To the tune of "Humoresque", and after Garrison Keillor:

"Passengers will please refrain,
From flushing toilets in the station,
This advice is timely and it's true.

When the train is in the station,
You must practice constipation,
If the train's not moving,
Why should you?"


The sign is from the early 1970's when the ecology flag was popular
for a few months.

Translation: Flush the commode somewhere out in the sticks, where no one of any great importance will have to see it.

I'm always reminded of the story of the Dave Matthews Band bus and the Chicago River.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Matt ... s_incident

I always wonder how many young boys saw that as a challenge as to who could leave the biggest pile at the station!

As I recall the impetus for Amtrak adopting holding tanks on cars was a similar incident involving a fisherman in a boat under a bridge in Florida. Not the same volume obviously.

Cue "crash into me".

It was the Track Department and Superliners.

In the olden days, when you flushed the toilet it went down and out onto the right of way. In certain watersheds, Special Instructions called for toilets to be locked. Cars parked for occupancy had a "honey bucket" under each downspout.

Enter the Superliner. Their toilets fed a tank that mulched the effluent and held it in a tank that had an automatic drain valve that was closed below 20 mph. When the train left the station and accelerated, at 20 mph they all dumped. Passenger trains accelerate at about the same rate every day, so every day they contributed to a growing pile of effluent, soaking the ties, ballast, subgrade, berm and drainage ditch. Then track workers had to work there in all this mess.

So Amtrak had to go to a real retention tank with a "honey wagon" meeting the train at schedulled points.

Phil Mulligan

I remember when I rode the SW Chief in '89 to Flagstaff, going over Raton Pass the OBS Chief announced a reminder to the attendants to put their holding tanks on retard at a couple of points to prevent them from dumping. So I guess their was a manual override that could be used in limited circumstances.

The Chicago North shore and Milwaukee interurban had a distinctive problem with this issue because they entered the City of Chicago on the elevated transit system. Same thing in Milwaukee where the trains ran in public streets to the downtown terminal. I remember the conductors walking through the cars once we reached urban areas and locking the toilet doors.

I've heard the old direct flush toilets referred to as "Tie Counters". They fascinated me as a kid.
A friend of mine got torpedoed when we were watching a HW train go by at speed. It wasn't pretty.

It shall remain unnamed, but I was 'drafted' on to lookout duty about 20 years ago on an established excursion railroad at the end of day, we backed the empty train out on to a girder bridge over the river and dumped ALL the retention tanks at once into the river from about 25 feet up.

My unexplained job from the dutch doors was to radio clear looking upstream and downstream for any humans, canoes, or observers that might be out there....No, I don't see anybody, why?

Followed by the response command 'BOMBS AWAY' to the crew in the cars. OMG, I can't believe this....

I can assure you, that practice is no longer done. I was just stunned, I had no idea that's what they were up to until it happened.

Reading Company simply painted "Electric Locker" on its MU car dry hopper toilets and locked them.

Phil Mulligan