Rare set of 4 Express lifts

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Please note: Please don't attempt to copy what you see in this video without understanding of how to do it safely. I don't mean to sound bossy or tell people what to do. I just don't want people to get hurt. Just from watching my videos will not give you all the knowledge required to safely enter lift shafts.
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[@IM35461]

I used to work on two banks of four Express 4A Lifts, gearless, double wrap U drive with compensating ropes and advanced door opening with a top speed of 600ft per minute and had relay based dispatcher panels which even worked out if the demand was for up or down and parked the lifts accordingly. They were installed in the late 1960's and had no electronics other than capacitors. These were in Southern House Croydon and very similar to the ones installed in the Post Office Tower.

[@Techno-Universal]

Those lifts should be kept original as they could actually be more unreliable and more expensive to maintain if they are replaced or heavily modernised! They also seem really fast for the building so I wouldn’t be surprised if the residence voted to keep the old lift because they don’t want to pay for a modernisation or replacement through their rates while wanting to avoid increases in their rates because of higher maintenance costs! They might of also heard of nightmare situations with tower blocks with newer cheap lifts that have had to get their lifts replaced after a few years due to maintenance and reliability issues with the new lifts.

[@andrewthompsonuk1]

3 or more relay logics were common. They had timers on each lift that were slightly longer than the travel time from top to bottom. Usually a dummy call would bring a lift to the ground floor where it was parked on a timer. The second one would be free running and the third would be parked where it was last stopped on a timer. The timers were usually a minute or so. This meant you could have a longish wait time before the third lift came to life. However when things were busy all lifts would be responding to all floors. Some systems would inhibit door opening if another lift won a race. In some buildings the system was not balanced so one would get more use than the others. If one lift was broken you often had to wait for the timers before anything would move. Holding a call button would eventually get you all the lifts.

[@benolifts]

That is very interesting. I bet modern day engineers would have no clue how to troubleshoot this system if it went from. I have many questions! With the set of 2 system of left lift default being for up and right lift default being for down, and then if a certain condition is met, for example the left lift is higher than the call and is heading away, then the mode changes from being individual to a lift race... 1. Am I understanding this correctly or am I missing something, or mis understanding. 2. If the left lift enters into race mode, does that mean the right lift is also now in race mode, or are the two separate. 3. on a set of 3 I am confused at how lift 3 comes in. Is it that if lift 1 becomes in use, the call buttons for lift 1 are now connected to lift 3? 4. If there is 3 lifts and 1 lift receives a call in reverse direction while still operating in the other direction, does the lift enter race mode, does it transfer its calls to both other lifts or just to lift 3? I find relay logic very interesting, and there is almost nothing about it at this level of complexity on the internet.

[@andrewthompsonuk1]

@@benolifts Modern-day people think about things differently (Just look at IT these days). I was given tours of various motor rooms of 1960s and 1970s Otis systems. This was in about 1980 so the systems were totally original. These engineers could tell you exactly what every relay did and most issues with the logic could be sorted out very quickly. Think of each lift having 3 states parked, up mode or down mode. Up mode could only be canceled if there were no calls from either the car or the outside above it. Same idea for down mode. These states were usually indicated with light bulbs in the car on the button panel as well as on the ground floor as small arrows next to the numbered floor lights. There were no interrelated conditions between the lifts each controller is separate and in the two or more lift scenarios there is a separate rack of hold in relays for each floor whose job was to effectively call all the lifts to that floor and cancel the call when the first one got there. To answer your question, a call button will generate a call on all 3 lifts which will be cancelled once the first one gets there. So the call buttons are totally shared between lifts. By race mode, I mean both or all heading to the same call. The parked mode timers were the only thing that stopped a race. For your point 4 all the lifts will keep heading to the call until it's cleared and the others will stop and reverse at the next floor they are near. The better systems would do this reversing without opening the doors (felt strange if you were in one that did that). I think relay logic was an evolution from the very basic logic. They just kept adding more and more features on top of the basic design. The relay logics look very complex however once each subsystem was understood they were actually fairly simple and easy to work on.

[@pineappleroad]

I remember hearing that pretty much every manufacturer from this time period used their own system for handling multiple lifts and i have heard that the system otis used was one of the simplest systems, and im not 100% sure but from what i know it seems the otis system would not be able to handle more than 2 lifts from what i have been told, with the otis system, up calls go to the left lift, down calls go to the right lift, if one of the lifts broke down, is switched off, or the doors are held open for too long, then a relay kicks in to transfer all the calls to the other lift, athough if a lift is sat on a floor idle, then the call buttons on that floor will then be connected to that lift on this system the transfer relay does not kick in if it takes too long for the lift to serve a particular call

[@wisteela]

Very interesting. I like how they have a window in the door.

