Swanage Railway General Discussion

Not hard at all. Just throw money at the 'problem' and it's easy peasy. LSL/Saphos Trains at Crewe are doing their charter stock.
Cost of coach installations - £20,000 per diesel unit coach according to Network Rail estimate in 2016: https://www.railmagazine.com/news/n...plans-a-major-inconvenience-for-charter-firms plus retention tank vacuum extraction plant and the space to install one of course. All very expensive for a heritage railway with more important calls upon it's limited finances.
Finally, would you like to be a railway volunteer detailed to clear out these tanks?

 

I guess it wouldn't be the most pleasant of jobs, but not as bad as working on a sh!t-strewn P-way!

 

Installing toilet retention tanks shouldn't be too difficult or expensive. The equipment to empty them would cost a lot more. Emptying then isn't a bad job, just connect a hose and press suck on the pump. I'd certainly rather be doing that than changing brake blocks covered in someone's output!

 

It's a network change so will all have to be funded by Network Rail anyway, same as GSMR was

 

Is it really necessary to provide quite so many on-train toilets - or, indeed, any at all? The journey time on most heritage lines is less than an hour (many half that) and there are usually perfectly adequate toilets at the termini so are they used "just because they are there"? I can certainly remember many journeys on B.R. of more than an hour in compartment stock with no loos. I'm sure many parents would be 'up in arms' if little Johnny couldn't 'go' just when he felt the need rather than going to the trouble of making sure he'd 'been' before boarding the train. I feel sorry for the poor sods working on faecal contaminated track (and the poor sod who volunteers to clean all those toilets on a rake of Mk1's).
Just sayin'
Ray.

 

I think toilets on trains *are* useful, many a time we've had families rushing to catch the train which is already late and hurriedly asking "are there loos on the train?" But I agree I don't think we need that many, one set of two per 3 carriages ought to be enough IMHO.

 

The thing about kids is they're utterly unpredictable. They can seemingly fill their bladders in the five minutes between insisting that they don't need to go to the toilet and the train moving off. On-train toilets are thus a vital necessity for any family-friendly railway, regardless of length.

 

Dan you are obviously closer to it than most of us if you work for SWR, but in the most recent ORR paper I see no mention of it possibly being a Network change.
http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/20832/effluent-position-statement-2016-02-09.pdf

 

Is 34072 '275 Squadron' any closer to entering traffic yet? I know on the website it said April and we only just half way though the month but I would thought at least a test would have happened by now...

 

It was in light steam a couple of days last week and coaled, but seems to be back in the sidings again.

 

And don't forget us old folks with weakening bladders! It's not nice to have to deliberately dehydrate yourself to be sure you'll make it!

 

No but 257 might be

For interest while 257 flew Hurricanes, 275 flew the Walrus for air sea rescue. I somehow feel that the former were a bit more glamourous

 

It could be argued that the Walrus was just as vital to the war effort!

 

Surely you might need a complete redesign of the inside of most MK 1's because they;'re just not designed for retro fitting of retention tanks. For a start most toilets in Mark 1s are at the end over the bogies so there's no where to fit a tank (though the Bullied 4365 would be easier as the toilet is in the middle!). Also aren't most of the retention tank fitted coaches fitted with low water usage "power flush" toilets that need a power supply. So I don't believe it's a simple as just slinging a retention tank under the coach.

David R

 

This, then, begs a question: when are we going to see some 100% new-build coaching stock? It might be a good idea to work on a new heritage-style design that will meet the needs of longer heritage lines and main line use...

 

I think we've been through this before, at least for heritage railways, and personally I don't really see the point of it. If you want to and can raise the money, then fine go for it, but much like new build locos, there isn't a need for them. And I'm not comfortable with the idea of a generic "heritage" coach that you build en mass and paint in whatever colour suits your region. That's just a BR Mk1 but made up, and we've got plenty of those, even if they're in a bit of a state. Building new is still going to be more work than restoring even some of the basket cases which at least for most bogie vehicles have an underframe and bogies fabricated even if they need restoring.

As for mainline use, I don't know enough about how easy it would be to get new coaches on the mainline with no grandfather rights with things like opening windows and some semblance of a heritage outline, but I bet it wouldn't be simple.

 

If the day comes and we have too, I would make all brake vans disabled accessible coaches with fitted with custom built tanked toilets in the middle and take out all toilets from non brake Mk1 to provide buggy / bike space. That way every train will be equip.

 

sounds like a good idea, as that way you can fit state of the art equipment perhaps you can also build in platform side units connected to the main sewer so you can empty the tanks and refill them during termini stops if you had to ?

 

It seems to me that an obvious start point for this exercise, which will come sooner or later is to start metering the water used to fill toilet tanks as that will give a good indication of the work that needs to be done to fit tanks

 

Provided you aren't going to be too fussy about preserving the layout of a Mark 1 toilet in as built condition there must be compromise ways round this problem.

Sources of power are becoming more easily available with the development of batteries for cars etc so if a low flush toilet needs power that could be done (discrete battery hidden either in the ceiling or wall panels). Similarly if the toilet isn't going to be a traditional U bend design as originally fitted in a Mark 1 there is reasonable scope for storage in the space between floor level and seat height. Taking for example the typical "porta potti" that comes with a 15 litre fresh water capacity and 21 litre waste tank but is a self contained unit that would fit in a Mark 1 toilet cubicle using the floor space currently used by the traditional porcelain pan. Some of those are floor fixable for use in say boats. Bearing in mind John's point above about measuring how much toilets are actually used, I wonder whether these could actually be at least the start of a thought process. Benefits are a self contained small unit, which if necessary could just be swapped out entirely when full or not working. My guess is that on some of the shorter lines (like Swanage) where the journey times mean that 99% of passengers won't use the toilet at all, something similar to a Porta Potti could be sufficient.

I'm not suggesting that lines start buying up a load of these, but its clearly possible to get toilet function and storage into a reasonably small package that would fit in a Mark 1 cubicle without needing under floor space.