Day 72- Elevator panel tower installed!

OK Ghouls, we're on to the elevator again finally! To review the concept, let's go back to that particular post. You can find it here. Now I agree, there is a huge amount of infrastructure we're building this year for the haunt in general. I'm getting a little anxious about it with the time factor and all, but I think we'll be OK. This particular design I am very happy with as I simplified it A LOT. If you look at the version I referenced in the earlier post you can see that having individual panels come out of the ground on some sort of rotating spool mechanism was logistically too complex and yet another motor to drive it was not in the budget. The sliding mechanism has to be super smooth and problem free. One day a couple of months back I was thinking about this and wondering what examples I could find of moving panels. It suddenly hit me in the face literally as I was looking right at one...the garage door! At first I was thinking about curving the tracks underneath our current garage door to make additional room but the curved garage door track is way too expensive. The straight track is cheap. The hinges and wheels you can buy in bulk. This was a good compromise. We have unfinished 10 foot ceilings in the garage so I was able to build a straight tower with 2 8' 2x4's and a pair of 76" tracks. The tower sits just in front of the open garage door so it doesn't affect it. I had to calculate where the wheels had to go on the panel frame so I could get the maximum height of elevation. Now it's true that with a straight panel construct you don't have as many panels as you would if you did have some come up from underneath a floor or something and then curve away, but if we raise the window at the back of the elevator a bit and have the 'elevator operator' raise the panels slowly, you will still get the motion effect I believe. The panel frame is 71" high. I put one crypt panel at the bottom as you can see, since this is the floor that the guests will go down to! I will use foam for the upper floors and carve bricks out! Now in the images you can see the panel is at the back of the elevator and a window will be created ('X' in the image) which will show only a small portion of the top of the panels. We will have someone behind the panels pulling them up which will in turn provide the sensation of a descent! Now this 'panel tower' is wicked smooth with the tracks and 2" wheels. I used some motor grease in there to lube things up. Works like a charm. Should have some video soon! Stay tuned!