
Rare wooden escalators lead down into a staggeringly monotonous tiled tunnel - bcaulfield
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/st-annas-tunnel
======
perilunar
The wooden escalators at Wynyard Station in Sydney were replaced last year,
and they turned the old treads into a sculpture:

[http://chrisfox.com.au/interloop/](http://chrisfox.com.au/interloop/)

~~~
the_rosentotter
That is incredibly cool. Genius way to preserve, and even honor, the old, even
though it is replaced by something newer. Wish we did this kind of thing more.

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LiamPa
Didn’t know that any still existed, here’s why they don’t in the UK:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Cross_fire?wprov=sfti1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Cross_fire?wprov=sfti1)

~~~
setquk
I remember this. My grandmother was caught up in it coming back from holiday.
Back then there were no mobile phones and she couldn’t hear her land line
phone so everyone was panicking and we had to go to her house to see if she
was ok. She was making some tea when we got there and shrugged it off as a
minor disruption to her schedule. A lot has changed technology-wise since
then.

For the people who don’t know, you could smoke on London Underground back then
and the place was littered with cigarette butts still burning in some cases.
It was just a matter of time.

~~~
interfixus
Oh yes. I was living around London at the time, and very well remember being
stranded at some station when all trains were halted, shortly after I had
gotten on board at King's Cross.

As for mobile phones, I actually believe there were some at the time. They
started appearing sometime during the latter years of the eighties, to begin
with as rather expensive status symbols, conspicuously flashed by the yuppie
mob.

Tangential: Being stranded on the tube was not necessarily a waste of time.
Not too long before, I was in a stationary train in a tunnel near Liverpool
Street Station, in muted light for the better part of an hour. A woman in her
eighties (who said: "I don't like old people") told me fascinating stories
about the bombing of London that she had experienced. Only gradually did I
realize we were talking about bombings of the _first_ world war. Zeppeliners.
Never heard of that before, and found it hard to credit, but of course,
everything checked out when I looked it up.

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spython
That reminded me of some of the nicer speculative psychogeography writings
about the Woolwich tunnel time anomaly:

[https://portalsoflondon.com/2017/07/02/the-woolwich-
anomaly/](https://portalsoflondon.com/2017/07/02/the-woolwich-anomaly/)

~~~
elthran
This utterly fascinates me. I don't know whether to treat this as someone who
actually believes this stuff, a bit like the Mandela Effect, or if it's all
just satire

~~~
mseebach
It's fiction: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/08/woolwich-
foo...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/08/woolwich-foot-tunnel-
portals-of-london)

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jeffwass
I remember using the Old wooden escalators at Macys in NYC when I was little.

And Looks like Macys even kept them after a recent renovation :
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/nyregion/macys-
histori...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/nyregion/macys-historic-
wooden-escalators-survive-renovation.html)

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mschaef
The wooden escalators are truly a blast from the past for me.

I grew up in Houston in the 1980's, and the Foley's department store downtown
was one of the old-school, many floor department stores that used to be more
common. (Like the old Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.) I distinctly remember
riding the escalators all the way to the top, and the top few floors having
these seemingly rickety narrow wood escalators. I see the fire safety risks,
but am still glad to have had the opportunity to see it firsthand.

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mrarjen
I went down this tunnel once, the escalators were out of action unfortunately,
so a big lift was used instead. It's surprising how spacious it is down there,
and ideal for biking down the tunnel.

~~~
Tharkun
Cycling down the tunnel is not allowed, unless <5km/h. It's _incredibly_
annoying to be overtaken by cyclists in such a narrow space. In fact, anyone
doing this should probably try cycling next to a moving train for comparison.

There's a sign in the tunnel that says something like "cyclists are tolerated,
but only at walking speed". I frequently get into arguments wich douchebags
who ignore this rule and ring their bells like antisocial nutcases at
pedestrians in the tunnel. You know, the way drivers do when cyclists aren't
moving fast enough for their tastes.

~~~
Symbiote
> There's a sign in the tunnel that says something like "cyclists are
> tolerated, but only at walking speed".

There's a sign in Denmark, the standard bicycle+pedestrian plus the text
"Knallert forbudt"[1], often seen where the path is shared with pedestrians —
like on a quay or in a park.

I'd assumed "knallert" was cognate with English "knell", meaning to ring (or
the sound of) a bell, and the sign therefore meant a cyclist mustn't ask
people to move out of the way. But it seems that "knell" in Danish is
"knolde"[2], and the sign is the much simpler "Mopeds forbidden".

I like my meaning better.

[1] [http://mapio.net/pic/p-26687006/](http://mapio.net/pic/p-26687006/)

[2] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
Germanic...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
Germanic/knuzlijan%C4%85)

[3] StreetView example:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6779341,12.5994887,3a,75y,27...](https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6779341,12.5994887,3a,75y,27.9h,90.3t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJ9RpWoFjvey_DR95Hnq-
Dg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

~~~
Tharkun
"Knallen" in Dutch can refer to exploding sounds, or it can mean "going really
hard/fast", so I had a similar reaction to yours. Languages are a never ending
source of interesting tidbits like this.

------
Erwin
A similar but much more active 100+ year old tunnel in Hamburg:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbe_Tunnel_(1911)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbe_Tunnel_\(1911\))

That one allows both cars and pedestrians. Worth seeing while in Hamburg
(along with the miniature model railway museum
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniatur_Wunderland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniatur_Wunderland)
\- a visit there inspired Sid Meier to re-create Railroad Tycoon).

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DaveSapien
I road some wooden escalators in Budapest many years ago. It was a wonderful
experience. An absolute delight. The wooden 'clanking' sounds where especially
memorable.

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booleandilemma
The Macy’s on 34th street in Manhattan used to have wooden escalators. (Maybe
it still does?)

~~~
elahd
They still have a couple with wooden treads on the top floor near the bedding
section. There are many more in that building with steel treads and wooden
"bodies."

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jnsaff2
There is also Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_foot_tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_foot_tunnel)

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fencepost
I look at that and think "That's a huge canvas for an art school to work on
for years."

The white does have the advantage of making any water leakage or disruption of
the walls immediately apparent though.

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iMart1n_FR
A pretty cool viral rap video was shot there last year !

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjQTA81MhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjQTA81MhY)

Enjoy !

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gpvos
"1876 feet". WHYYYY? You're outside the US, keep your obfuscating imperial
measures where we can't see them please.

~~~
Symbiote
They are writing for an American audience.

I'd like to see a browser automatically translate units, perhaps with an
extension like [1], but ideally with standard markup. That could also end the
mess of brackets on English Wikipedia.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/automatic-
uni...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/automatic-unit-
converter/)

~~~
gpvos
Well, they shouldn't. The international audience is much bigger.

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lardo
A good excuse for fried food but research sauce options beforehand.

