What actually happens when a station lift breaks down?

BRX · Tuesday at 09:36

Lots of people rely on lifts to make journeys possible, so I would say they are a critical part of the rail infrastructure. But it feels to me like a lift failure is not really treated as an urgent situation. Lifts, it seems, can sometimes be out of action for days.

So, what actually happens when a lift breaks down, beyond a "sorry for the inconvenience" sign being stuck on the door? Are there any systems in place that allow it to be looked at immediately, by which I mean within an hour or two, to see if a fix can be done?

Is my perception that broken down lifts are not addressed urgently an unfair one?

RailUK Forums

InkyScrolls · Tuesday at 09:42

BRX said:
Lots of people rely on lifts to make journeys possible, so I would say they are a critical part of the rail infrastructure. But it feels to me like a lift failure is not really treated as an urgent situation. Lifts, it seems, can sometimes be out of action for days.

So, what actually happens when a lift breaks down, beyond a "sorry for the inconvenience" sign being stuck on the door? Are there any systems in place that allow it to be looked at immediately, by which I mean within an hour or two, to see if a fix can be done?

Is my perception that broken down lifts are not addressed urgently an unfair one?

When I was a guard, if we were told a lift wasn't working, and if we had a passenger on board who needed it, we could request an ad hoc platform change to make their situation easier. Not possible everywhere of course but I remember having such requests granted not infrequently at Lancaster, as the lifts were out for several months on multiple occasions. The station being fully bi-directional made that possible.

Sun Chariot · Tuesday at 10:07

Hello @BRX

I can't speak for lift contracts at railway stations; but I will share my own experience of lifts witin retail buildings.

1994 to 1998, my career was in retail store management, several stores within central London. Each store had at least one lift for shop-stock; one store had a customer lift as well.

For the next bit, imagine "store" = "railway station"...
- LIft maintenance + repair was contracted at overall retailer company-level, not by each store.
- The maintenance + repair contractor had its service model grouped into geographic regions (East UK, South West UK, London & Home Counties UK, etc).
- Each region had a small group of service engineers who were responsible for all the planned servicing/maintenance and all the unforeen failure-repairs, for all lifts in their region.
- And that meant, unless a lift posed a provable and material danger to life, the fault was added to the region's job-sheet, for an engineer to visit the store as and when the previous jobs (other sites) had been done.
- And that meant the lead-time for a visit (let alone parts) could be several weeks.

A commercial contract requiring "be on-site within 2 hours" Service Level Agreement will be prohibitively expensive for the station.
Lifts are specialised: it's not a case of "send an electrician".
Lifts are dangerous, too: I recall one service engineer's tragic death, when he didn't fully isolate the lift; it then dropped and crushed him.

Magdalia · Tuesday at 10:09

The lift industry is still unusually fragmented, with many separate companies doing manufacture, installation and maintenance.

There will be maintenance contractors on call, and sometimes a fix can be done. But if there is a component that needs replacement, then it can take a while.

At staffed stations, the staff will be able to provide assistance, and permission may be granted to vary a journey to use a lift at another station.

A few years ago the Chelmsford lifts were replaced, and Greater Anglia also provided road transport to and from Shenfield if required.

muz379 · Tuesday at 10:10

BRX said:
Lots of people rely on lifts to make journeys possible, so I would say they are a critical part of the rail infrastructure. But it feels to me like a lift failure is not really treated as an urgent situation. Lifts, it seems, can sometimes be out of action for days.

So, what actually happens when a lift breaks down, beyond a "sorry for the inconvenience" sign being stuck on the door? Are there any systems in place that allow it to be looked at immediately, by which I mean within an hour or two, to see if a fix can be done?

Is my perception that broken down lifts are not addressed urgently an unfair one?

The station operator will have a maintenance contract which will include a service level agreement which will have agreed targets for response time and resolution time among other things, obviously a priority response will mean that the maintenance contract costs more so I imagine that the level of response specified will depend on the patronage at the station.

I have known station lifts at very busy stations get a same day response although resolution has still taken a few days which I imagine is down to parts availability.

In the interim passengers that are completely unable to access the station because of this should have alternative transport arranged to or from the nearest file accessible station, or depending on the station It hasn't been unheard of for trains to use different platforms where possible if there are known assists required.

