Heavy Duty Swinging Door Operators for New York’s Penn Station

Prominently located at the edge of Midtown Manhattan, Penn Station is one of the busiest rail hubs in the world, carrying over half-a-million passengers per day. Originally built in 1910, it has undergone several major renovations since then. For the current renovation cycle, Brookfield is proud to have been selected as a supplier for their specialty door operator needs. 

As part of the renovation, new platform stair enclosure doors with a 90-minute fire-resistance rating were installed at the Long Island Railroad Train Hall.  Located on the platform level, the Brookfield door operators are required to hold the double doors open with magnetic holders during normal operation; thus, allowing for unobstructed pedestrian traffic.  Project specifications require three basic modes of operation: normal, emergency, and maintenance.  

During a fire emergency, the heavy-duty door operators were programmed to receive a signal from the Fire Alarm System (FAS) that release the holders and close the doors under power.  Once closed, the door operator sends a confirmation signal to the FAS.  To allow for passenger evacuation and access by first responders, the door operators are designed to power (open and close) the steel framed glass doors against positive and negative differential pressures of 150 Pa (3.14 psf) generated by the Emergency Ventilation System (EVS). 

The door operator PLC required custom programming to meet the sequence of operations: Activation from the push side panic or the pull side lever handle to release the latches and signal the operators to open the doors.  Door mounted safety sensors installed on both sides of both doors to assure entrapment protection for passengers exiting and emergency personnel entering simultaneously.

To meet these requirements, we started with our standard Brookfield NB-1000 Main/Sub swinging door operator set. This model is designed for use on double doors with each leaf weighing up to 12,000 lbs., or 2250 lbs-in of operating torque.  Modifications were made to the basic system to accommodate the existing space. To fit the header, the lengths of the standard operators were shortened.  Some reengineering was required to fit the electrical components into the NEMA enclosures, which are placed above the operators.  In addition, the linkage arms were custom designed to fit the frame offset.