I missed that this was being built. I remember the old escalator, up only and rather long, and the stair tunnel looking much dingier than does now (even in the 1950s, when the station was quite new).
From the Evening Standard:
Tube's first 'sloping lift' installed at Greenford, ending 68-year wait for disabled access
Ramzy Alwakeel Wednesday 21 October 2015
You wait 68 years for a lift: The new design has been unveiled at Greenford station Transport for LondonA revolutionary lift that runs up a slope on miniature rails has opened at a Tube station in west London.
The design, the first of its kind on the British rail network, ends commuters^ 68-year wait for disabled access at Greenford in Ealing.
It comes six years after plans to excavate a vertical lift shaft at the station were shelved on grounds of cost.
Transport for London said the new design, which resembles a funicular, was twice as efficient to run and cheaper to build as it did not require a shaft at all.
The design will be copied at two Crossrail stations when they open in 2018.
Lianna Etkind of campaign charity Transport for All called the lift ^a fantastic example of a clever innovation that has opened up this station to older and disabled people^.
Greenford opened in 1947 and until last year had the Tube network^s last wooden escalator.
Work to replace the capital^s escalators with metal ones began after the 1987 King^s Cross fire, which started underneath one.
Isabel Dedring, the deputy mayor for transport, said: ^The Mayor has set an ambitious target of ensuring more than half of
TfL» ^s stations are step-free by 2018.
^This lift is the first of its kind in the
UK▸ and a great example of one of the many innovative projects now underway to achieve that.^
Greenford is the 67th step-free station, leaving 203 to go.
Ealing^s transport chief Cllr Bassam Mahfouz said the lift would ^mean the world of difference^ for disabled people and those with young children, claiming some of them ^will now be able to access London for the first time in their lives because of this new lift^.
It doesn't seem to have an accepted name yet (well, why would it if there were none?). Any name must fit with ordinary lifts - vertical, if the distinction is needed - and horizontal lifts, for which we are still waiting but could find a use at stations too.
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