100-year-old wooden escalator at Macy's - GIF

[Jon]

100-year-old wooden escalator at Macy's flagship store. Originally built by the Otis Elevator Company, from oak and ash.

[neilbourjaily]

I'm thinking the caution stickers are not OEM.

[PJs]

Not so common anymore to have wood mixed with moving mechanical machines. Seems I remember seeing these when I was a kid. Very cool.

[neilbourjaily]

The combination of wood and machinery was common in fruit packinghouses into the 1990s. Wood was used in conveyors, elevators, to turn fruit as it rolled by on conveyors, holding carcases for fruit that was ready for final pack (you know, the fruit you're about to eat), rollers that would be geared to space sequentially in order to size the fruit. The first automatic pattern-packers arose in the 1980s and used wood paddles to walk the fruit to the pattern forms. As the computer age came on, the old wood grading and sizing lines went to Mexico. I worked in an orange packinghouse in Lindsay, CA (remember lindsay ripe olives?) that shipped over 2million 40lbs cartons annually, representing about 4% of the California industry. The first machines to switch to pure plastic-steel were optical sizers. Later machines read color, some scarring, even *brix (sugar content) by IR. Photos of the fruit are taken and compared to computer images for color, size, shape, scar. I don't know fps, but that fruit zips on by.

[MeJasonT]

I remember these escalators well from my trips to New York when my good lady forced me to go shopping in Macy's, I remember admiring the the wood work and wondering how they had not been pulled out already. There was a steel and aluminium one went up in flames on the London Underground due to an overheated motor and an accumulation of dust/fluff and litter. Is Macy,s still going, I heard Lord and Taylors and Vileen's basement had closed, they were two more of Debbie's shopping haunts in Manhasset where we were staying.

[Jon]

Escalator cleaner.

[MeJasonT]

That's like one of those crazy floor sanders, I watched one tradesman just about get launched out of a window when the machine took of on him and only stopped for the skirting board under the window. pure cartoon moment.
I've just realised this escalator cleaner hooks onto the tread plate.

[PJs]

Interesting tread cleaner. It does seem to be a scrubber of some kind, perhaps sanding, but would guess some kind of wire wheel or bristle brush. I seem to remember seeing gum in the treads a few times. Wonder if it gets the gum out?

[Jon]

This one is nice too.

[Frank S]

I wonder if they found the guys shoes