These things suck, they literally recirculate the water from inside the bowl. We like to call these "poopie pumpers" / commodes Twitter: / bathroomtours
Must’ve smelled great. These actually recycle water from the holding tank itself, much like what a flushable porta potty does. However convenient, I don’t like the size of the bowl, and I don’t know about the trapway though..
At 55 it was sort of odd that I, out of the blue, wondered how crews on freight trains dealt with the situation. Now I know. Something not often thought of, but when needed, suddenly becomes a very important part of the locomotive. I can't believe that freight train engines have so little in the way of crew comfort. Have you seen the interior of cabs on earth moving equipment lately. Even the humble backhoe now has crew comforts that make a freight train locomotive look down right barbaric. Some of the bigger excavators have crew cabs that look like something between a luxury car and an aircraft. But none have bathrooms. I would have thought that modern locomotives would be more comfortable for their crews in order to increase safety. Uncomfortable crew cabs lead to fatigued crews. When I was a kid back in the seventies L&N RailRoad ran right behind my parents house, so my neighborhood friends and I grew up on the railroad tracks. For whatever reasons, freight trains hauling coal would sometimes stop on the section of track behind my house. One day we got up the nerve and knocked on the Caboose door. The man inside was surprised that their were 5 kids knocking on his door. From his perspective it must have seemed that he was out in the middle of a heavily wooded nowhere so kids on his caboose must have seemed strange. When he opened the door we asked him if we could look around since none of us had ever been in a caboose before. The man was nice and let us in and gave us the grand tour. Even though I was a kid, the caboose looked very sparse to me. Up toward the front of the caboose there was an old wood burning Franklin Stove, that undoubtedly had burned more coal than wood. There was a table and a cold naugahyde bench seat that looked like it had been the front seat of an old car at one time. It seemed pretty cool, us being there inside a caboose, until the man started asking our names and where we lived. Sensing a trap, we told the caboose man that we had to go and hurriedly left. The names we gave him were made up and we pointed toward the opposite direction from where we actually lived. It was all just a big adventure for us, and one of many growing up on the railroad tracks. L&N is gone now, and as everyone knows, so are cabooses. It was a sad time watching as more and more trains traded in their cool cabooses for a box of electronics.
but you could stop at a truck stop or gas station when you need to and do your buisness and maybe pick something up at the store or restaurant if the place has one
My dad has been driving shy of three decades, (including time as 92Foxtrot) mostly in the western region. And many times it's not that simple. When one has a load belonging to Uncle Sam, you just go... You even get waved through the scales! And in general, they have a schedule to keep to that requires balancing "staying legal" (a driver can only spend so many hours on the road), breaks and getting the load to the customer in a timely fashion.
I wondered about the old steamers until I climbed into the engine at the Chattanooga choo choo. Beside the firebox there is a cast iron "funnel" with a pipe that just goes down through the floor and onto the tracks. Suddenly i was enlightened!
I saw that toilet on TVCTA Rail GP38-2 Locomotive 273 on Train 451 to Tailslandian River Airport Central Station while going to use it before operating the train. Signed, Xane Fox, Eddy's Mother.
Things must have been trickier when you were on a long-distance steam locomotive! ( I suppose if your aim was good there was always *some* space between the loco and tender.)
I thought trains had those weird vacuum toilets where they filled with water, then whoosh! Away it goes. I saw a similar toilet to this one in a portajohn in Arizona. Instead of a lever, you stepped on a pedal, and the chemical water solution would "flush" it. My favorite portable restrooms are the ones with RV toilets or "normal" toilets.
Is this a NS gp38-2 with the long hood forward setup since the control stand appears to be on the other side of the cab, with the toilet/head essentially in the rear now?
@nx9100 If I recall correctly and watching the video several times, I think that is what the situation is. I’ve never seen that, but appearance would say that is what is going on.
lol poopie pumpers. These toilets in Italy on these trains that i went on going to Florence had wierd toilets too. The ride was 3 hours long, but I forget the brand and model of the toilet. All I can remember was that they used very little water and your "poopie" evacuates through a whole in the train and it lands on the trian tracks 0_0 it was very wierd..........But quite effective cause it saves a bunch as they dont need to install water tanks and lines to have an actual toilet. Wierd still..
Toilets that just dump on the track exist in many countries though most places are phasing them out, not only for the ick factor but because they contaminate waterways, splatter workers and people living by railways and stink the place up when people flush at the station (there's a sign saying not to but people sometimes ignore this). As well, the discharge can damage and corrode the track, points and underside of the train. At high speed the effluent creates a splatter that goes everywhere. Some toilets in some European countries (I can't speak for other world regions) some trains, usually trains that aren't super modern but not old enough to have toilets that flush on the track have chemical toilets a bit like this one (which I believe is quite common in the US, correct me if I'm wrong) but most newer trains have vacuum toilets
Yes, they're like portaloos and I used one which is the similar sort of system on a TGV in France that worked like this and it was rank. Vacuum toilets don't smell nearly as bad because the smell is locked away in the tank instead of being swished around again and again
