luggage Lifts - pre-nationalisation

[ColHut]

Dear All,

 

I am looking for images or plans of luggage lifts as might be expected on a platform accessibly in the main by steps.  I am guessing to or from a crossing road bridge or similar elevated point.  I have no idea what they looked like, and can only guess that they were no approved for passenger use.

 

regards

[Sandhole]

The lifts at Manchester Victoria were, just that, a much larger lift able to fit luggage trollies. Two I think.

They had the open metal framed gates of an old lift.

I only ever saw passengers in them two or three times. Families with prams and disabled in wheelchairs and then always accompanied by a porter.

I've had a look in my shots but I'm afraid Deltics, 25s, 40s and parcels railcars were where I pointed my camera in the 80s.

I know better now!!!

                  Chris.

[Titan]

The station at Witham had its very elderly luggage lifts only recently replaced with something more appropriate for passenger use in the 21st century. The old ones had an open metal framed gate on the lift car as described above, and a folding sliding door on the outside, with a couple of small windows. It was not supposed to be used by passengers, and there were notices outside the lifts saying as much. However that did not seem to stop any of the folk who had learned how to use them from stopping! I went up and down them numerous times in my pram, and later on in life when I was taking my bike on the train. Station staff did not complain too much - I supposed it saved them the hassle of having to do the job themselves!

 

The doors were of course manually operated, and interlocked. The lift would not move unless all doors were properly shut. Unfortunately not all users made sure that this was the case, especially when in a hurry to get a train, which meant that when the next person pressed the call button for the lift from the other door it stubbornly refused to move. Assistance from platform staff was then essential if you could not get up/down the stairs to close the other door properly.

 

They moved quite slowly, and I remember watching the brickwork going past through the frame of the gate!

 

It will be difficult to find photos of the doors of the old lifts on the net, but the new ones were built in the same shafts.

 

They were built so that they were on the opposite sides of the footbridge to that of the stairs. You can see here the brick built towers containing the lifts in this picture with the machinery rooms on top - access to which seems via a very precariously positioned door!

 

 

I expect the lifts dated from when the station was rebuilt following the deadly wreck of the Cromer Express in 1905, the buttons were all bakelite, and a really ancient sounding bell gave one 'ding' when the lift arrived, dim incandescent lighting inside etc. They must have passed their centenary before getting upgraded!

 

It used to have doors similar to this:

 

 

But this is the lift at platform level as it looks now:

 

Edited April 7, 2018 by Titan

[Oldddudders]

I think those folding/sliding doors as in the Bournemouth pic are known as Bostwick Gates.

[TheSignalEngineer]

Bostwick gates were the old folding lattice ones patented c1887 by the Bostwick Gate & Shutter Co Ltd of Hythe Road in Willesden. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Bostwick_Gate_Shutter_and_Co

Edited April 7, 2018 by TheSignalEngineer

[ColHut]

Thankyou all very much.

 

They appear to have had winding rooms  then, so they were not hydraulic scissor lifts.  

 

In my mind I had an idea they were more like dumb-waiters for some reasons.

 

regards and thanks again.

[teaky]

There is one at Worcester Shrub Hill.  A quick search for images should bring up a few.  It is towards one end of the platforms rather than the more central footbridge.

[Titan]

Bostwick gates were the old folding lattice ones patented c1887 by the Bostwick Gate & Shutter Co Ltd of Hythe Road in Willesden. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Bostwick_Gate_Shutter_and_Co

,

Thanks for that, the 'Bostwick' gates were the ones that were on the cars, So first you had to open the folding door, then the Bostwick gate to get in. If either were not shut properly the lift would not move, and they weren't the easiest things to shift, so a firm decisive action was required!

[Nearholmer]

Very probably most of these lifts would have been ‘traction’ lifts, electrically powered, from a machine room, usually above the top of the shaft. Such lifts first came into use surprisingly early, the 1880s, and they have a common ancestry with electric trams and trains, with the same engineers being involved in the development. Frank Sprague, who perfected dc electric traction, and invented electric multiple-unit working, had earlier devised a very good lift control system, for instance, and his autobiography was called something like ‘travel in a space of three dimensions’, in reference to the fact that his inventions had made the modern, underground railway and lifts-in-skyscrapers, city possible.

 

Of possibly more interest to non-retrotechnophiles is that when I was a trainee engineer in the 1970s, I was attached to a lifts maintenance gang for a while, and their favourite sport was to hide in the machine room above one of the shafts at, IIRC, Twickenham Station from where they could spy on their ‘governor’. He kept a bicycle at the station, and every Wednesday afternoon at 1400 would pedal off to a clandestine afternoon of passion behind lace curtains with his lady friend, who lived nearby. As soon as he departed the station, a telephone-tree system sprang into action, telling every single person from the depot concerned that ‘the coast was clear’, and everyone would go home, to the bookies, or to the pub according to personal taste. He returned to the station at about 1730, chained-up his bicycle, and caught his usual train home to his wife, in blissful ignorance that his antics were very widely known indeed.

[wainwright1]

Just come across this, so I though I would contribute a little of my knowledge.

 

With regard to the lattice gates these were mainly fitted to the lift cars, though sometimes to the landings as well. Many of these were manufactured by the Bolton Gate Company, a company who are still in business today and surprisingly still producing this type of equipment as well as the more modern folding and sliding type gates. These gates would be both mechanically and electrically interlocked to prevent the lift from moving if the door had been left open, even if the 'beak', the mechanical part of the door which engaged in the lock, were to break.

 

Most lifts would have been traction driven, either from a motor room at the top of the shaft or sometimes from the bottom.

Hydraulic lifts were fairly slow moving and driven with water and particularly in London the water pressure was supplied by the London Hydraulic Power Company from large tanks located around the inner London Area. (Not sure if a similar arrangement existed elsewhere). This was available to a wide variety of companies including the London Docks, presumably on a rental basis.  Although it may have been used in railway goods depots and warehouses, I am not sure that these would have been used on railway station platforms, apart from perhaps the main line terminus stations. Maybe someone with greater specific knowledge may be able to confirm.

Oleodraulic lifts are driven by oil and are a more modern version of the hydraulic type with their own independent tank reservoir of oil. I think that these may be now quite common on some of the newer type lift installations at stations either in direct drive or scissors lift format.

Incidentally, on the manufacturing side, many lifts and escalators were supplied to the railway companies and especially the London Underground, by the Otis Lift Company, originating in the United States, who had invented the patented safety gear which was fitted to all lifts.

 

I hope that this may be of interest.

RB

[wainwright1]

Forgot to mention that the Southern Railways Group, used to or maybe still do offer an etched brass lattice gate in their Phoenix Kits range which could be used for a lift.

 

RB

[wainwright1]

Just checked and these still seem to be available.

 

SR90 described as 'Lazy Tong' platform gates. May require a little adaptation for a lift.

 

RB

[keefer]

We have a goods lift with Bolton Gates at work and a very much bigger one to close off the loading bay.

 

They have the 'concertina' panels to make sure nothing can protrude through, but the main framework seems to be like a Bostwick gate

Edited July 4, 2018 by keefer