Other Westy stuff (elevators)

[mathewhebailey0]

Anyone familiar with Westinghouse elevators? There are three buildings in my area that have Westy elevators.
Two are equipped with Westinghouse Selectomatic elevators.
The three Westy elevators in one building have Otis gearless hoist motors with Westy brakes.
Another buisness also involved in elevators is or was GE.
The GE elevator products I have seen are gearless hoist motors,motor generators & controllers.
Since CBS bought Westinghouse, Schindler Elevator services Westy elevators.

 

[Cybrvanr]

I remember we had Westy elevators at my college in some of the academic halls, and in the dorms. Unfortunatley, Westinghouse's elevator line didn't seem to be quite up to the durability that the rest of it's product line was. I guess this may have been attributed to a lack of proper maintanence, or through student abuse.

The thing was is they were notorious for trapping people in them, not lining up properly to the floors, and doing other erratic things that made people uneasy about riding in them. I remember listening to a buzzing all night when an empty elevator hung up in the shaft with the door open. The door alarm buzzed all night, and nobody knew how to get in there and shut it off! Even when the R.A. used the key to make it return to the 1st floor, it wouldn't move!

In an office building I used to work part-time in during holiday breaks, they had some very old Westinghouse elevators from the late 40's that had these huge mechanical relays and a geared motor. If you turned out the lights in the equipment room, you could see the relays spark as they clicked on and off. These elevators seemed to work pretty good, as I don't ever remember them doing the same wacky stuff the ones at school did! They were rather attractive elevators too, with ornate metalwork on the doors, and fancy woodwork inside. They had a rotating floor indicator above the elevator doors that would rotate as the elevator ascended or decended.

 

[neptunebob]

Most buildings in the Pittsburgh area have Westinghouse elevators and escalators and today they are made and serviced by Schindler. Pittsburgh International Airport has a shuttle subway train that goes underground to get from the "landside" to the "airside" terminal that is made by Adtranz - which used to be part of Westinghouse.

 

[SactoTeddyBear]

Re: Also:

There is a long-time Company called Otis, that is/was an Elevator Company. I'm not sure if they were Nation-Wide known or possibly just in certain areas, like the Western, North-West, South-West and Mid-Western States.

Peace and Fun Tall-Building Elevator Rides, Steve
SactoTeddyBear...

 

[jasonl]

OTIS

Is everywhere! Most elevators and escalators are Otis but I have seen Westinghouse as well.

I like VINTAGE elevators. You know the kind with wooden sliding gate that you can see through. Cheers in Boston has one. It was so small, Bri's powerchair barely fit. I think New Orleans had a few vintage elevators in some of the old building.

I also like the fast express elevators like in the tall buildings.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Westinghouse Escalators

When Washington, DC's Metro system was being designed, Westinghouse was the only company that could easily turn out escalators of varying lengths so they had the contract sewed up. The system is very dependent on escalators since many of the stations are very far below street level. If you have ever seen the Dupont Circle station entrance, you know what deep is. One station is so far underground that it only uses high speed elevators between street level and the station. The thinking by the men in charge was that if the escalators at the staion entrances were covered, people would jam up at the end to put up their umbrellas in bad weather, so the escalators were left open to the elements. Needless to say that has not worked out well and on any given day there are stations without a working escalator. Since they are being repaired so often, they are open top, bottom or the whole length if they have taken the steps out. At top and bottom, they have very powerful heaters to keep precipitation in a liquid state no matter how cold it is. Now some of the stations are being fitted with very modern glass canopies in hopes of protecting the escalators, so we will have to see if the clumping of passengers at the top takes place. Since the stations have to be accessible to handicapped passengers, there are elevators between street and station level and between the station mezzanine and the track level, but they are not super dependable either One hot day a friend decided, with many other people, to take the elevator to the street since there was not a working up escalator and the elevator stopped in the shaft and was there for 45 minutes.

 

[48bencix]

I love elevators

When I attended Berkeley in 1964, I met a guy named Tom, the only other guy I knew who loved elevators like I did. We would go to different buildings on campus, and later in San Francisco and ride the elevators. We enjoyed comparing the various features.

