TIL the elevator at the old Grandview Hotel in St. Louis still uses a manual rope governor.

I was there for a wedding last weekend and the building manager let me peek in the machine room. The whole safety system is run off a hemp rope and a set of flyweights, nothing digital at all. For those who've worked on modern traction units, what's the biggest risk in keeping a system like that operational?

3 comments

3 Comments

spencer414mo ago

Reminds me how we trust old mechanical things way past their expected life. What's the plan when the last person who knows that rope system retires?

rowanbennett4mo ago

Wait, we still have rope systems?

the_spencer2mo ago

Most people don't realize that some of those old rope systems are actually storing potential energy like a spring. If the line goes slack then gets loaded again fast, it can snap and whip back with more force than you'd think. The scary part is that without proper maintenance logs, you don't know if the rope has been through that cycle a few times or hundreds. By the time you see visible fraying, the core could already be compromised. Everyone focuses on the operator retiring, but nobody asks how many shock loads that rope has actually taken.