Great Western Coffee Shop

I've just returned from Paddington on the 11:06 which was turned around in the station, but the toilets were not refilled.
This meant that by the time it reached Plymouth toilets in at least 3 coaches were out of water (in fact when I went first time just before Pewsey coaches E and D were dry).
When the train reaches Plymouth it is turned round again and sent back, with no refilling facilities at Plymouth by the time it reaches London again there would be no toilets available.
How can FGW justify such appalling lack of basic facilities?

Are there definitely not any tanks at Plymouth??

I believe I've seen a mini bowser at Plymouth similar to the one at Penzance but never seen it connected to anything.

Welcome to the forum, chrisoates.

Blame the "bean counters":

Watering facilities have to maintained, manned, the trains have be in place long enough to refill the tanks all of which add to TOCS costs.

The only way to guarentee fully operable toilets on all journies is to make it part of the performance regime and fine (heavily) the TOC for every out-of-service toilet on a train.

Don't give the DafT any more ideas!

There is indeed a bowser at Plymouth but it would not be able to fill a whole train in time, I assume it's used for the buffet only

Watering toilets is called attention to detail.

It's something that seems to have been lost in these days of concept driven, branded journey opportunities each with their unique selling points, thought up by the marketeers.

What they don't realise is that one waterless toilet for one passenger on their one train journey a year blows all their work apart.

This is particularly true given that the trend with new stock/refurbs is to reduce the number of toilets, so usage (and queuing) for those remaining increases. 

Well, I have it on the best of authority that Andrew Haines took his family on a FGW train, some time ago: they found the toilet facilities to be less than useable, and he made his concerns known to staff, in no uncertain terms.

However, the fact that sets are still being sent out with toilets not working is indeed a matter for some concern.

 ::) >:(

If there is one thing that would put you off travelling long distance on a train that would be finding a toilet full of c**p because the water has run out.

It's good to hear that Andrew Haines has raised this issue of the standard of toilets on board trains. There are some things you can make cutbacks on but toilets should not be one of them.

Each HST lost 2 toilets in the refurb, one at each end of the train, and I think someone has mentioned on this forum that if FGW keep the buffet cars on all the HST fleet that the toilet that was removed from coach A would be put back as there would be no need for a trolley docking bay at that end of the train.

Still it could be worse, Voyagers only have three toilets and XC wanted to remove one of those! Crazy.

I think part of the problem is that the people who plan the number of toilets work on the assumption that all of them will always be available. Which is pretty reckless assumption, especially on the Voyagers.

Before they were withdrawn, I used to sometimes get the Arriva train from Bristol to Manchester (there were no through Virgin trains then and it beat the Birmingham New St changing trains lottery). On one occasion the two-car train had one modern toilet whose automatic door wouldn't close, and an old style toilet whose manual door wouldn't open. 3 1/2 hours is a long time to have to go without a p1ss. :o

The Tanking Operatives do a superb job at PAD but there is only so much water you can put in if the train is on a tight turnaround, in an ideal world all major stations would have proper tanking facilities but they havent.
Bit of a compromise really....full up toilet tanks or another late running train which will have the potential to disrupt other services

Then the turn around time should be longer or more staff employed.

Thinking about when I got the 20:05 from Paddington back in July on a Saturday it was turned round quick and the rubbish hadn't even been cleared from the tables.

Right, now to give you good people on this forum something to think about,
Besides squeezing in Extra seats in standard class HST 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 there were

8 Bowsers at Paddington   Now less
6 Bowsers at BTM            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 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.

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

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 have recognised this and all HST'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.

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.

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

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. 

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 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 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 and left at BTM.  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