London Underground and the mechanisms are regularly degreased to lower the potential for fires. The only wooden escalator not to be replaced was at Greenford station, which remained until October 2015 when TfL replaced it with the first incline lift on the UK transport network. There are 426 escalators on the London Underground system and the longest, at , is at Angel. The shortest, at Stratford, gives a vertical rise of . There are 184 lifts, and numbers have increased in recent years because of investment making tube stations accessible. Over 28 stations will have lifts installed over the next 10 years,
Escalator first acquired Montgomery Elevator company, then took control of Germany’s Orenstein & Koppel "Rolltreppen". In the twenty-first Schindler became the largest maker of escalators and second largest maker of elevators in the world, though their first escalator installation did not occur until 1936. In 1979, the company entered the United States market by purchasing Haughton Elevator. A decade later, Schindler assumed control of the North American escalator/elevator operations of Westinghouse, forming Schindler's American division. Jesse Reno also designed the first escalators installed in any underground subway system in the form of a helical escalator at Holloway Road tube station in