Otis elevators were considered the best at the time. A building owner would pay extra to have them installed. Otis elevators had door sensor edges that would sense the presense of a person and not crunch down on them when attempting to close. Other elevators of the time, and many today have an extending panel that has to touch the person and then retract. Otis also had touch buttons located at each floor, touch them and the neon tube inside would light up. Many of the larger Otis systems had a lobby control panel which would have a circle with system condition lights, kind of an early computer. It would show "up-peak down-peak, balanced", and a couple of other conditions. These systems would sometimes send an elevator up to the top, say before lunch and it would be available to take people down.

Westinghouse elevators were less common at the time. When you got on a Westinghouse and the doors closed, the cab floor indicator would race ahead 3 floors, showing the nearest floor where the cab could stop, then continue to change.

We liked the elevators of taller buildings the best because they would go the fastest. We would judge them by smoothness, (Otis), accelleration (Westinghouse). Good elevators of the time and now will start to open the doors a little before the car has reached the floor level. This speeds things up a bit. They all close completely before leaving the floor.

Of course our World Trade Center had the most and best elevators. I was fortunate enough to visit there in 1978. Nothing like a 100 story elevator ride. Empire State building has nice ones too.

Elevator systems today are all computer controlled and this adds quite a bit of efficiency. One of the latest tricks some of the newest systems use is that you punch in the floor you want to go to in the lobby, then the computer tells you what cab to take. This way each cab is only servicing a few floors at a time.

I too have been in many elevator machine rooms, there is one in San Francisco, the 29 story building was constructed in 1929, and the original Otis system had relays, fun to watch. At one point the system was revised and a vacuum tube control system was added, the original system had elevator operators. In 1980 a computer overlay system was installed, to increase efficiency. In 1991 The system was revised again making a high and low elevator bank. During all of these years and changes, the original Otis elevator machines were used. As was typical of these systems, the motors are direct current. The direct current is produced by a motor generator set, the motor uses alternating current from the building and produces direct current for the elevator drive machines. There is one generator for each drive machine. The direct current allows for precise control and variable speed.

I think I like the elevators and washing machines because they are automatic, and do different things when buttons are pushed. I also appreciate the engineering behind all of these devices.

Martin

 

[petek]

Years back in Vancouvers west end where there are dozens of high rise apartment buildings we'd always joke if someone moved into a building that didn't have an Otis but some cheap make like Montgomery or Krone, clunky things.
I believe it was Otis that had the big brass control panels on the lobby showing where each car was and they could set it for heavier up, heavier down.Called the Auto-tronic

 

[wiskybill]

Pete,
You are so right about Montgomery elevators.
The last building that I worked in before retiring had three Montgomery elevators, all 1970 vintage. The building was only 6 floors and those were the SLOWEST elevators you will ever ride in and always at least 1 out of service.
You could literally walk up the stairs faster.

 

[polkanut]

The elevators in our city hall are Westinghouse. The building was built in 1940 as the home office for Employers Mutual Insurance. They were one of the original sponsors of 60 Minutes. Their logo was and still is the train depot here in Wausau. And yes, the elevators have som very ornate grille work, very Art Deco.

 

[laundromat]

elevators

All of us know they have their ups and downs but seriously,Mr.Alexander Otis invented the elevator and made some of the nicest ones ever.I lived in an old Pepsi Cola warehouse in Baltimore years ago and the old Otis elevator would take me as well as 4 to 6 washers up 4 stories to my apartment.It had a manual control arm made of brass and the gate too.There would be many a time that Joe(the maintanance man who lived across the hall)would be sick (or drunk)and I would wind up running that old machine all night long.The bitch would be when it got stuck or needed service.

 

[tolivac]

There were some very nice Westinghouse Escalators in the Wash DC plant I used to work in-the building was built in 1939,a Gov't building.Just about a year ago-the escalators were condemmed as unsafe-the frames were cracked-unsafe to ride.don't know what brand replaced the Westinghouse ones-Were really neat-all brass fittings.The buidding had Otis elevators-was fascinated by them-they used to have relay-vacuum tube logic panels-then these were replaced with microprocesser based controllers.They retained the Otis gearless motors,and Leonard electric motor gen sets.Used to watch the equipment room machinerey on breaks.Was interesting.They also had freight elevators-these had DC GE motors driving a gearbox.They also had GE motor-gen sets and relay logic.Now I was told the elevator equipment was upgraded agian-now with all microprocessoer equipment of a diffrent type-no more MG sets.

