Original 70s era Otis Lifts

Careless.

London Underground were worried by Otis being a monopoly supplier at the time.

They gave orders to a company called Wadsworth.

Otis then bought the company.

A while later I booked an Otis lift operator to work at Edgware Road for some overnight work. We couldn't do the job because of other work.

We had an alternative job at Regents Park and I asked him if he could work the lift there? He said he could but it was a Wadsworth lift so it was not allowed.

Several years later I was trained how to operate lifts and escalators during engineering hours.

These lifts are known as geared traction lifts and mostly installed in the 80’s and 90s with a couple of exceptions being Chalk Farm (1979-1980) and Tufnell Park (1977-1979).

Wadsworth was the predominant manufacturer for these lifts who were bought by OTIS along with Becker and you’ll see on companies house that they merged with Becker in 1985 to become Wadsworth Becker.

OTIS were of course heavily involved as well. Indeed their high speed lifts at Hampstead were very unique, they were so powerful at the time that the power supply and motors were sat on two different floors of the cavernous machine room.

I believe Bank, Holloway Road and Elephant and Castle (Northern line) are the only stations that retain geared traction lifts.