Quick Turn Around leave trains toilet-less

[whole diary]

[devon_metro]

Westbury has a fixed hose position along the platform which i presume feeds water.

[super tm]

Ah but at Paddington you dont need bowsers anymore.  A few years ago water pipes were installed at platforms 1 - 5 and platform 8. They are under the metal platform edges which you can see breaking up the concrete edgeing stones.

The problem with the refurb is that you have increased the number of passengers which can be carried whilst at the same time reducing your toilet capacity by 15% as two of the toilets have been converted to trolley storage rooms.

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) have recognised this and all HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s are now watered at Paddington.  However sometimes when the train is late into the station they do not have time to do this and so you get the problems you mention.

[smokey]

They don't water Buffets at Paddington then, for some strange reason Railway Safety Standards (but only on the former Western region) prohibit watering Buffet tanks from stand pipes.

[vacman]

Right, now to give you good people on this forum something to think about,
Besides squeezing in Extra seats in standard class HST^▸ (High Speed Train) Cars, Two toilets have been removed from every HST, so demand for toilets on these trains is Higher than before, not nice when tanks Aren't filled properly during turn rounds.

However WHEN Great Western took over from BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) there were

8 Bowsers at Paddington   Now less
6 Bowsers at BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI))            Now 3
5 Bowsers at Plymouth      Now 3
5 Bowers at Penzance       Now 2
3 Bowsers at Exeter St D   Now 1
1 Bowser at Westbury       Now less than 1
may be there were even more at places like Worcester and Oxford.

Makes a DARN BIG difference filling a turn-about train with 1 bowser rather than 3, and during the day the shortage of Water on HST just gets bigger when services leave from say Plymouth with only PART filled tanks.
Wonder what FGW^▸ (First Great Western) would say about this?

Of course I have never worked out why the toilet tanks, (Not Buffet Tanks) don't have a common service pipe from one end of an HST car to the other so a car only has to be filled ONCE rather than Twice.

Penzance station went from BR to South Wales and West railway, then to Wales and West, then to Wessex trains before going to FGW.

[eightf48544]

I think what all these posts show is that beancounters rule the roost even at D(a)fT level. They require maximum utilisation of the minimum amout of stock with which you can run the service, at the least overall cost.

Therefore, having staff and equipment to water trains in the short turnrounds required by the mantra of maximum stock utilisation is considered too costly.

Until we all complain everytime we find a toilet out of action or waterless the situation will not improve. 

[Tim]

They don't water Buffets at Paddington then, for some strange reason Railway Safety Standards (but only on the former Western region) prohibit watering Buffet tanks from stand pipes.

I guess the distinction between toilet and buffet tanks is that buffet tanks need to be filled with drinking water whereas toilet tanks do not. 

I assume that you could get drinking water out of a standpipe but assume that they would need to be subjected to a cleaning and/or testing regime to check that the water was safe to drink.

Just a question, but how long does it take to tank a toilet? could anything be done to speed this up?  Extra Bowsers and better organisation can't be that difficult or expensive can it?  I guess the problem with late running trains is that they may end up missing more than one tanking oportunity if they stay late until the end of their diagram.   Does the TM^‡(resolve) always know when the tanks are empty?  Do staff check that there is water in the taps? Is there any indicator of the water level available to staff (other than the overflow when they are filled up or there is no water in the taps).  It seems to me that the first step to FGW^▸ (First Great Western) solving the problem is having an efficient method of knowing when and which tanks are empty.

A couple of years ago. I was on a Scotland-penzance voyager.  I joined at BNS^▸ (Barnes (not Birmingham New Street)) and left at BTM^▸ (Bristol Temple Meads (strictly, it should be BRI)).  By Cheltenham all the toilets were out of use (jammed door on one, other two empty).  The TM announced at BTM that there were toilets in the station subway but that he would only wait 3 minutes at BTM.  As I left the train, I glanced back at it and say two blokes taking a p1ss against the side of the voyager.  Unacceptable behaviour I know, but an appropriate comment on the design of that train I thought