Geeves · Tuesday at 10:19

At my station when it's happened and there's no time to make arrangements we have had trains load up with the trapped passengers and then arranged a driver and guard + signal box to shunt the unit round the station so the passengers can leave from a different platform

Usually the engineers will be there with in two hours. I can tell you for definite it's treated as a very high priority by all parties right up to Control

CharlieSpotted · Tuesday at 10:20

Yesterday at Wolverhampton station someone was getting a priority response to their lift issue... a fire engine parked outside and several burly firefighters battling with lift doors that seemed reluctant to open.

LucyP · Tuesday at 10:21

The more interesting question is - why are station lifts so slow, compared with other lifts. They move at a snail's pace.

edwin_m · Tuesday at 12:44

Nottingham, Manchester Piccadilly P13/14 and probably other stations have stairlifts, presumably brought into use if the primary lift isn't working.

BRX · Tuesday at 12:59

Sun Chariot said:
Hello @BRX

I can't speak for lift contracts at railway stations; but I will share my own experience of lifts witin retail buildings.

1994 to 1998, my career was in retail store management, several stores within central London. Each store had at least one lift for shop-stock; one store had a customer lift as well.

For the next bit, imagine "store" = "railway station"...
- LIft maintenance + repair was contracted at overall retailer company-level, not by each store.
- The maintenance + repair contractor had its service model grouped into geographic regions (East UK, South West UK, London & Home Counties UK, etc).
- Each region had a small group of service engineers who were responsible for all the planned servicing/maintenance and all the unforeen failure-repairs, for all lifts in their region.
- And that meant, unless a lift posed a provable and material danger to life, the fault was added to the region's job-sheet, for an engineer to visit the store as and when the previous jobs (other sites) had been done.
- And that meant the lead-time for a visit (let alone parts) could be several weeks.

A commercial contract requiring "be on-site within 2 hours" Service Level Agreement will be prohibitively expensive for the station.
Lifts are specialised: it's not a case of "send an electrician".
Lifts are dangerous, too: I recall one service engineer's tragic death, when he didn't fully isolate the lift; it then dropped and crushed him.

It feels to me much more likely that a station lift will be out of service, than one in a retail store.

Finding a lift out of order at a shop is pretty rare. On the other hand, finding one or more of the lifts out of action at my two nearest stations with lifts, both with annual exits/entries measured in the millions and both of which are interchange stations, is commonplace.

Partly what prompted this thread was getting off the train at one of those stations yesterday, travelling with a bike. Both the lifts (one on each platform) were out of action. For me this was just an inconvenience - I was able to take panniers off the bike and carry everything down the stairs in a couple of goes - but I noticed an elderly passenger on the adjacent platform who had to rely on a kind fellow passenger to carry her bags down the stairs for her.

This is in south London where many many stations don't have lifts, so you are really quite stuck if you want to use these lift-serviced stations and the lifts aren't working: the nearest locations where there are also lifts are several miles away.

Whatever maintenance contracts are in action, it doesn't feel they are appropriate given the importance of keeping the lifts available for as much time as possible.

py_megapixel · Tuesday at 13:17

Are stations unusual for having so few lifts for the amount of traffic?

Shopping centres tend to have multiple lifts dotted around so if one isn't working you will easily be able to find another.
The new bus station in Stockport has two lifts between the concourse and the roof garden, and a third one to a side entrance, and there are plenty of other step free exits too.
Even my local supermarket has two lifts from the car park to the entrance foyer.

In contrast at the vast majority of big interchange stations you only get one lift to each platform island, and if it breaks down, you are screwed because there is no other step free access.

Mcr Warrior · Tuesday at 13:21

What's the typical target 'get it sorted' response time if someone does get stuck in a lift at a railway station? Is it 2 hours, or longer?

Sun Chariot · Tuesday at 13:38

BRX said:
Finding a lift out of order at a shop is pretty rare. On the other hand, finding one or more of the lifts out of action at my two nearest stations with lifts, both with annual exits/entries measured in the millions and both of which are interchange stations, is commonplace.

Perhaps you are unlucky at your two local stations? I cannot recall a lift out of use at stations in my area of West Sussex and Hanpshire.

If your two nearest stations have gate receipts "...measured in the millions", I presume your local stations are large urban interchanges?*

My 1990s experience of non-customer lifts, between loading-bay / stockrooms, was of numerous failures requiring a lift engineer each time; and the lead-time from "log the fault" to "engineer arrives" was anything from 4 days to 4 weeks.

