GWR SERVICES. UNAVAILABILITY OF TOILETS.

[LSWR Cavalier]

Another unecessary feature, powered doors. They should be manually operated, then there is less to go wrong.

 

[dmu fan]

It seems to be a mixture. The depots do everything they can to avoid putting a unit into traffic with the toilets unavailable but sometimes it is unavoidable. At Bristol, they try to concentrate those units on 'short hop' type diagrams to minimise the inconvenience.

Do you know how long it takes or gwr allow to detank the cet tank, refill the water storage and clean each toilet?

 

[JN114]

Do you know how long it takes or gwr allow to detank the cet tank, refill the water storage and clean each toilet?

I don’t know if it’s any slower with the setup on Turbos; but with the 387s the gang at West Ealing normally take 20-30 mins to do all 4 on an 8 car (we’ve often diverted the 0430 Paddington to Heathrow T5 empty stock into West Ealing for a flush and tank, swapped sets with the 8 in there already, and the tanking set is good for the 0505 empties back to Paddington)

 

[dmu fan]

I don’t know if it’s any slower with the setup on Turbos; but with the 387s the gang at West Ealing normally take 20-30 mins to do all 4 on an 8 car (we’ve often diverted the 0430 Paddington to Heathrow T5 empty stock into West Ealing for a flush and tank, swapped sets with the 8 in there already, and the tanking set is good for the 0505 empties back to Paddington)

That's interesting. The depot crews must work really hard to get everything done within a tight schedule. Thanks for the information.

 

[D2007wsm]

The small toilets on the GWR IETs have a sliding door, don’t know about the disabled ones though

 

[fgwrich]

The small toilets on the GWR IETs have a sliding door, don’t know about the disabled ones though

Large single electronic door on those. Which to me would have made sense to go with on the Turbo’s, than the flimsy two piece design used.

 

[py_megapixel]

The small toilets on the GWR IETs have a sliding door

Yes, they do. It's a good design in theory, but would be better IMO if the doors didn't automatically shut in the way they do as it has the side effect of making them undesirably heavy to open.
It also can be difficult to tell from the outside whether the door is locked or not - there's a little red/green indicator thingy (which really should contain text for accessibility reasons but i digress) but that's nowhere near as good as the big "toilet occupied" light you get on Voyagers, for example.

Large single electronic door on those. Which to me would have made sense to go with on the Turbo’s, than the flimsy two piece design used.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a two-piece design - the issue is more that the specific ones used for the recent rounds of PRM mods (not for just the Turbos, but for most of the other toilet-fiitted ex-BR fleets as well) are not very well built.

I believe the company responsible for those is no longer trading, so the more recently done 323s are fitted with a different (presumably more expensive) design which is far better. (That is a one piece door FWIW but I can't see why a hypothetical two-piece version would be inherently worse constructed)

 

[skyhigh]

If they're the same 2-leaf setup that's found on 150s and 155s, then they are pretty cheap and nasty, though to be fair the number of door related faults I've had seem to have dropped recently. The main fault seemed to be that the leaves got out of sync and confused the system. The other issue is that the fresh water tank seems to be relatively tiny.

If the 323s use the same design of toilet as found on the ex-Northern 321s then that seemed to be a lot more reliable- it seemed very similar to the toilet found on 195s.

In my experience out of the older fleet, 158s have by far the best PRM toilets.

 

[fgwrich]

If they're the same 2-leaf setup that's found on 150s and 155s, then they are pretty cheap and nasty, though to be fair the number of door related faults I've had seem to have dropped recently. The main fault seemed to be that the leaves got out of sync and confused the system. The other issue is that the fresh water tank seems to be relatively tiny.

If the 323s use the same design of toilet as found on the ex-Northern 321s then that seemed to be a lot more reliable- it seemed very similar to the toilet found on 195s.

In my experience out of the older fleet, 158s have by far the best PRM toilets.

They are indeed. Oddly, the same design in the Exeter based 150/2s doesn't seem to suffer as many noticeable issues as the Reading & Bristol based Turbo fleet. Agree about the leaves becoming out of sync resulting in itself shutting itself down, I've also seen one leaf jam up on plenty of occasions resulting in similar faults. It's rare, but I've also seen one 'derail' itself as well. The Turbos still, in my view (as I commute on them), are very much overdue some form of refurbishment or replacement.

 

[JonathanH]

Isn't the two leaf door design closely connected with the ability to get it through the doorway from outside the train on some of the rolling stock it has been retrospectively fitted to? It was a standard fitting installed to a wide range of units.