Friday, February 24, 2017

Paternoster Lift

A few weeks ago Claudia and I went to the main Brno post office after picking Tünde up from kindergarten.  This meant, of course, going for a ride on the paternoster lift (elevator).  She thinks it's a fun ride.

It's really the niftiest thing.  It's a chain of open compartments that move in a continuous loop between floors in a building.  Each compartment holds up to two or three people.

There's no call button since the loop is always running.  They don't break speed records or anything so that you can hop on and off.

Due to safety concerns, the production of new paternoster lifts ended in the 1970s.  Those same concerns are why many have been shut down but you can find them still being used in Europe.  There are around 230 of these still operational in Germany.  Czechland has 68 still running and I know that there are at least a few in the UK.  There are only two outside of Europe, one in Malaysia and one in Peru.

Update:  I came across another one.

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