Does anyone know anything about pre-fabricated concrete toilets placed along the lineside in post-WW2 days?
When I was growing up in industrial Lancashire in the late 1960s and early 70s, there was a network of many miles of recently-closed railway lines in my locality victims of Beeching cuts and declining heavy industries. I spent many hours exploring these trackbeds by bike since, although track & sleepers were gone, the lines had been dismantled recently enough for vegetation, flooding etc. not yet to be an issue.
There were some good, unofficial Rail Trails especially as BR didnt seem to use much ballast on these former goods lines and colliery branches. Bits of more durable railway paraphernalia were still in evidence e.g. mileposts, concrete gradient markers, bases of signal posts, foundations of signalboxes, and maybe the odd ruined platelayers hut.
What I do recall coming across quite regularly on these explorations were small, square prefabricated concrete huts.
These huts were all the same, maybe 4 or 5 feet square on the base definitely room for one man only windowless solid concrete slabs on three sides and completely open on the fourth, with a flat concrete roof. I suspected at the time they might be lineside toilets (of the pit, or at best chemical bucket variety), but I dont know their purpose for sure.
They seemed too small to be used for storage, or to work inside (as in lamp huts), or even as air-raid shelters from the War. Although small, they were of heavy-duty construction, which probably explained why they were left behind when almost all other railway infrastructure was removed.
Ive tried Google searches to find an image of what I'm trying to describe, with zero success.
Another clue was that the open side of these installations usually seemed to face away from the former railway tracks, possibly as a modesty precaution for passing train passengers, and meaning they were unlikely to be fogmens huts. Presumably they had had a wooden door when in operation, the doors having been re-purposed (stolen for someone's garden shed) or vandalised / burnt at some stage.
As well as along closed lines, I also saw the same structures alongside operational railways at the time, in a similar state of door-less abandonment, but of course I didnt investigate these too closely being the wrong side of the fence!
They were usually in incongruous or random locations where you might ask why put a toilet there?, but perhaps there had been long-gone sidings there or a goods loop, where shunters or footplatemen waiting for a path might need to answer natures call.
So my questions are does anyone remember this type of lineside hut from 30 40 years ago and were they really lineside toilets?
And are there any images on the Internet, or even 21st Century survivors on Network Rail?