Bit of a tangent (sorry) but is/was this a different paternoster from the one in this building? Attenborough Building - Wikipedia
I went on this on a visit in the early 1990’s, I tied a google but it’s not clear if this is still there or not.
Yeah different one, different uni. However I did visit the university of leicester a few times, around about 2000, and I don’t recall a paternoster in that building.
Also, in the interests of completeness, there was at least one other building on the de montfort campus that had a paternoster: Fletcher building. This building was only 6 floors high, though the paternoster cabins were noticeably bigger than James Went. Perhaps this building still stands and hasn’t been retrofitted?
Victorian designs are still used in many devices where they just work and there’s no need to change them.
As for the safety of paternosters, I can’t say. I only have my anecdotal data. However that’s still far superior to “I can’t imagine how that could be safe, so it’s unsafe”.
Sure, but how many of those are huge motorised things for moving people about? A Victorian potato peeler probably always was as safe as it ever needs to be.
I don’t see any reason at all why this statement should be true. Your unfounded confidence is superior to my unfounded doubt, because… Because.
I found a newspaper article about an accident with a paternoster in Frankfurt, Germany. This incident occurred last year in a luxury hotel, of all places. The victim was a 22 year old student who was using a paternoster for the first time in her life. Apparently, she panicked when missed the last exit on the top floor. She suffered fractures in both her feet as well as in her left shin.
The newspaper article is in German, but there are pictures of the young lady sitting in a wheel chair and of the paternoster.
http://www.fnp.de/lokales/frankfurt/Paternoster-Geliebt-und-gefuerchtet;art675,674594
They may have been invented in Victorian times, but the one I used was in a building built in 1964 and presumably the design and safety features had been updated at least a bit in the intervening 80 years…
I said As for the safety of paternosters, I can’t say.
That’s “unfounded confidence”?
Do you remember which building had the student canteen in? Or at least the post-grad canteen. That’s the one I remember using a paternoster in but I really have no idea what the name of the building was. (This was in 1997-98).
Well I started my undergrad degree in 97. The only canteen I used, or was aware of, was in the student union, which had neither a lift nor paternoster.
But of the two buildings which had paternosters, I would guess you are thinking of Fletcher building. Though it’s the one with fewer floors, it had a much bigger footprint, so it had lecture halls and display areas, whereas James Went just had lots of snug classrooms.
If James Went had a canteen, you wouldn’t want to go to it 
</DMU hijack>
I’m not sure. Are you confident they’re safe? On what grounds?
Huh?
Do you understand the sentence: As for the safety of paternosters, I can’t say.
Whatever. It’s the bit you said just after that, that made you appear quite confident.
Must be the Fletcher Building then. Ta.
The paternoster in Essex University library is still operating- you can see it on YouTube.
I rode it myself in the 1970’s, and I didn’t like it one bit. I remain astonished that these things are legal.
I used the one in the James Went at Leicester Poly frequently, back in 1985-89. after being a bit wary of it at first, it became a source of fun and brinksmanship in judging timings, especially if you were the second one jumping in per box and had less of a ‘window’ ! Never really tried obstructing the things though to see what happened … I don’t seem to remember the one in the Fletcher building so well but that was Arts and I was Science, with the James Went hosting our Maths lectures, usually in the top floors which swayed perceptibly in the wind…
I guess paternosters really don’t scan too well with modern H&S and accessibility, and yes there was a little canteen in the James Went (at least back then), but no you wouldn’t want to go to it so much, much preferred the ones in Fletcher and Hawthorn for my pie ‘n’ chips 
Seems like they’d take the fun out of a young child’s first trip to a tall building.
(You know, hitting all the buttons and scraming…)
As a guy who spent ten years in the elevator game (Yeah, it has its ups and downs. Shut up. 
), the ten years when the industry was playing catch-up to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act, all I can say is…
JESUS H. CHRIST, ARE YOU INSANE? YOU DON’T ALLOW PEOPLE ON THOSE DEATHTRAPS, DO YOU?!?!?
They are illegal here for multiple access and safety reasons, all well-founded.