Did you know that in some countries the lavatories on the trains are not equipped with tanks for the sanitary disposal of waste? I did not know this. I learned this via a news item brought into class. It was about a woman in India who was riding a train, sat down on the toilet and passed out while giving birth prematurely to a baby girl. In India, the toilets on the train open right onto the tracks, which is where the baby landed. It took two hours before the woman was found in the loo, and before people understood what had happened. Happy ending though, the baby survived.
Students wondered who cut the cord and we surmised that the placenta must have come out with the baby. And of course some are rather horrified at the "hole in the floor" train toilet. My Romanian student however, was nonplussed, "All the trains are like that in my country," she lamented. Can I get an ewww?
This has given me the chance to tell the story of when I was a kid and some unidentified liquid matter hit the windshield on a sunny day. "What was that?" I asked my mother who was driving. She gave me some deadpan response "that there must be a plane dumping the toilet tank." I was incredulous at first until my mother said, "What else do you expect them to do with it?" For at least a year afterwards I tried to "catch" a plane in the act of dumping the toilet tank. Finally, she came clean with me, but sheesh I was a gullible boy.
29 comments:
Transportation poo stories, nice. :-)
Stories of "blue ice" are as old as ... air travel.
The train in my country, Thailand, are like that too. We were told not to go no.2 when the train stop at the station.
I would not recommend sleeping train in Thailand. Only if you can afford the first class.
Read my Chaing Mai trip post if you are wondering why...
I'm glad the baby survived but did they have to name him Detritus? I used to enjoy waling along the train tracks here. In India even living near the tracks would be odorous. Ed
Just a few years ago I took the train from London to Edinburgh. I entered the bathroom and raised the toilet lid to see the tracks rushing by. Isn't Great Britain supposed to be a developed country?
You've got an ewwwww from me, Torn.
Birdie
I shudder to think of the possibilities in that story. Like, what if the placenta had NOT come out? Would the lady have been dragged through the hole by the umbilical cord? Astonishing that the baby survived... especially a premie!
Also: Planes don't really dump that cargo in mid-flight, do they? Maybe they do for overseas... into the ocean it goes.
I think suddenly I'm a fan of VIA rail.
I used to travel a lot by train up to the late '80s. VIA Rail still had (and, really, still has) old equipment. Stepping on the pedal next to the toilet yielded a view of the passing track. For that reason, toilets were locked when the train had to stop for a long time at any given station. In other words, we don't have to go back THAT far or the Third World to find trains with facilities like those you describe here...
ewwww!!!
And thus a life-long love affair ensued.
Cute, funny AND gullible! What's not to love, eh? :)
But the hole in the floor toilet thing.....definitly EWWW!
HUGS...
PS my verification word is: mmwoofhy. Probably a sound Sara makes from time to time, eh? :)
I read about this story last week. If this woman is from India, wouldn't she know that there are no tanks? I wonder if she was just trying to get rid of the baby and then when it survived...I don't know. Women in India are opressed and that's the first thing I thought of.
You is back on the poo train.. YAY!
Yes, often we who live in "civilized" North America forget that hygiene standards in many parts of the world are not like ours. I believe I prefer ours.
Mark :-)
It must really suck to be a track worker.
A few years back when Dave Matthews Band was on tour and passing through Chicago, his tour bus driver decided to dump the bus's waste on one of the many bridges over the Chicago River. Meanwhile one of the Chicago Architecture tour boats was underneath the bridge with tourists gaping up open-mouthed at the skyscrapers...
I believe DMB was fined for illegally dumping their waste. I've not gone on the Architecture tour, and when/if I ever do, I will be gaping close-mouthed at the skyscrapers!
PS: On the same subject. One of the major feats of "modern science" (even though this was done about 100 years ago) was the reversal of the flow of the Chicago River. But why was the flow of the River reversed?
The city and suburbs get their drinking water from Lake Michigan. The city dumps (or at least used to) dump the sewage into the Chicago River. So the sewage would end up flowing into the drinking water supply and people would invariably end up choking on their own sewage. So now the Chicago River flows to the Fox River which flows into the Mississippi and down to St. Louis, New Orleans, and the Gulf of Mexico. The drinking water supply and sewage no longer mix in such a volatile way.
I could probably talk you into most anything, it sounds like. And, as much as I fly in airplanes, I've yet to see the ground outside when lifting up the lid to take a leak.
I won't walk the tracks in India or Romania, then. then again, poo is poo and if people will tolerate dog poo on the street, then why not human poo on the train tracks?
I was surprised, the first time I took the train in Canada, that the train toilets were chemical toilets here. I'm very used to the 'hole in the floor' kind of toilets. You're not allowed to use them when trains are at the stations, but for the rest the waste just gets pulverized by falling on the train tracks. And the rain (abundant in the Netherlands) will do the rest. It's also much better for the environment than the chemicals used in chemical toilets and the toilets don't stink as much.
Oh, so your mother is to blame for the poo-tracks being laid in the impressionable young Torn's mind!
Your mom sounds like fun.
It used to be a common practice in the US to liquify the waste and then release it in a fine spray over the tracks. It isn't done anymore but when I think back to when we would visit my great grandparents in Uniontown, PA and walk along the railroad tracks behind their house....oh my gawd. There are just some things we are better off not knowing. But...poop goes somewhere!
Plane poo raining down on me.
Thanks, Torn. Something else for me to worry about.
Tornwordo, by all appearances you're a man of intelligence and integrity. So I'm startled by your apparent fascination with everything fecal. It's a recurring theme here on stickycrows. What gives? Or is it just one of your endearing personality quirks?
i remember when via rail had trains that did that. so it would be a maximum of probably 25 years ago if i can remember.
it used to terrify me 'cause when you flushed you could see the tracks going underneath.
and passengers were always asked to refrain from using the toilet while the train was in a station.
oh, apparently Maurice already said exactly what I did. never mind...
I don't think it's all that uncommon, even in first-world countries. I've been in very civilized places where advanced plumbing is the norm, and the train bathrooms are not to be used in the station.
Around here, the commuter trains have airplane-like bathrooms, but I don't know if something nastier is going on when it comes to cross-country trains. I try to avoid Amtrak as much as I can!
All the trains we took in Peru were like that. If the train was moving, you didn't notice. But if it slowed down for something, the stench was horrendous. Passengers were requested not to use the toilets in stations.
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