* purely context - Manchester Piccadilly recorded 27.4 million entries and exits in the 2024-2025 period according to official Office of Rail and Road station usage data

Dave S 56F · Tuesday at 13:44

I was in Halifax railway station on Sunday going to low moor railway station and the lift in Halifax station was working fine when I went out of the station with my bike to one of the shops in Halifax Town I came back tried to use the lift again and it was faulty to go back on the platforms the doors just kept opening when I were pressing the platform floor button in the lift and ended up having to carry my bike down the footbridge steps.

CharlieSpotted · Tuesday at 13:48

BRX said:
Finding a lift out of order at a shop is pretty rare. On the other hand, finding one or more of the lifts out of action at my two nearest stations with lifts, both with annual exits/entries measured in the millions and both of which are interchange stations, is commonplace.

I'd say it's 6 of 1 and a half-a-dozen of the other.

In my local Sainsburys (one of those 'shop on stilts' affairs with the shop hovering above the car park) one of the two lifts has been out of order for weeks, and very frequently is, which is a pain when the travelator in the up direction is also very frequently out of order (and is now being refurbished/replaced for the umpteenth time). So, everyone with a trolley, pram, pushchair, etc. has only one way of getting up to the shop from the car park. A single, solitary lift.

They also used a slam-door goods elevator (right next to the passenger ones) in extremis at Christmas, with a member of staff riding up and down to operate it, but seem to have abandoned that idea now. Or perhaps that's out of order too.

Compared to stations, well, I frequently use Birmingham New Street and the problems with lifts and escalators there could fill an entire book, I suspect. The escalators - which must have been fundamentally unfit for purpose since day 1, I suspect - are now being replaced.

BRX · Tuesday at 14:23

I've discovered there's a website that monitors station lift availability:

Station Lifts - check if the lifts are working at any station

Check if the lifts are working at any train station in Great Britain

stationlifts.org.uk

It lets you see the history up to a year ago. The results for my two stations are pretty poor:

https://stationlifts.org.uk/DMK/history

https://stationlifts.org.uk/HNH/history

Of course I don't know how accurate this data is.

It's worth bearing in mind that at stations with more than one lift, just one of the lifts not working can mean that the whole station is inaccessible for some people. That's the case at interchange stations but also those where you need to go up and then down again (or vice versa) to get between the platform and the street.

In that reliability data above, one of Denmark Hill's three lifts has an availability of 71% over the past month. But anyone making a same-direction interchange between lines needs to use that lift, so it affects more than 1/3 of passengers and it affects 100% of non interchange passengers who make a return journey travelling to or from the station.

71% means that if you use the station daily monday to friday, on average the station would be inaccessible to you on one or two days every week. That just seems way too high to be acceptable. If it happened to you once or twice a year then perhaps it would be tolerable but not once or twice a week. It means really that the station is simply not realistically accessible to anyone relying on a lift - despite it being provided with three of them.

Sun Chariot · Tuesday at 14:46

Interesting site, @BRX and thanks for sharing it, as the Office of Rail and Road doesn't seem to provide data about station lift availability.

Have you tried raising with Southeastern?
- They should know which company is contracted, manages the lifts at Denmark Hill and at Herne Hill. Might well be the same lift-maintenance company for both stations.
- They might even indicate when each station's affected lift - if still out of use today - is due engineer visit / an expected date for lift's return-to-service.

Qwerty133 · Tuesday at 15:01

BRX said:
It feels to me much more likely that a station lift will be out of service, than one in a retail store.

Finding a lift out of order at a shop is pretty rare. On the other hand, finding one or more of the lifts out of action at my two nearest stations with lifts, both with annual exits/entries measured in the millions and both of which are interchange stations, is commonplace.

Partly what prompted this thread was getting off the train at one of those stations yesterday, travelling with a bike. Both the lifts (one on each platform) were out of action. For me this was just an inconvenience - I was able to take panniers off the bike and carry everything down the stairs in a couple of goes - but I noticed an elderly passenger on the adjacent platform who had to rely on a kind fellow passenger to carry her bags down the stairs for her.

This is in south London where many many stations don't have lifts, so you are really quite stuck if you want to use these lift-serviced stations and the lifts aren't working: the nearest locations where there are also lifts are several miles away.

Whatever maintenance contracts are in action, it doesn't feel they are appropriate given the importance of keeping the lifts available for as much time as possible.

Lifts do not typically break whilst they are sat vacant not being used so in order to accurately compare failure rates across different settings you need to consider the frequency of use. On average I would suspect that lifts in retail settings, and especially non-essential retail, would see significantly lower levels of demand than lifts at major stations. Not only will customers in retail settings be much less likely to have a large suitcase or other luggage making the stairs more difficult but in most shops the majority of customers aren’t required to go upstairs as typically the items with the highest demand will be kept on the ground floor.

