'воспользоваться шансом и на лифте доехать'
That's definitely close enough to the meaning I was looking for. Does Russian have an expression for 'take a chance on something', as we say in English, or is that as close as we are going to get?

'когда несколько (бряцающих)...' I get the feeling that I should use 'когда ' as a sort of 'go to' word in contexts like this, instead of после, or something else. Is it general enough to be used reliably as English 'after'?

закрепляться:- The idea of cables 'settling down' is easy to grasp for an English speaker, but I suppose it is a bit idiomatic really. I have закрепляться as 'to consolidate one's grip (on)', which better describes what the cables are doing in this case.

I think I can see why тот is needed here; in English, it's easy to see that the lift is the thing starting to descend, but I think even I would expect to see it in Russian, as you tend to less 'loose' about these things than we are.

'попытались закрыться' I had thought that when describing an action that didnt happen, it was usual to use the imperfective. On the basis that, because it didn't happen at all, it was not sucessfully completed?

I'll look again at your notes on participles in the previous thread; It takes a while for things to sink in sometimes.