Escalators & Travelators

Where a lift moves people in batches, an escalator moves them continuously. In a shopping mall, an airport terminal or a railway concourse that difference decides whether a floor plate works: a single escalator pair carries several thousand people an hour without anybody standing and waiting, which is why retail schemes are planned around them from the first sketch.

Our escalators are built on a welded steel truss sized for public-duty service — the class of machine intended to run sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for the life of the building. Steps are single-piece die-cast aluminium with demarcation lines on the tread and both sides. Handrail speed is synchronised to step speed and monitored continuously, so any deviation stops the unit before a passenger notices it.

Travelators, or moving walkways, do the same job on the horizontal or on a gentle incline. Flat travelators move passengers along the long circulation routes of terminal buildings; inclined travelators are specified in hypermarkets, where they carry shopping trolleys between parking levels and the sales floor. Trolley-compatible pallets and magnetic wheel locks are fitted where trolley use is expected.

Safety devices are layered rather than singular. Step sag detection, handrail entry protection, comb-plate impact switches, missing-step monitoring, over-speed governors and skirt-deflector contacts each stop the machine independently. Standby operation is standard: the unit slows or stops when no passenger is present and restarts on sensor detection, which meaningfully reduces running cost in buildings with uneven footfall.