I've a good 'decent' friend, who had to take a shit on the station platform. Because there was no other option available at the time. Some people can not hold their bowels. I'm sure he'd have surrendered to the station toilets if they were open. UK trains and stations frequently have shut or out of order toilets. I've foolishly hung on, thinking the train will be an option, only to discover it's a no can do. I'll go alfresco every time given the opportunity these days.
> Some frustrated travellers even smashed their way out the cold, dark trains and walked down the tracks to escape after getting stuck for more than three hours.
It's a shame train operators don't feel able to make the common sense decision to give the passengers the option to walk before the three hour mark, without requiring them to "smash their way out".
Obviously, some passengers won't be able to make the trek, and it's not without danger, but given the choice between walking over some slippery rocks and spending 4 hours without access to a toilet, I know which I'd prefer.
Here in the UK the pendolino class trains, at least while operated by Virgin, were notorious for entering into an oscillating open/close loop. So much so that several times the staff would announce which cars had working toilets after each pickup station. Often times, apologising for the smell in the other cars.
> But don't flush any ex-soviet train toilets when you're stopped at a train station.
Not just ex-Soviet trains, British ones too. Newer and renovated trains have sewage tanks, but older trains flush directly onto the tracks (and often therefore have a sign in the toilet asking you not to flush when stopped at a station). According to the BBC, as of 2015 this applied to about 10% of the trains in service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30541015
The tabloids periodically have a field day with it when people notice again that these trains are still not quite phased out. E.g. in 2014, there was a minor sensation about the quantity of "fertiliser" on the tracks producing tomato growth: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/trains-dump-much-human-...
I take it you either haven't been to many central railway stations, or were pickpocketed on one of your first times through and now feel (understandably) unsafe there? Also not sure what you mean about the toilets, you think they're lying in wait there or do you mean 'dare' from a hygiene standpoint?
I've seen people poop on the train platform in NJ. Really crazy, but Newark does not open the bathrooms until 7-8AM. So when you're waiting for the 3AM train to DC... what you gonna do?
That really surprised me. They're running a service from Reading out to Shenfield with no loo. I'd have thought things could get quite urgent under those circumstances.
In euro style fast trains, you arrive 2 minutes before, walk in, you can go have a meal, there is electricity for your laptop, there are toilets everywhere.
Or for those stuck on last Friday's Paris-London Eurostar, not so much toilets everywhere as everywhere a toilet. I payed a premium to use the channel link to get me home this Christmas and, after 3 days of travel hell and sheer incompetence before I finally got on, I can't see myself ever using them again. In fact, after reading what actually occurred under the channel on Friday - tunnel operators seemingly asleep, staff going AWOL, passengers urinating on the floor, not to mention Kent police interrogating those who finally made it out as if they were potential terrorists (save for Claudia Schiffer, who got a police escort home and a free croissant) - I'm not sure I actually trust them to even run a safe service, let alone a convenient one.
My faith in international rail travel from the UK has been destroyed completely in one fell swoop, and it has nothing to do with the engineering malfunction that instigated it all.
Just wanted to say that trains without restrooms are the work of the devil. Actually access to restrooms is one of the major things which makes me prefer trains over buses, that and being able to read on a train because on a bus I get car-sickness pretty quickly if I try do to that.
There’s no reason you can’t flush in a station - modern trains don’t just drop onto the track (and people have to work on the track, so the station is just a PR thing to avoid offending passengers)
In the U.K. any train from the last 30 years fills a tank, like an RV, including ones with physical locks.
I was in a train going North-East from Beijing (can't remember where we were going, or more to the point, whether it was a 'rural' train or not) as little as 5 years ago, and the grandmother in the section opposite the corridor from us made here grandson go nr 2 right there in the middle of the train. Every time the train would swerve, the turds would roll from left to right and back :O| Cultural differences be damned, who in their right mind would accept this as a common practice...
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