Rare wooden escalators lead down into a staggeringly monotonous tiled tunnel | Hacker News Reader

Rare wooden escalators lead down into a staggeringly monotonous tiled tunnel

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126 pointsbcaulfield55 comments

The wooden escalators at Wynyard Station in Sydney were replaced last year, and they turned the old treads into a sculpture:

http://chrisfox.com.au/interloop/

That is incredibly cool. Genius way to preserve, and even honor, the old, even though it is replaced by something newer. Wish we did this kind of thing more.

Firstly, I love that sculpture. If I remember correctly, those escalators were actually heritage listed! I'm glad something beautiful was made from them and kept on site.

Secondly, I love the fact that the people in those photos are all wearing "rail spec" high-viz even though the installation site is well clear of the actual train line! Good old Sydney Trains regulations ;-)

That's a beautiful sculpture.

I remember when I first moved to Sydney those treads totally bowled me over. I haven't been back in years. Sad that they're no longer in service but glad something was done with them.

+1 the engineer and biologist in me can appreciate this

Didn’t know that any still existed, here’s why they don’t in the UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Cross_fire?wprov=sfti1

I missed the fire by about an hour. I’d travelled to London from Leeds with a colleague and we had intended to have a quick pint before getting the train back. He felt unwell during the day so we returned early, luckily as it happened. As said elsewhere, in 1987, in the days before ubiquitous mobile phones, my wife had no way of contacting me to find out whether I was caught up in the big news story of the day (31 people died). Later on, I became professionally interested in risk management, reading classics such as Normal Accidents [0]. I also tracked down the Fennel report [pdf, 1] written during the inquest. I used the fire as a case study at work to raise awareness of the dangers of the normalisation of deviance.

The London underground turned out to have been a fire disaster waiting to happen. To quote Fennel:

“London Underground did not guard against the unpredictability of fire. Since no one had been killed in the earlier fires they genuinely believed that with passengers and staff acting as fire detectors there would be sufficient time to evacuate passengers safely. But they had no system to train staff in fire drill or evacuation and their attitude towards fire (which they insisted should be called 'smouldering' and regarded as an occupational hazard) gave the staff a false sense of security. They failed to appreciate the particular problems of smoke.”

Fennel reports that there were a staggering 400 fires and ‘smoulders’ between 1958 and 1987.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents

[1] http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_KX1987.pdf

I remember this. My grandmother was caught up in it coming back from holiday. Back then there were no mobile phones and she couldn’t hear her land line phone so everyone was panicking and we had to go to her house to see if she was ok. She was making some tea when we got there and shrugged it off as a minor disruption to her schedule. A lot has changed technology-wise since then.

For the people who don’t know, you could smoke on London Underground back then and the place was littered with cigarette butts still burning in some cases. It was just a matter of time.

Oh yes. I was living around London at the time, and very well remember being stranded at some station when all trains were halted, shortly after I had gotten on board at King's Cross.

As for mobile phones, I actually believe there were some at the time. They started appearing sometime during the latter years of the eighties, to begin with as rather expensive status symbols, conspicuously flashed by the yuppie mob.

Tangential: Being stranded on the tube was not necessarily a waste of time. Not too long before, I was in a stationary train in a tunnel near Liverpool Street Station, in muted light for the better part of an hour. A woman in her eighties (who said: "I don't like old people") told me fascinating stories about the bombing of London that she had experienced. Only gradually did I realize we were talking about bombings of the first world war. Zeppeliners. Never heard of that before, and found it hard to credit, but of course, everything checked out when I looked it up.

Me to I owe my life to DND as my commute home would normally have taken me straight into the heart of the fire - luckily I had left early to play DnD.

Good job that my parents had not watched the news that night as I didn't get home till 12 and they would have been worried sick.

Model showing the Trench Effect (as discovered in the Kings Cross Fire investigation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmeg-vn6ho

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_effect

>The trench effect occurs when a fire burns beside a steeply inclined surface. The flames lie down along the surface, demonstrating the Coandă effect. The flames heat the material farther up: these emit gases that autoignite in a flashover event. The flames from these areas are themselves subject to the Coandă effect and blow a jet of flame up to the end of the inclined surface. This jet continues until the fuel depletes.

For all of us living in London in 1987, I think the Kings Cross fire is the first thing that comes to mind if you mention wooden escalators. We just took for granted that the underground was safe; I used to really like the old wooden escalators. The fire was a terrible shock and wake-up call to everyone.

IIRC, the top floors of the Manhattan flagship Macy’s had a few wooden flights: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/nyregion/macys-histori...

Still did as of last December.

We still allow wooden escalators but only above ground. There's one at Greenford.

Not any more. From the above Wikipedia article: “the last wooden escalator at Greenford Underground station was decommissioned on 10 March 2014”.

They were used in the Tyne pedestrian tunnel until pretty recently.

They’re actually still there but the tunnel is closed for refurbishment, part of which is the replacement of the escalators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyne_Tunnel#Tyne_cyclist_and_p...

IIRC the root cause was a 50 year build-up of grease, rat fur, ticket stubs, cigarette butts, and matches in the tracks that the steps rolled on. They had never been cleaned. One day a smoker dropped a match in just the right spot...

Fluff was the tinder, but the wooden escalator treads (along with layers of old paint and some temporary wooden hoardings) were the fuel that turned it into a mass fatality. The fire was so deadly because of a sudden flashover, engulfing the ticket hall at the top of the escalator in flames and acrid black smoke. If the escalator treads had been metal, the fire would have progressed much more slowly and been limited in intensity.

