I recall a documentary on black musicians in the 1920's that stated one successful group chartered a pullman car to avoid Jim Crow rules in the South. They used the car as hotel space at stops. It occurred to me that these cars would not have had retention tanks for sewage. What did railroads do when parking sleepers or private cars with onboard guests? Did everyone just ignore the sewage deposited on the tracks?

"Honey" pots were placed under the hopper chutes for private cars and Pullmans alike. Gray water just ran onto the track.

"Car Knockers" dumped them in large terminals. The last place I saw this was in Saint Louis, during the early years of Amtrak.

Special buckets...placed with care under the chutes. Some had an offset chute so they could fit alongside the truck frames or other underbody equipment. Others had wire handles...some stood on the ends of the ties. Somewhere in the terminal would be a "honey house" where these buckets were dumped and rinsed out.

For long-term parking you would see canvas sheets hung on hooks around the ends of the car to keep down odors and flies (you see this in photos of cars parked in FLA for example).

As an example of an extreme situation...imagine a 14-4 lightweight car with a hopper in every accomondation. If one of these were to lay over at a terminal on standby there would need to be a bucket under every chute!

T7

I remember a Chessie System business car parked in New Haven (Conn.) Union Station in the early 1980s for a Yale Bowl football game. There were large plastic trash bags tied to the outlet pipes.

Were there any terminals or stations where they would hook a hose up to gray or black water tanks and/or leech fields?

I guess today they have holding tanks and empty them at destinations, similar to a RV.

Interesting responses. Also interesting how our mutual tolerance has changed over the years. Can you imagine the same scenario in a passenger station today?

What did New Orleans Union Passenger terminal and Amtrak do with occupied parked Heritage sleepers on the transcontinental services while parked in New Orleans or Kansas City, and on the Executive Sleeper while parked in Penn Station, New York? I did ride the Executive Sleeper a few times, and don't remember any warning from the porter.

As an interesting side note, one of the two Illinois Terminal interurban business cars at IRM, 233 or 234, I forget which, has what looks like a tapered cylindrical housing on one end of one of the under-body equipment boxes. Closer inspection reveals that it is a common galvanized steel bucket, hung on brackets so its open top is against the end of the box. That's the stowed position. Not far away, adjacent to the end of the hopper tube, is a pair of hooks. That's the deployed position.

Social commentary... I guess back in the day, you knew you'd arrived when you could pay to have someone else carry your sh*t for you.

Older car inspectors used to talk about the joy of inspections and repair on "decorated" running gear.

There was no warning from anybody...the carmen just dealt with it and the passenger was never made aware. A benevolent management made sure that passengers never had to consider such things. This was a reality with Amtrak up until a certain date (Claytor era?) when the holding tanks were mandated.

I can remember one old passenger terminal having a mountain of galvanized buckets stacked in a storage room after passenger operations stopped. The newer ones were painted green instead. You see the galvanized ones on Ebay now...some marked with RR initials.

One interesting note was the high-level cars that AT&SF had. Those cars were built with holding tanks that "emptied themselves" once the train had reached a certain speed. Maybe you can remember thinking "these cars stink" when you saw them in service. Imagine the cloud of waste being vaporized when the big tanks dumped at speed. Nasty.

T7

I don't believe that any of the Santa Fe Hi-Level cars were equipped with holding tanks while in ATSF service. Of the Hi-Levels that went to Amtrak, a very few were rebuilt in later years for service on the "Heartland Flyer" and were retrofitted with holding tanks at that time. Also, the Hi-Level lounge cars that were rebuilt as Pacific Parlour Cars for the "Coast Starlight" would have been retrofitted also, providing they retained their toilet facilities.

The system you describe is that of the first generation of Amtrak Superliners. Those were later retrofitted with hoppers that used much less water, allowing for holding tanks that didn't have to dump between service points.

Jim Tatum

On the "old" NS Steam Program there were a number of privately owned sleepers and lounges that were used in first class service on some trips. By the late 80's all of the cars used on the train had to have holding tanks. One unamed car owner had an inside release to a dump valve on his tank hidden in an electrical locker. He was in the habit of emptying his tank when going over bridges to avoid pumping charges.

Gary

Grassy Rail, Va

During the 1977 NRHS convention in Washington DC I had signs made up and posted in the restrooms of the excursion cars we used that said "Please do not flush when standing in stations or during photo runbys." Jim Boyd saw this and mentioned it in Railfan Magazine's report on the gathering. I had seen flush water coming out of cars during runbys in the past and it wasn't pretty watching folks duck. The unaware got a nasty bath.

The 77 Convention was in Roanoke, but we did originate an inbound convention special from DC.........