use by staff or pupils with mobility difficulties and for moving heavy things and authorised users were issued with the requisite key.

Some children had somehow got hold of a key and spent some time riding up and down. After too many had crammed in it stopped between floors, trapping them.

For some reason it took quite a while for anyone to hear their calls for help and when the lift engineer was called he was told not to rush. The Headmaster greeted them on their release an hour or two later.

There was no unauthorised use after that.
 

ModernRailways

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One of my biggest fears has always been getting stuck in a lift! :o I guess for a lift fan it's probably quite cool?! Anybody got any 'stuck in a lift' tales? :)

A good few years ago now (15 or so years ago), we (my mum, me, and a kid she was looking after) got stuck in the lift at Monument Metro Station in Newcastle. Pressed the alarm, and they told us they'd have some engineers there soon. An hour later, after calling the alarm button almost every 5 minutes asking for an update someone new answered and told us they had no idea we were stuck inside. 10 minutes later the fire service came and freed us, the Metro staff at the station were super confused and just thought it had broken down, they had no idea people were stuck inside of it hence the confusion at the fire service turning up. It wasn't too scary at the time, but once we got out and found that none of the staff there knew we were stuck inside and had just put out a board saying it was broken down it was quite scary.
 

stut

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I very narrowly missed not only getting stuck in a lift, but getting quite seriously injured by it in my old office building. This was early 00's in a building of 80's vintage in central London. We were on the 7th floor of 8, it was fairly small.

Two of us were going down for a smoke (as was the style at the time). Lift arrived, doors opened rather slowly, but this wasn't unusual - the lift tended to be a bit odd, making random announcements, etc. My colleague stepped in, and I noticed the lift moving up (despite it being a down lift). I instinctively jumped backwards, as the lift moved upwards, doors open, as I looked up the lift shaft, it was clear that the lift had moved to the very top. The doors, thankfully, then closed at that point.

I walked upstairs to see what was going on, and the lift had gone above the top floor, to the very top of the shaft. Called out the engineers who were absolutely stunned at what had happened. Could have been very nasty...
 

Mikey C

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I got stuck in a lift in one of the buildings in the Barbican centre

When the doors were wedged open, I had to jump down 4 feet to get out. I had help to do this, if I had fallen into the liftshaft I wouldn't be around to tell the tale!
 

rebmcr

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[youtube]kdTsbFS4xmI[/youtube]

Very interesting how permament magnets are enabling new innovations here as well as in AC traction motors.
 
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simple simon

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My view is that is that advanced magnetics (which includes magnetic levitation) is the way forward. I feel sure that some maglev trains already use fast switching magnetics to cause the vehicle to move without traditional motors.

It is also possible nowadays to use printable magnetics to attach or release devices. This is possible because (being very non-technical) the same poles (- and - or + and +) repel whilst opposite poles (+ and - or - and +) not so much attract as grip very firmly!

The example I saw promoting this technology was of a space station docking area that would use magnetic locks to ensure that the docking shuttle would dock gently (ie: reduce the likelihood of the shuttle crashing in to the space station) but once docked the grip was so strong that it was as if it had been welded to the space station.

The reason for using magnetics is that there would not be any moving parts - all that would be needed would be to change the magnetic state of a small section of wall.

Merge the above technologies and lift travel will be transformed.

Preferably though the controlling computers will be kept off the Internet, so that hackers / people with malicious intent are prevented from compromising safety.

Simon
 
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simple simon

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(some information which I wrote ages ago but never got around to adding to this page)

Curved Escalators

Earlier in this thread curved escalators were mentioned.

Below are two rather small still images from videotape plus a link to a short video clip showing curved escalators in action in San Francisco. This was filmed in 1999.

Curved_escalators1.jpg


Curved_escalators2.jpg



The Self Starting Escalator

Escalators running needlessly when no-one is around consume energy and incur extra 'wear & tear', both of which add to the transport system's operating costs. To find a balance between what is needed and what is just 'convenient' escalators at quieter locations are sometimes configured to only start moving when people are about to travel on them. This facility also makes two-way escalators possible, as seen below.

A short video showing this can be seen at the link below. 1990's footage.


The Two-Way Escalator

At some locations the same escalators can be used by passengers going both up and down.

Normally these escalators are stationary and both the 'two way traffic' and blue 'one way' road signs are illuminated.

To use all a person has to do is walk on - and they automatically spring to life. But, whether going up or down depends on whether the person boarded it at the top or bottom...! At the same time the blue lamp at the far end extinguishes and instead the 'no entry' sign lights up.

It was noted that the escalators seemed to detect the number of people boarding and were very quick to stop when the last person in the direction of travel alighted, which made photographing the 'no entry' sign somewhat awkward, but this is probably good as it means that people waiting to travel the other direction have a better chance of having their turn.

I also noted that especially when the escalator was travelling 'down' people wanting to travel in the opposite direction (ie: up) tended to wait rather than use the adjacent fixed steps.

The photos below show a two-way (bi-directional) escalator at Bad Cannstatt light rail station in Stuttgart, Germany.

P1160690a.jpg



P1160691a.jpg


Simon
 
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eastwestdivide

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Leicester university propose to scrap their paternoster lift, one of the few working examples remaining in the UK,
Most regrettable in my view http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-42363360/paternoster-the-rare-lift-that-went-over-the-top
Oh, shame - but the linked articles say that new installation have been prohibited since 1974 (!), so you can see why it would become uneconomic to keep repairing with custom parts every time you needed to..
Story "from the horse's mouth" at
https://www2.le.ac.uk/staff/announcements/paternoster-lift-in-attenborough
It is with a heavy heart that we have to inform the University community that we are going to have to retire the Paternoster lift in the Attenborough Tower.
...
We’ve looked at a range of options and thought carefully about this, but it would be both impractical and uneconomic to attempt to fix it or replace it as spare parts for Paternosters are no longer available and need to be manufactured each time they are needed.
Our plan is to remove the Paternoster and install a new lift in its place which will be in addition to the lift already in the Attenborough and will meet the needs of all building users. However this work is unlikely to be complete until September 2018.
 

AY1975

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Leicester university propose to scrap their paternoster lift, one of the few working examples remaining in the UK,
Most regrettable in my view http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-42363360/paternoster-the-rare-lift-that-went-over-the-top

There is still a working paternoster in Sheffield University Arts Tower, although I think it has a conventional lift alongside it to comply with disabled access regulations as the paternoster is not really suitable for wheelchair users. You can see footage of it in operation at
and a map of the university showing where to find the Arts Tower at https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.215510!/file/university-self-guided-tour.pdf
 

simple simon

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In that Sheffield University Arts Tower video the lady who was wearing a white jumper and who waved goodbye when she boarded the lift went 'over the top'!

LOL

I can see why no new examples of these are allowed. But there is something appealing in a lift service where you never have to wait for more than a few seconds before it arrives.

Simon
 
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