Brings to mind a great song by Nick Lowe:

https://genius.com/Nick-lowe-who-was-that-man-lyrics

Can't find a video on youtube...

Video on the forensics investigation:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6cE9Ud6GgE4

Yeah that was my thought as well. Cool history, but quite the fire hazard.

I suppose that they could be fitted with fire detection and suppression systems, and operated safely.

That reminded me of some of the nicer speculative psychogeography writings about the Woolwich tunnel time anomaly:

https://portalsoflondon.com/2017/07/02/the-woolwich-anomaly/

So if they finished a day's work in ten minutes, why was it eight months delayed?

This utterly fascinates me. I don't know whether to treat this as someone who actually believes this stuff, a bit like the Mandela Effect, or if it's all just satire

It's fiction: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/08/woolwich-foo...

I remember using the Old wooden escalators at Macys in NYC when I was little.

And Looks like Macys even kept them after a recent renovation : https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/nyregion/macys-histori...

The wooden escalators are truly a blast from the past for me.

I grew up in Houston in the 1980's, and the Foley's department store downtown was one of the old-school, many floor department stores that used to be more common. (Like the old Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.) I distinctly remember riding the escalators all the way to the top, and the top few floors having these seemingly rickety narrow wood escalators. I see the fire safety risks, but am still glad to have had the opportunity to see it firsthand.

I went down this tunnel once, the escalators were out of action unfortunately, so a big lift was used instead. It's surprising how spacious it is down there, and ideal for biking down the tunnel.

Cycling down the tunnel is not allowed, unless <5km/h. It's incredibly annoying to be overtaken by cyclists in such a narrow space. In fact, anyone doing this should probably try cycling next to a moving train for comparison.

There's a sign in the tunnel that says something like "cyclists are tolerated, but only at walking speed". I frequently get into arguments wich douchebags who ignore this rule and ring their bells like antisocial nutcases at pedestrians in the tunnel. You know, the way drivers do when cyclists aren't moving fast enough for their tastes.

> There's a sign in the tunnel that says something like "cyclists are tolerated, but only at walking speed".

There's a sign in Denmark, the standard bicycle+pedestrian plus the text "Knallert forbudt"[1], often seen where the path is shared with pedestrians — like on a quay or in a park.

I'd assumed "knallert" was cognate with English "knell", meaning to ring (or the sound of) a bell, and the sign therefore meant a cyclist mustn't ask people to move out of the way. But it seems that "knell" in Danish is "knolde"[2], and the sign is the much simpler "Mopeds forbidden".

I like my meaning better.

[1] http://mapio.net/pic/p-26687006/

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic...

[3] StreetView example: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6779341,12.5994887,3a,75y,27...

"Knallen" in Dutch can refer to exploding sounds, or it can mean "going really hard/fast", so I had a similar reaction to yours. Languages are a never ending source of interesting tidbits like this.

I was told anecdotally that the name "knallert" translates roughly to "putt-putt" and is in reference to the sound of the small two-stroke moped engine.

They should add speed bumps then.

What? Why? Those would be annoying for pedestrians, people in wheelchairs or parents with prams. Cyclists in the pedestrian tunnel should simply behave, period. It's not hard. If they're in a rush they can always take the ferry.

I don't want to find excuses to the cyclists in the tunnel because they are annoying, but waiting for the ferry isn't really faster than walking, unless you arrive just when the ferry is leaving.

Anyway there is a real problem here with the river crossings, I am always astonished how few options there are and how all of them are either unreliable, congested or slow.

I was going to write there's no ferry there, but TIL: https://www.visitantwerpen.be/en/transport-antwerp/ferry-ser...

The escalators have been renovated over the past few months, but should be back into action now so they can start renovating the elevators. It should cut down on cyclists a lot because most won’t be taking the escalators but opt for the ferry instead.

On a warm summer’s day it’s nice to get out of the stuffy city using this tunnel. It’s always cool down there, and the monotony of the walk relaxes the mind. On the other shore there’s lots of green and open space, very quiet.

A similar but much more active 100+ year old tunnel in Hamburg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbe_Tunnel_(1911)

That one allows both cars and pedestrians. Worth seeing while in Hamburg (along with the miniature model railway museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniatur_Wunderland - a visit there inspired Sid Meier to re-create Railroad Tycoon).

I road some wooden escalators in Budapest many years ago. It was a wonderful experience. An absolute delight. The wooden 'clanking' sounds where especially memorable.

The Macy’s on 34th street in Manhattan used to have wooden escalators. (Maybe it still does?)

They still have a couple with wooden treads on the top floor near the bedding section. There are many more in that building with steel treads and wooden "bodies."

There is also Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_foot_tunnel

I look at that and think "That's a huge canvas for an art school to work on for years."

The white does have the advantage of making any water leakage or disruption of the walls immediately apparent though.

A pretty cool viral rap video was shot there last year !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjQTA81MhY

Enjoy !

"1876 feet". WHYYYY? You're outside the US, keep your obfuscating imperial measures where we can't see them please.

They are writing for an American audience.

I'd like to see a browser automatically translate units, perhaps with an extension like [1], but ideally with standard markup. That could also end the mess of brackets on English Wikipedia.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/automatic-uni...

Well, they shouldn't. The international audience is much bigger.

You do realize that it's only "obfuscating" if you can't perform basic arithmetic, and that there are several countries that use imperial measurements?

Yes, the US, Liberia and Myanmar.

All the countries that have been to the moon, and more!

As Tom Lehrer famously sang:

"And what is it that will make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun!"

Cute, but most of the former British empire (including Britain itself) still uses parts of it.

A good excuse for fried food but research sauce options beforehand.

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