French Toilets In Motion

One of the heads and the flushing mechanism from a rented Crusader canal boat in France.

Here is the head in an Orion, a very similar rented canal boat in France. The only differences I noticed between the two boat designs were:

• A bow thruster was added to the Crusader design.
• The main helm position is designed a little differently.
• The domestic water supply is designed differently, with multiple much smaller pressure tanks on the earlier Orion versus a single much larger pressure tank on the Crusader.
• The simpler toilets on the earlier Orion, which worked much better. The Orion toilets are operated by pressing a waterproofed button on the panel below the counter to pump water into the bowl, and stepping on a foot pedal (barely visible below the bowl in the image at right) to open the large flapper valve into the holding tank. For much better performance, use the detachable shower spray nozzle. The entire head compartment is the shower, see the picture at right with the drain in the floor. The Crusader heads had a complicated and poorly performing T-handle pumping mechanism.

I have taken these on trips on the Canal Latéral à la Loire between Briare and Decize, and on the Canal du Midi between Port Cassafieres and Castelnaudary. Click here for many more pictures of those trips.

This is a Toilette a Grande Vitesse, or a High Speed Toilet, found on the TGV or Train a Grande Vitesse, the High Speed Train running through France. Before leaving my seat, my GPS had synced up and was indicating a speed of 305 km/hour.

This is the toilet on an older regional train in France, running between Toulouse and Avignon. Old-style train toilets with no holding tank, where the flapper valve opens into a 10cm diameter pipe dropping straight onto the tracks.

This is the toilet on an newer RER regional train in France, running between Marseille and Béziers.

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