BRX · Tuesday at 15:08

Qwerty133 said:
Lifts do not typically break whilst they are sat vacant not being used so in order to accurately compare failure rates across different settings you need to consider the frequency of use. On average I would suspect that lifts in retail settings, and especially non-essential retail, would see significantly lower levels of demand than lifts at major stations. Not only will customers in retail settings be much less likely to have a large suitcase or other luggage making the stairs more difficult but in most shops the majority of customers aren’t required to go upstairs as typically the items with the highest demand will be kept on the ground floor.

This may be true, but it just means that the lift needs to be specified appropriately for its intended use. Obviously a station lift is generally going to have to be more robust than one in a retail setting, for the reasons you give.

Magdalia · Tuesday at 15:40

BRX said:
In that reliability data above, one of Denmark Hill's three lifts has an availability of 71% over the past month. But anyone making a same-direction interchange between lines needs to use that lift, so it affects more than 1/3 of passengers and it affects 100% of non interchange passengers who make a return journey travelling to or from the station.

71% means that if you use the station daily monday to friday, on average the station would be inaccessible to you on one or two days every week. That just seems way too high to be acceptable. If it happened to you once or twice a year then perhaps it would be tolerable but not once or twice a week. It means really that the station is simply not realistically accessible to anyone relying on a lift - despite it being provided with three of them.

If you actually look at the data you will see that it doesn't mean that at all.

What the data shows is that the Denmark Hill platform 2/3 lift broke down on 12 April and did not return to service until 6 August. There was clearly an intermittent fault following the repair, with 25 short outages since 8 August. It has now been in service continuously since 0632 on 30 August.

The 30 day availability will jump up after 5 September, once the long term failure drops out of the 30 day period.

The Denmark Hill platform 2/3 lift history shows that, sometimes, lifts do take a long time to repair, and also, that failures are often recurrent, not random.

Note that the platform 1 lift has not had a breakdown since 24 October 2025, and the platform 4 lift has been running continuously since 20 January 2026, apart from 2 short outages last month.

Qwerty133 said:
On average I would suspect that lifts in retail settings, and especially non-essential retail, would see significantly lower levels of demand than lifts at major stations. Not only will customers in retail settings be much less likely to have a large suitcase or other luggage making the stairs more difficult but in most shops the majority of customers aren’t required to go upstairs as typically the items with the highest demand will be kept on the ground floor.

This is not the case. John Lewis in Cambridge has the women's clothes on the first floor, the men's clothes in the basement, and two cafes, one each on the first and third floors. In my experience the lifts are in almost continuous use.

But it does have 3 lifts.

Multi-Storey Car Parks are another example of lifts getting very heavy use. The Grand Arcade in Cambridge recently had one that was out of use for months.

BRX · Tuesday at 16:02

Magdalia said:
If you actually look at the data you will see that it doesn't mean that at all.

What the data shows is that the Denmark Hill platform 2/3 lift broke down on 12 April and did not return to service until 6 August. There was clearly an intermittent fault following the repair, with 25 short outages since 8 August. It has now been in service continuously since 0632 on 30 August.

The 30 day availability will jump up after 5 September, once the long term failure drops out of the 30 day period.

The 30 day availability may improve, yes, or it may get worse again - we can't say. Maybe it will suffer another multi-day failure in Spetember, maybe it won't. I deliberately said "on average".

The current 7 day availability, which doesn't include that long term failure is currently at 90% which is still not very good - it means that on average, if you used the station daily mon-fri, you'd find the lift out of order once every two weeks. I think that's still high enough to be really problematic for someone reliant on the lift.

The 365 day availability is terrible at 57%.

Magdalia · Tuesday at 17:09

BRX said:
I deliberately said "on average".

The average is not meaningful, because the outages are not independent and not random.

Times when people using the station are not independent and not random either, lots of them will be making the same journeys every weekday.

BRX said:
The current 7 day availability, which doesn't include that long term failure is currently at 90% which is still not very good - it means that on average, if you used the station daily mon-fri, you'd find the lift out of order once every two weeks. I think that's still high enough to be really problematic for someone reliant on the lift.

It doesn't. If you look at the times of the 4 outages in the last 7 days, 3 them are overnight, when very few people are travelling. The other only lasted for 10 minutes. Nearly all travellers won't have noticed that any of them have happened.

