Talk:Passenger train toilets

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DYK July 22, 2005
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I sent the following email to Amtrak Customer Service:

To whom it may concern:

This is a very unconventional inquiry, but please take the time to hear me out. I am a user of the large open source encyclopedia project "Wikipedia" (http://www.wikipedia.com). Being open for edit to anybody, while offering great rewards, also opens us up to a wide range of rather creative pranks. I need to ask for your help in determining whether a particular article stub is genuine or if it is, in fact, a prank. This article may be located at the following address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_train_human_waste_disposal .

This may seem to be a very unusual question, but can you tell me whether it is true of false that when one flushes a lavatory on a passenger train, the urine and fecal matter (disinfected with a disinfecting agent) is released onto the tracks?

I apologize for the unusal nature of this inquiry, and I hope that you are able to respond.

Many thanks in advance,

Matthew T

a.k.a. ClockworkTroll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ClockworkTroll)

This was the response I received:

Dear Matthew T,

Thank you for contacting us.

The matter is flushed in to a holding tank. We do not release the matter on to the tracks. Releasing it on to the tracks would be considered polluting, which we do not do.

We hope this information will be helpful.

Sincerely,

Brooke

Amtrak Customer Service


About 15 years ago, Amtrak had at least one car in use that released the matter on to the tracks. See "U.S.A. ca. 1991", below.

Contents

[edit] New title

Possible options:

Preferences or other suggestions? zoney ♣ talk 23:34, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Zoney, here's the transport toilets proposal I've just made to the vfd page:

  • Thinking way too much about this, I've come to a new position. With what we know now, passenger train toilets would face entirely or essentially the same constraints, use the same technology, etc. as toilets on an intercity-class passenger or a VIP tour bus, a recreational vehicle including certain trailers or vandwellings, etc., etc., and very similar to toilets on a passenger ship or airplane. (And, hey, aerial lifts, airships, helicopters, etc.) What we need to make of this is a common article: I suggest transport toilets, with a redirect, if it found favour, transportation toilets. Or vice-versa. (Mobile toilets is a possibility but perhaps too close to neologism...) So keep and move to a more inclusive, less painfully granular, but extremely close subject definition. Samaritan 05:46, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • I respectfully disagree. This article discusses (or should) how toilets are arranged in train carriages. Also the "dropping crap onto the tracks" element is not generally (or ever?) the case with other modes of transport. I suggest this remains train-specific. At some point someone can presumably create an article on how the retention tanks (indeed used on buses, planes, etc.) work, and that can be linked to from here. zoney ♣ talk 10:24, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • I can see both points as having merits. On one hand, different modes of transport are somewhat different in how the manage their wastes. On the other hand, I can envision a unified "crap management"-type thread with a comparative analysis between trains (outdoor vs. subway) vs. busses vs. commercial aircraft. Who knows, maybe even the space shuttle? Expansion, I think, may work out well with this article. It's a shitty job, but sombody has to document it (har, har) ClockworkTroll 14:04, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Gah. They are not toilets. Toilet is a misnomer and a euphemism. The actual word you are looking for is lavatory. Tannin 14:11, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lavatory is not in common usage here. Perhaps in the US only? In any case, the article is written in British English - just in case people start complaining about the rail terminology, etc. zoney ♣ talk 14:23, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
"Toilet" is not a euphemism, it's a correct word being slighly misapplied (in the US perspective, at least). In the US, the toilet is the porcelin fixture itself, and the lavatory is the room in which it may be found. ClockworkTroll 14:29, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In the U.S., were I to go to the home improvement store to buy a lavatory, I would be sold something with a wash basin and faucet. (Matching definition #3 in the dictionary link.)

That's because most Americans have a bizarre bathroom and cleanliness fetish and have become so used to the silly euphemism that they don't recognise it for what it is anymore. It's OK, I never did claim that they speak English in America anyway. Roll on the Ameripedia, I'm sort of used to it by now.