[@ZZ9ProductionsOFFICIAL]

i'm glad these are still original, i think the only original express lifts i've been in so far still. One thing that makes me think they might have initially been in two sets of 2 is how the right two are positioned close together and the left two are likewise, but there's a large gap between lifts 2 and 3. If they had always been a set of 4 I would have expected them to all be equidistant from one another, likely with centre opening doors instead of the single slide doors that are used here, or with the middle two opening in the opposite direction to what they currently do to make the gaps a bit more equal. I also wonder if they might have been linked up when the dewhurst panels were added in to comply with regulations, but that would then depend on how easy it would be to make equipment from that time work with the original if it would be possible at all. The motor room for these would be very interesting to see one day if you manage to get up there

[@benolifts]

The Dewhurst panels are just an addition. No logic changes happened when the Dewhurst was added. This building was built in the early 70s. Using circuit boards with processors on lifts in the 70s would have been very early and pretty unheard of. Express were one of the first to use circuit boards in the late 70s with their weird relay logic lifts with electronic dispatch system. Most likely that these lifts are 1970s ice cube relay lifts and were 2 sets of 2, and then when the 80s model came out, which uses the same ice cube logic, but with electronic dispatch, express probably added the circuit boards for dispatch to make a set of 4. If these lifts do have the older generation logic originally, then either the entire logic was replaced with ice cube (or maybe the late 80s to 90s electronic express logic), or alternatively express may have added the circuit boards to the 60s logic which would be a very rare system. Back in those days there was more of an attitude of making things work rather than planned obsolescence.

[@LAUCHGeorge]

PLEASE make a detailed look on ThyssenKrupp Evolution Blue PLEASEEEE!

[@joshlunt7827]

Gotta love that ding! 1:06 Presumably the one at 1:06 meant that that particular lift was going in a different direction due to the higher pitch?

[@LBSiUK]

Oh, just to let you know, Train Sim World 2 is currently free on Epic Games Launcher.

[@Joemp3]

He has it already with all DLCs

[@SPS8elevatorsoflakecounty]

There is one set of three relay-control elevators that I know of, but they have since been modernized. They were Otises from the 1960s, and I was able to snap some pictures in the machine room quickly, as well as get a video of the original cars. The fixtures were replaced with Dewhurst but that was all that was updated. Now they’re totally replaced, and have touch screens.

[@dykodesigns]

I've never seen sets of 3 realy lifts either, but I have seen 1+2 setups where two lifts run as set, and one smaller lift running independantly. The independant lift is then ususally a smaller capacity cab. The smaller lift sometimes runs faster then the two that are part of the set. Last year I came across a 1+2 setup in an office building in Rotterdam (called Het Grotiushuis). I have filmed these but I can't remember if the samller lift was faster. These lifts where modernized with modern logic. Another thing that I've seen is a two lift setup where the lifts always park with on the groundfloor with the doors open. This was in a department store in Enschede which sadly was modernized, the original lifts are gone. Maybe the set of 4 relay lifts use some intricate selector system, recently I've seen something about a telephone exchange system on the Look Mum No Computer / Museum Of Everything Else channel. He's trying to work out how these phone relay systems work. However, I wouldn't be supprised if Express just moddded them in the 80's and added some computer logic to it to combine two sets of 2.

[@wisteela]

Sam from Look Mum No Computer is awesome.

[@johnrauner2515]

Surely though if you can have lifts refer calls on then this would work for a set of 4 relay controlled lifts. Lift 3 would refer a call on to lift 4 if it's busy regardless of where the call came from.

[@benolifts]

I think the inefficiencies of the system would become too much with a set of 4. With a set of 2 there is inefficacies as relays can not count. If call happens and no lift is on the floor then Lift 1 takes the up calls and lift 2 takes the down calls. If lift 1 is going upwards and has calls upwards and it gets a call below it then it enters race mode (and the other way around with up and down swapped). If it waits more than 60 seconds because some idiot blocks the doors it enters race mode. Race mode is defaultly active so if ever lift 1 was switched off, then all its calls are transferred. This means that if the lifts are not busy, and I was on floor 2 and press up, and the lift 2 was on floor 1, and lift 1 was on floor 0, then lift 1 responds to call despite being further away. So with a set of 3 lifts, while at the moment I don't fully understand it, but it will have some complex transferring system. When the lifts are very busy and a full on race of all 3 happens then they are fairly efficient. But there will be regular lifts going to terminal floors needlessly due to it losing the race and not knowing where to go. But when the lifts are not bust the transfer of calls will be very ineffective and have difficulty being done at the right moment. So with a set of 4 lifts. The initial transfer to start the race will be very buggy and not efficient. How the transfer would happen would be crazy complex. And once in race mode there will be constant lifts going to terminal floor as they get lost after losing races all of the time. At this point it becomes better to have 2 sets of 2 lifts. The problem with this is that most people will call both sets as they are impatient. But the downsides of this (lifts keep stopping at floors where passengers have taken the other set) will still be better than the downside of the overly difficult set of 4 (difficult getting race to start at best moment, unfair traffic on some lifts more than others, lifts lose races all the time and waste electricity going to terminal floors as they are lost).

