"...you'll find that the
abandoned staircase leads to the back of the lift shaft in current
use. Interesting fact, the empty shaft isn't a lift shaft and
never was one. It was built to accommodate an experimental spiral
escalator, which broke down frequently and never really worked
well enough to go into service, so the shaft for it was simply
blocked off and never used. The escalator itself was removed
sometime in the 1950's and as far as I know, is in storage for
the LT museum, but no documentation on it's construction exists
anymore, so it's basically in bits. Mitsubishi though, have manufactured
the World's first spiral escalators and they're in a shopping
mall in San Francisco, but these are simply curved, rather than
a full spiral as the Holloway Road one was."
Darren Gomes.
©2005
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