Narrative Ecology – Blog of Ron Donaldson – fACILITATOR, TRAINER AND COACH

Now don’t get me wrong, I love public transport and I don’t normally get worked up about the lesser issues only about getting to my destination on time. However today is turning out to be more eventful than I anticipated.
Having booked a reduced fare East Coast Rail first class advance ticket last week, I arrived at Peterborough station early and as an earlier train stood at the platform, I watched the on board toilet flush. Eager to see if I was right, the train moved off leaving a large fresh brown turd with a trailing toilet paper scarf smiling up at all of us on the platform. A quick scan along the track and I spotted other similar tell tale piles of toilet paper every few feet and associated bluebottles and flies.
Is this acceptable in 2010? I cannot think of an easier situation for flies to vector disease direct from fresh faeces to humans, since the iron age. If we ever do have an outbreak of toilet based d in the future we would probably need to consider closing down the railways to prevent further dispersal.

Surely it is not outside the creative genius of carriage designers to develop a sieve that comes into place under the train when stationary but moves away at say 30 miles per hour when away from heavily populated stations?