RARE duplex lifts still in operation - FULL TOUR 

Wow massive compliment. Thanks very much 😀

Modernised a bit, with the inductive sensors taking over from the shaft switches. The original Express used a big shaped guide on the side of the car, that was large enough to catch the switches, irrespective of position, and then, using a middle of chute channel, would set them into one of 2 states. Above car for those above it, and below car, for those below it. this set of switches drove the logic, and also drove the indicator panel, as the one set of contacts on the large cam on the switch would operate during the change over to open the short across the series connected floor lamps, and thus the corresponding floor lamp would light, till it went past the next, which would, as it changed state, flip to indicate the next, with a large power resistor there to limit current flow in the lamp circuit. 24VAC lamps, running off a 48VAC tapping on the power transformer, and the resistor was high enough power to withstand the lamps shorting to ground. Lamps only needed one wire per landing, plus one extra, to operate them, and typically you had a ground floor one, and one in the car. The other function of the switch was to stop the car on the landing, using a second set of change over contacts that would cancel the floor call when at the floor, and also stop the lift, as it no longer had any call, till the door relay timed out, and allowed the logic to look at the floor status relays again. This was single speed, made in 1939, and was still running till around 2000, when the controller got modenised with a digital one, using still the same lamps, switches on landings, but with a new trailing cable (not enough non leaky cores in it, though the new cable got eaten twice by the car, blowing 2 controllers up properly, as they got 230VAC fed into the 24VDC power rail) and car call panel. The 2 speed one just had a second switch that would operate the half speed function, holding till the main switch operated and stop the car. Was an art to get this to stop perfectly level both up and down, not helped by the shaft being slightly out of true, so you could have the car at some floors float out of the switch chute, but not out of the guides, and skip floors, till it would stop at the next floor. Only affected the middle, old shaft guide rails that had relaxed, and moved about 2cm from true, and if you adjusted the guide shoes (cut down Otis shoes) to not float, you would run at other spots.

Absolutely! Thanks for the comment. More parts coming soon on this.

I wonder if the are struggling to get the bulbs now because the rest seems in superb condition and no corners cut, incandescent lamp production has been winding down for the last 20 years.

You could probably duplicate it with a $1 microcontroller and some sturdy IO chips.

@@user2C47 LOL, so true ... still you need to put up a decent board that can stand the time, discharges, EMC events (so much wiring exposed) and keep working unatended for years. But yes, any PIC18F would be enough for the logic and even handling a 4G modem for alarms. Well, they need to comunicate with the numerical displays that can also put (scroll) messages (probably a 485 arrangement).

@@38911bytefree Floor displays are an array of relays, powering lightbulbs, no RS485 here.

Thank you very much!

Thanks for the massive compliment Lachie :)

@@mrmattandmrchayyeah you deserve like 10M subs best effort quality details and graphics

Me neither, that was the first time I’d seen them!

I would love to have a look at those really old fashioned ones with the long flattened arrows.

nice one! Thanks

Thanks for the nice comment :)

Thanks

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wDvtrWtP-1c.html see 6:30 onwards. Can't think of any other lift for these reasons... car 1 can't move because car 2 not ready. Weight differences between car1 and car2 will vary and not efficient. If car2 empty and car1 full, not efficient and motor would struggle. Having a counterweight is probably easier to install then having car 1 linked with car 2. With 2 lifts linked, need a bigger motor and if only one car has passengers then a waste.

Thank you very much :)

You can see them much clearer here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-C3QFo7wyPKc.html The lamps are between 100-110volts and have a bayonet fitting (push and turn).

It’s extremely hard-wearing, virtually maintenance-free, cheaper to construct and often has an attractive, uniform appearance.

Pretty much all lift shafts will have lights in them to help with maintenance. The engineer switched them on so we could get a better view :-)

What is meant is that it’s the first technology which allowed multiple lifts to run automatically in an advanced fashion rather than a single lift with a manual operator. :-)

It describes the fact that there are two elevators which work together.

More like spelling issues to me, but that's ok because English has a vrey borken spellig sysem.

Well, there’s a lot more to learn and know than can be put into a 14, or even 30 minute video. If you’re actually interested, the whole channel is full of this content, with videos dedicated to specific parts. This video is more of a general overview.

@@Lift.Tracker ​ Being able to compress a video into 14 minutes and being able to structure a video are two very seperate skills.

This wasn't a time to say to the other guys, "hang on a minute, can I retake this footage?". I'm not making a blockbuster film here, I'm following a lift engineer, then spending a lot of time editing it to make it as informative as possible. If you don't like the "bad and confusing quality" (??) of this video, then you're in the minority.