  • With respect Tannin, I was merely pointing to two definitions in a dictionary, purely for informational purposes. It was not a sign reading "insert Anti-American sentiment here". Thank you for understanding. ClockworkTroll 15:12, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Back to the real topic, I might mention that Australian medium and long-distance trains had plain drop toilets (see, I'm even doing it myself now) in the 1970s. Some (a very little) rolling stock had a different arrangement then. But under a succession of right-wing post-war governments (Menzies, Bolte, Askin, etc.) there had been virtually no spending at all on public transport rolling stock since the 1950s, and little enough since the '20s. Some of our daily-use rolling stock dated back to the 19th century. (Yes! 80 years old. And wonderful old carriages they were: vast cushions you could sink back into, covered in real leather, old and cracked but still sound; beautiful hand-crafted woodwork polished smooth by generations of schoolchildren's hands, tired old suspension that always seemed like it was going to let the whole train tip over when you went round a bend. Nothing like the crappy cheapskate modern things we have now.)

There are no drop toilets still in use in Australia now so far as I know, I'd guess that the last ones were retired around .. oh .. maybe 1985 or so. Note, by the way, that given the vast distances to be covered and the very low population density (by European or American standards), the hygene thing was not an issue except at stations. They used to have signs saying something like "please do not use facility while at platforms". As schoolchildren, of course, we took that as an irresistable invitation to conjure up inovative ways to amuse ourselves during the long trip home. Details ... well, you can guess them for yourselves. Tannin 14:51, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Here in Ireland, toilets in all but the newest commuter trains dump the waste onto the track. They are flush toilets, but it's gross nonetheless (white-ish splats on the tracks with lumps you do not want to peer at). Yes, there are notices not to use the toilets while in the station, but generally people pay no heed. The Enterprise service Dublin-Belfast has newer carriages, where the toilet doors are automatically locked at stations.
I assume the 67 new carriages on order from CAF will have retention tanks. Unfortunately, our experiences with these on commuter DMUs have not been good. Sometimes the tanks are emptied and they back up. Think very bad biological experiments in the toilets and smelly carriages. However, this issue may just be down to our inept train company running commuter train units as relief stock on intercity services.
I guess a photo of the "crappy" tracks would not be a good accompaniment to this article :-)
zoney ♣ talk 23:27, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Just remember how old our "all but the newest" are - 1980's - Zoney. And how little they're used in built up areas too, really. --Kiand 05:17, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thailand, India and China

I have personally pinched loaves onto the tracks many times in Thailand, India and China. --AStanhope 14:25, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] U.S.A., ca. 1991

In (or about) 1991, I took a train from Los Angeles, California, to the District of Columbia. When I boarded in L.A., the restrooms were locked. I'm not sure when they were unlocked, but I think it was when we were past Riverside. I didn't understand the reason until daylight, when we were out in the Arizona desert. When I flushed, I could see that a flap opened to allow the contents of the bowl to be dumped on the track. I could see the ties through this hole as the train passed over them. By the way, the bowl was flushed and rinsed with a blue liquid.

When I changed trains, I did not see this type of restroom again. The other trains used a holding tank system. However, during the return trip, one of the trains had problems at higher elevations – we were periodically asked not to flush until we got to a lower elevation.

I have a memory of a news story from Florida. (Maybe one of you can search for the story.) A father and son were in a boat fishing. When they were near a rail road bridge, they were sprayed by a passing train. If my memory is correct, Amtrak explained that the train had a sewage holding tank. A system would empty the tank by atomizing and sanitizing the contents, and spraying the result on the track. There was something to prevent spraying when the train was on a bridge, which apparently malfunctioned.

[edit] Channel Tunnel

Something I read gave me the impression that the trains transiting the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France were the subject of a difference of opinion over disposal policy. Apparently the French were happy to have the effluent dumped onto the track while the British went for retention tanks. Since this is well into windup merchant territory I hesitate to put in the article without a very specific citation! (I think the retention tanks won the day). Britmax 00:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

No, all passenger trains transiting the Channel Tunnel must have retention tanks (among many other features such as being able to split the train and drive the two halves to the opposite end of the tunnel in case of fire, etc), and this has been the rule since the tunnel was designed. -- Arwel (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)