After the deep breath, man that was close, thank you gods, I began my investigation. The disconnect is the type with internal transformers to create its own shunt trip 110VAC power. The electricians thought it a great idea to connect the two controllers, connected equals single source right? The step down transformer was now being back fed, form the still powered up car 1, and turning it into a step up transformer the other way, for the two legs. The luck of the draw, these were not the same two legs my controller used for its own transformer so, no LED readout on the soft starter, no indicator lights on the boards, just blank friendly pieces of elevator controller inviting me to touch them.
Been in the trade 13 years now, the last 7 or so as an adjuster. Mostly Hydraulic elevators as I am just getting up to speed on our tractions. I adjust or inspect roughly 5-7 cars a week, and have worked with these types of disconnects at least 200 times. I am, and forever will be, learning. Posted this so everyone can maybe take an extra 30 seconds to be safe. Glad to be around for another day, maybe the wife will even let me be the boss today!
Just on this sbm, this is just criminal by the electricians not marking any new switch or even the old switch. I'm not even sure why you would replace a new switch in a differing place. However in our state(Victoria) you are NOT allowed to work live anymore(unless fault finding and under special circumstances) and you must test and tag everything you work on. So in this instance, if you had got a zap you would still be in breach of your own duty of care as you didn't verify that it was dead. Its a good idea that you drum this in to your workers as it takes 2 seconds. I had a similar instance where I got a 3 phase 415v belt across my hand working on a bmu on a roof. I had recommended all 3 ph plugs get replaced and I had been doing so, testing everyone as I go, but I got lazy and since everyone had been dead, I didn't test the 5th one in line. Wow god it hurt across the hand. It turned out that half of the plugs were on 1 circuit and the other half on another circuit that no one knew about. Test and tag gents. It can save you some pain!!!