 

[48bencix]

The latest in Elevators

Maglev elevators set to debut in Japan

TOKYO — Elevators controlled by magnetic levitation are set to debut as early as 2008, promising speedier, quieter and more comfortable lifts. The world's first magnetic levitation train for commercial use, the Maglev, is in Shanghai.
By Eugene Hoshiko, AP

These elevators use magnets in place of wheels and guide rails to travel up and down.

Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corp. said the elevators would be the first in the world to employ magnetic levitation — a technology capable of suspending objects in midair through combination of magnetic attraction and repulsion.

Maglev technology has already been used to develop high-speed trains. The only passenger-carrying maglev train in the world links Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, to the city center at up to 267 miles per hour.

A maglev shuttle in Birmingham, U.K., was abandoned in 1995 after 11 years in operation because of technical glitches.

 

[Cybrvanr]

Automatic Elevator control systems absloutely amaze me because of the simple fact that they were developed back in the 1930's, and became very popular in the 40's and 50's. Automated elevator systems handling several floors, and several elevator cars can be extremely complex. Performing this level of control today is no problem with I.C. chips that can be built with millions of transistors or more, and memory chips that can hold megabytes of information.

Before the micro-processor however, it was all done with relays, switches, tubes and other electro-mechanical goodies that took up lots of space, and were very complicated. Writing an additional command into software is an easy, inexpensive thing, but adding a bank of relays to a controller to perform a specific function took considerable labor and expense. Yet, these things fluorished in the pre-micro-processor era!

One of the neatest elevators I have been on was recently at Rockefeller center in New York city. They have recently opened the observation deck on top of the G.E. building. The elevator shaft is decorated with neons, LED's and lasers, and the top of the elevator car is glass. When one gets into the elevator, it resembles an ordinary elevator car with a frosted glass ceiling with flourescent lamps behind it. Once the operator closes the door however, the flourescent lights go out, and the fancy lighting in the elevator shaft comes on, and the glass becomes transparent. They even decorated the counterweight with lights, so when it whizzes by, you can see a streak of light!

TomTurbo, your story about the DC metrorail escalators is pretty interesting. I always wondered why they didn't cover the openings to the subways like that! I ride the metro-rail frequently when I'm up that way on business. It seemed like it was a corner cutting measure or some other bean-counter mentality that kept covers off the escalators. Sounds like there was some thought that went into why, although it was a little bit out of touch though. Just typical of the U.S. government however, I can't believe they are constantly rebuilding those escalators, and I can't believe they are wasting so much energy running those heater-dryers in there! It seems like the awnings could have paid for themselves hundreds of times over in the upkeep and retro-fitting of those escalators to operate in the damp conditions!!

 

[tolivac]

In the gov't building I worked in the -started there in 1988-they were using the realy logic panels.The big thing of these over micropocessors is exteeme durability--those panels were working from 1939 to 1990 or so-wonder if the microprocessors will last that long.The relay units used a vacuum tube oscillators and and a metal probe that went by the oscillators coil to "level" the elevator car at the floor when it stopped for people to get on or off.And there were three MG sets-one to power the realys and circuits-another for the car door motors and hoist motor feild.The 3rd was for the armature of the hoist motor.MG sets were considred better than SS rectifiers and devices for DC hoist motors-because when the elevator car is descending-the motor is more like a generator than a motor.It is then feeding power BACK into the supply-MG sets coped with that well.They have improved the SS devices to where the MG sets is no longer required.However the MG units are incredibly duarable.And they isolate their load from the powerline-would like to see them used as power supplies in SS transmitters.The power surges kill more RF amp transisters than lightening strikes!!The MG's ran at 1800 RPM so brush life was very long.
I as well rode the Metro system in DC-mainly to commute to work and for downtown shopping.Loved watching the techs work on those LONG escalators they have-they have 2 gear motor drives per section!!also the awnings could keep the WATER out of the escalator sumps-that was a problem as well.Rain and snow would cause the water drainage into the sumps-sometimes escalator equipment was located there.

 

[chad_hauris]

If you go to the Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs Ark. there is a very old Westinghouse elevator still working in it.
There is an interesting 50's Otis elevator at an old building here in Midland TX which has touch-sensitive buttons, which operate like touch lamps or the touch tune buttons on some 70's TV's. The number part in the button is metal to provide the touch sensor.
I'm sure some of the elevators here still use the MG sets, as there are key switches on some of them at the first floor for "Generator On/Off".