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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.
And so down to ground travelling in the luxury by lift!
Tim
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