[@godfreypoon5148]

It's not difficult to perform the despatch logic using simple analog electrics, without even the need for active elements (no transistors or tubes). Arrange a potentiometer for each lift with taps on the tapers corresponding to each floor, and have the wiper position driven by the position of the car in the shaft for each lift. When the floor call button is pressed, the corresponding tap on all potentiometers is to be grounded. Drive each wiper from a reference voltage source with a modest series resistance for each. This will yield a voltage for each lift that is proportional to the distance between the lift and the pressed floor call button. Connect a sensitive reed relay (of the low voltage coil, current sensing type) to each wiper node, and energise it through a reverse blocking diode for each and a resistance common to all, fed by the voltage reference. This arrangement will allow current flow through only the relay corresponding to the lift with shortest aforementioned distance. The reed relay contact set can be used to gate selection of the appropriate lift. Use relays to break the reed coil circuits for lifts travelling in the undesired direction, except in the case where all are - the call should be accepted by the lift with shortest distance.

[@hariranormal5584]

Wow you seem to understand the analog stuff, and here I really have not even got an answer of how a Relay Logic's "CPU" works :V

[@NaylenGamingTV]

Ben I’ve Got An Idea: You Could Revisit Luton Shopping Centre & Surf Those Lifts.

[@joshlunt7827]

Gotta love that ding! 1:01

[@nazmerts1330]

Beno this soo amazing by the way what kind of logic they are using?

[@benolifts]

Ice cube logic

[@nazmerts1330]

@@benolifts thx beno

[@wesh420]

i drink ice

[@nazmerts1330]

@@wesh420 yez

[@AndrewG1989]

I like the “ding” sound of those lifts.

[@benolifts]

I have blocked that troll that seems to be following you everywhere on KZbin. He seems obsessed with you.

[@AndrewG1989]

@@benolifts Cheers. I know who that troll is. Keeps on changing names and making stupid comments no matter what I comment.

[@cat1554]

I remember you had a speedometer app on the app store. However, I can't find it now. Is it only in the UK app store?

[@Internationalcartoons4063]

♬ Imma gonna say hi to the guy top the lift ♬. Hi!

[@elevatorfilmersg]

Perhaps the passenger lifts at the Hilton London metropole originally were a set of 4. The original block had 4 express passenger lifts when the hotel opened in 1973. But those passenger lifts were modernised by Otis in 2006. I’m unsure if the logic for those express lifts were replaced in the 1990s just like the service lifts. Sadly the fireman’s lift, the last lift in the building to still use the original 2nd gen express fixtures, was shut down earlier this year for modernisation by a generic company. But I think the fireman’s lift also has the original logic replaced in the 1990s by express just like the service lifts. Anyway now even the service lifts have also been modernised by generic

[@Loding_lul]

Hi ben! I have found an unlocked Schindler euro lift logic cabinet and I was about to open it but I found a camera pointing towards the lifts and so I closed it but not all the way so there was still a big gap, should I go back and take a look or should I just let it be?

[@benolifts]

I am not too sure what you mean. Without context of what building it is, I don't know if the camera is monitored. You should leave everything about the lift the same as how you found it, unless something is wrong like a cabinet is left open, then you should lock it.

[@benolifts]

A shopping center is pretty risky

[@TheUKTransportBlogger]

These are knackered. And I honestly think they’ll be replaced once Lift 1&4 fail since 3 is stuck between floors and 2 is crashed in the pit. I rode Lift4 & 1 today both have multiple issues but are just about working. A guy told me that 4 had failed yesterday. I honestly think the middle pair broken are donoring parts to keep the others going now.

[@mushroomcraft]

That's depressing

[@TheUKTransportBlogger]

@@mushroomcraft They gave up last year been no lift operation since.

[@xxalexaviation]

Weird they left the old panel in.

[@gabrielcoyle3067]

They appear to have been modded

[@windowsxpnt2347]

hey austin this is guys

[@AndrewG1989]

hey guys windows xpnt can’t stop commenting

[@asetatlikalem]

İ dont think they supposed to have a voice

[@joemercedeslivestreamchann8885]

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