Hi
Continuing my story of visits to the Beacon, I sometimes found the lifts entrance door to be open. On my 1st couple of visits I merely got as far as the lift doors, marvelling at what excitement it must have been to people in the past and took a photo (possibly lost / chucked as it was poor quality) of the plaque commemorating the visit by the Queen. Can’t remember if I tried the call button, but I do remember being told by centre staff that the lifts were out of order as they had never been maintained for years.
Not long after I did hear that the lifts were being repaired and this prompted me to try again. Another random day, prob early afternoon I tried again, walked into the foyer and tried the button and the lift doors opened. I didn’t dare enter due to possible entrapment but sent it to the top and called back again. All seemed to be OK so I decided to brave it – now or never!
The acceleration was in a series of jerks which I think is an early method of controlling motors in steps but deceleration was fairly normal. And there I was, right at the observation deck with no one in my way this time!
I set about exploring the 2 main floors, discovering that there was another significant floor under the restaurant.
Basement Floor This was reached using either one of two sets of stairs descending from the South (escape stairs) side of the restaurant and was a proper floor level but not round the whole circumference, just the Northern half roughly. This floor had male and female changing rooms / toilets, obviously for staff and a kind of maintenance room which contained the revolving floor mechanism spare bulbs, parts for machinery and possibly a workbench. There was access from at least one end of the semicircle to the floor void and you could see the light bulbs that illuminate the column and shine out of slatted holes down below. NB no access to escape stairs from this floor as it was on the ‘wrong’ side and I can’t remember if there were any access doors to the lift shaft from this level, certainly no formal stop here with automatic doors but the ubiquitous Bolton Brady access shutters would have made sense here.
Back to the main (restaurant) floor, I discovered that staircases led off from here in 5 directions! At the South side there are staircases to left and right down to the changing rooms (only 1 strictly necessary but everything was double routed) plus up and down the metal stairs in the core. At the North side beside the lifts there was a relatively smart internal staircase leading up and clockwise round the core to the Southern side of the observation deck. This staircase was signposted as a fire exit from the North side of the restaurant ie people to walk up it and then down the escape stairs from the South side of the observation deck!
Going clockwise from the main entrance (lifts, North side) there was a (full height poss.) desk in front as you walk out of the lifts that must have been for tills or the person that finds you a seat etc. Then the public internal stairs up to the observation deck and toilets. Next a room/space I have not labelled on my diagram unfortunately but I assume it could be a servery / wash up area served by dumbwaiter from the kitchen above. Next a gap in the kind of middle semi-inner core with possibly some flimsy doors (I can’t remember) concealing a lobby leading to all the multifarious staircases mentioned above. Next, a room labelled as ‘control room’ not sure what was meant to be controlled from here! Again, another unidentified space and then cloakrooms coming back to the lifts.
Observation Deck Again clockwise from the lifts there was a lobby / café area with sliding/folding? doors out to the deck itself. Then the kitchen which I was able to walk through to a door leading to the top of the public staircase and therefore out onto the South side lobby which had its own set of doors out onto the roof. Perhaps this was another kind of 1st class area of the roof for restaurant customers!
Continuing round there was a corridor with male/female toilets and then a door at the end back to the North lobby / café area with a tea bar (café servery) in this corner.
Even Higher!
Between the lift entrances (which were deep set here) on the observation deck, there was a metal ladder. In for a penny, in for a pound I climbed this it was more than a storey, perhaps 2 to climb and eventually reached a floor of lift equipment. Here there were electrical cabinets, Ward Leonard sets and diverter pulleys but no proper motors. The pulleys were presumably to take the drive cables from centrally mounted motors over to the North side of the core where the actual shafts are.
Higher again up another ladder was finally the motor room. This contained 2 gearless direct drive machines, longer than other gearless lift machines I had seen ie more sausage than disc shaped and painted pale blue I can still see it today!
There was a roof hatch with a ladder to it I think but enough was enough I seemed to have climbed halfway to the moon already! I was a little concerned about entrapment at this stage, this was before the days of mobile phones. I also had no water or toilet facilities and I was exhausted. I had had a scare earlier on trying the lift call buttons on one of the main levels while exploring to find that the door didn’t open nor did the machines above rumble and pull the lift up to me. After about 20 to 30 seconds the door opened there though. What had happened was that the lift car was just there in front of me but the Ward-Leonard set (motor coupled to a generator to covert ac to dc for lift control) needed to start up, they are often on a timer and so cut out if not used for a few minutes.
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And so down to ground travelling in the luxury by lift!
Tim
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