BRX said:
The 365 day availability is terrible at 57%.

That was zero availability for roughly 4 months, about a third of the year. Most users will have known that for most of that period.

For the remainder of the year availability was roughly 86%. not brilliant on the face of it, but, if, like in August, most of the outages were at night, few people will have noticed.

py_megapixel · Tuesday at 17:16

Now I think of it, I'm a bit sceptical of the lifts that apparently have 100% availability for weeks on end, since most large machinery requires routine inspections and servicing that takes the equipment out of service, at least for a brief time.

Are lifts an exception to this? Can the required work typically be completed in less than 10 minutes, meaning that website can miss it (as the data is apparently only updated every 10 minutes)?

BRX · Tuesday at 17:38

Magdalia said:
The average is not meaningful, because the outages are not independent and not random.

Times when people using the station are not independent and not random either, lots of them will be making the same journeys every weekday.

It doesn't. If you look at the times of the 4 outages in the last 7 days, 3 them are overnight, when very few people are travelling. The other only lasted for 10 minutes. Nearly all travellers won't have noticed that any of them have happened.

That was zero availability for roughly 4 months, about a third of the year. Most users will have known that for most of that period.

For the remainder of the year availability was roughly 86%. not brilliant on the face of it, but, if, like in August, most of the outages were at night, few people will have noticed.

How are you getting the detail on time of day etc? The website doesn't seem to offer this to me.

Magdalia · Tuesday at 17:55

BRX said:
How are you getting the detail on time of day etc? The website doesn't seem to offer this to me.

I'm on an old style desktop pc: I just hover my cursor over the red blocks and the times appear in a little box.

gravitystorm · Tuesday at 18:10

That's a great site. I had the personal opinion that the platform 7/8 lift has been broken more than it has been working recently, but I thought maybe I was unlucky. The chart shows it has actually been the case this summer: https://stationlifts.org.uk/VXH/history (bottom chart on that page). I wonder what's so wrong with it, it's not the oldest lift in town or anything like that.

BRX · Tuesday at 18:21

Magdalia said:
I'm on an old style desktop pc: I just hover my cursor over the red blocks and the times appear in a little box.

This doesn't seem to work in my browser. I did, when i first looked at it, wonder if some of the red periods were overnight but had no way of checking. Of course if lifts are unavailable when the station's not open, then this affects the picture, they may even be deliberate maintenance shutdowns. Nonetheless I do think the data on this site confirms availability isn't great.

JD2168 · Tuesday at 23:50

On the subject of lifts the ones at Sheffield Station particularly at the main part & on platforms 6-8 seem very slow & unreliable at times. Long queues seem to build up regularly for the lift at the main building which has been extremely slow for a long while

WAB · 2026-09-02T00:19:52+0100

Network Rail is responsible for the vast majority of station lifts. Depending on the busyness of the station, call-outs can be quite quick, but if it needs a replacement part, the lift will be out of order for much longer.

Station lifts are worked far harder than most other commercial uses and in more inhospitable environments too. They suffer from the same supply chain issues seen more broadly in the lift repair market. @LucyP asks why station lifts are so slow - I understand that in some cases this is to improve the reliability of known problem lifts.

Horizon22 · 2026-09-02T00:32:49+0100

When a lift goes out of service, it does depend why. Sometimes it is because of an earlier entrapment, sometimes a part fails. The TOC / NR will have the contract with a company to rectify it with an SLA (Service Level Agreement). However often if a specialist part is required, or it is an older lift this may take some time, which can be prolonged. It will then rely on an engineer coming back to fix it and a slot booked. Resources may be stretched for whatever reason. Things might get escalated as required if it is taking a substantial period and user groups / councillors / MPs start to get involved.

If possible, passengers can circulate (instead of going A-B, go A-C-change-C-B) if it's only impact one of the platform(s) and the other one is working fine. Or alternative transport provision (normally a taxi) would be required.

That's really there is all to it; not really much of a conspiracy.

Mcr Warrior said:
What's the typical target 'get it sorted' response time if someone does get stuck in a lift at a railway station? Is it 2 hours, or longer?

I'm aware of 60-120 minutes for a call out, but this may vary. Otherwise it's calling the local fire brigade.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Yesterday at 00:39 ==

BRX said:
Finding a lift out of order at a shop is pretty rare.

Really? Where I go, it is not common, but nor is it "pretty rare" to see a lift out in a retail store. The worst culprit is lifts in public places or "street lifts" as I call them.

What actually happens when a station lift breaks down?

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