Current and Proposed New-Builds

I suspect it will be the on train lavatory which will disappear as using the track as a long distance filter bed is likely to be less and less acceptable.

Paul H

 

A railway with a vision to recreate something would be all it would take providing the build budget passes muster. I could see period matching new-build coaches to locos as a draw card that sets a railway apart as far as the educated punter is concerned. Some form of communication about lack of on board ablutions might be prudent if 100% authenticity is the goal! Ahh, but then would comfort and ride quality also need to be considered?

 

I'd counter it with we'd probably have to consider accessibility first rather than comfort. Not sure anyone desperately wants non-bogie stock with no suspension back! Bums on seats behind said victorian kettle is a big factor as well. So likely bogie stock?

Having ridden the Pockerly Wagon Way the ride can be most uncomfortable, for all the novelty of it.

 

The late Victorian period (say, post 1870) is fairly well represented in both locomotives and carriages. Interestingly, so is the very early period (say, before 1835) with various replicas, albeit running on short demonstration lines. It is the middle period between those dates that is significantly under-represented, when there was rapid technological advance in both locomotives and carriages, but more or less nothing running and very little even preserved non-operational.

Tom

 

Damned good point. There are indeed worse things than a 'linear scrapyard' and a 'linear filter bed' in the four foot is certainly right up there. Not really the greatest recruiting hook for PW volunteers, eh?

 

Or loco crew (coupling), shunters (ditto), C&W maintenance ...

Tom

 

Didn't we have just up thread someone was adding toilet tanks to Mk1's? That certainly seems like a decent solution, but then some poor sod (the shunter?) will have the honour of draining said tanks at the end of the day into a septic tank.

...Oh dear.

 

Well, it cant be as bad to do the job when properly prepared as it is having random Richard the Thirds all over the place

 

got to be safer for fitters also, every had to remove a bogie that's directly inline with the discharge tube? I had to, even steam cleaning it didn't remove the debris plus you can always tell which end it is, human waste seems to be an very effective paint stripper and in one case when I had steam cleaned the bogie, all trace of paint had also been stripped .

 

Strangely in 8 years of p/way volunteering I've yet to encounter a human RtT in the four-foot. Plenty of canine ones in certain places ('cos a railway is clearly the ideal place to send your dog for a crap) but even they are fairly easy to avoid compared to the minefield that is the canal towpath locally. It's not that the toilets aren't used, plenty of paper trails in evidence, but either the eye-watering velocities cause the RtTs to vaporise on contact, or the pax are all constipated and aren't on board long enough?

 

Has anyone, big railway or small, installed one of those macerator arrangements that are used on loft conversions? That way the catch tank could more centrally placed, and all the content would be liquid. I know there are "commercial grade" versions which ought to stand up to preserved railway use. They will even cope with paper towels which the domestic type certainly can't.

 

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Bob.

 

Dynamo and a battery maybe?

 

They must be all bunged up.

However if you have paper debris the solids may have been abraded down but they will not be vapourised away.

 

Depends on the strength of the curry ...

 

What about the steam power plant thingy on the front.

 

Dunno. What powers the lights? Electricity might work

 

Now if someone could come up with a way of converting said excrement into fuel pellets...

Steve B
(not sure about the smell though)

 

Bristol energy are offering some sort of poo gas tariff.....

 

Well early 80s the Ravenglass and Eskdale had a serious experiment with a gas producer firebox - Prof. Sharpe of Queen Mary College -
and among other fuels was dried sewage sludge.