Blindtraveler
Established Member
Hopefully once the busy summer season is over the existing facilities will be refurbished as they've coped with a lot in the 10 years they've been open
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New toilets at London Bridge
- Thread starter Benjwri
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We can hope, but having visited the new ones yesterday I would think it will cause issues. While not as bad as the women’s, the men’s can get fairly busy as it is. I went to visit yesterday and the men’s side is very small, at least half the size of the other toilets. I don’t think they would be able to anywhere near cope on their own.
Mikey C
Established Member
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Agreed. The original men's toilets are pathetically small, with the hand dryers placed to get in the way of people entering! The new ones are much the same size or even smaller, so would similarly struggle if the original ones were closed for any period.
Backroom_boy
Member
Trend is to move hand driers above the sinks to stop the blockage near the entrance. St Pancras was marginally improved with this change. (On the men's side at least; the women's side os still horrific.)
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
...and all that does is cause a blockage around the sinks as half the sink space is now taken up by people drying their hands.
Mikey C
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True, though if the toilets are large enough, then the hand dryers don't get in the way anyway, e.g. at Euston where they are at 90 degrees to the sinks.
jon81uk
Member
Is it better to have someone taking a full minute at a sink and dryer together rather than 20-30 secs at the sink and a further 30+ seconds at dryer.
My biggest peeve is public toilets that don't have enough dryers. There is no point having eight sinks if there is only one dryer. Eight sinks means eight dryers are needed, or a better design with 4-6 sinks and 4-6 dryers. It takes just as long, or longer to dry hands with an air dryer as it does to wash them.
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
It takes a lot more than the stated 30 seconds to get hands fully dry*, and quite often because of the positioning of the drying blowers, it's not easy for anyone else to use the sinks on either side of anyone drying their hands.
Far better to have separate areas for each function.
*Especially if the blower is only producing cold air, which seems to be the case with half of them!!
jon81uk
Member
The other major downside with seperate locations, particulay in travel circumstances is then needing to pick up bags with wet hands to move to the location of the dryer. Thats one main reason why airports and similar have switched to having the dryer above the sink, it keeps the luggage with the user.
Most modern dryers use high speed air to push the water off now rather than heat to actually evaporate the water. Dyson Airblade should work like a squeegee pushing the water down the fingers and off the end, so doesn't need heat.
Backroom_boy
Member
By taking 18 months to do it?
Page 24 & 34 of the attached design manual also describes the ambulant cubicle at a more technical level.
I'm guessing there was quite a lot of fairly serious plumbing required given the previous use. They are also to be fair a lot more heavy duty than previous installations, so should last better. But I'm sure many consultant's fees were also involved.
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
Are they Airblades hidden above the sinks? The stream of air doesn't feel that concentrated to me - and I've never managed to get my hands dry in a single cycle on an Airblade anyway...
Would be interesting to see how a similar installation in a non-railway environment would compare, cost wise.
jammmmmsssssss
Member
But most people don't bother completely drying their hands as it takes too long. A lot of people (including me) only spend about 5-10 seconds at the hand dryer
Significantly cheaper. But as I say they’ve used a lot more durable fittings, and I suspect a lot of money was spent creating the space to put them as I don’t believe it was existing, so a fair bit of structural work.
Blindtraveler
Established Member
In what way are the fittings etc. More durable? I've been quite shocked at the cheap quality of some of the post-pandemic network rail toilet refits, Edinburgh Waverly springs to mind, tiles coming off the wall and taps not working within a year of completion
I would say it’s a more heavy duty installation, proper walls between cubicles, metal doors etc. you can see it in the photos above, and it’s been done surprisingly tastefully.
Obviously you can’t really judge the things you mention till time has passed, that’s more quality of install and non visible fittings.
A large chunk of that will probably have gone on congestion zone & LEZ/ULEZ costs for contractors. All this pretending we care about air quality costs big money.
Probably, yes... Lowering CO2 emissions etc are all current PR buzzwords, used while quietly hoping everyone forgets about the existence of Marylebone.