Rajdhani Express’s shitty affair

I remember traveling to New Delhi via Rajdhani Express for summer holidays couple of years ago. The journey was comfortable, with quite good service and the food served was delicious. Going to the ‘loo’ was also not a problem, which is very surprising since I suffer from acute public toilet phobia. Yes, my hidden secret is out in the blog-land; I cannot get myself to use a public toilet, no matter how clean & neat it may be. Atleast I will try to ignore nature’s call, till the extent I know that my fragile gall-bladder is about to explode.

Anyway, the reason for the post is not about discussing my toiletry-phobia but about the lavatory inadequacies aboard Rajdhani Express.

According to Mid-Day:

Passengers on the Rajdhani Express have a unique problem. The advanced lavatories in these trains have a flap or a shutter in the cylinder beneath the commode. The flap only opens when the train reaches a speed of 30 kmph, so that toilets cannot be used when the train is at a halt at stations.

However, the flap mechanism often malfunctions, which jams the discharge outlet of the commode. This leads to overflowing, causing inconvenience to passengers.

And this is not all. There have been a few dirty potty mishaps aswell. For example -

One mechanic, while repairing the lavatory, recently got faeces all over his body as the flap or the discharge outlet opened up and emptied its contents on him. “It is a great risk to repair the jammed lavatory mechanism. Sometimes, the cylinder has to be banged from the sides. While doing this, there are chances of the faeces falling all over the place,” said a railway source.

The only solution to fix the problem; most of the commode’s discharge outlets, had to be forced open and the mechanism have been done away with.

This turns out to be one of those rare cases where advanced technology has lead to hazardous situation instead of improving it.