
Why has Victoria tube station started to smell like roast meat? - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.citymetric.com/business/why-has-victoria-tube-station-started-smell-roast-meat-3777
======
franze
In Austria we have a whole metro line which smells like vomit in the hot
summer months - it's also the metro line which connects the most important
tourist sites. So tourist get a very special smell of Vienna.

The reason is organic glue used in the 70ies during construction to harden the
ground. So the smell is "baked in" the structure of the whole metrotunnel.

[http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/ubahn/deutsch/...](http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/ubahn/deutsch/faq.html)
(German)

~~~
hrktb
Your paragraph on this similar issue conveys almost the same level of info as
the whole article and is equally interesting.

I don't see myself as a TLDR extremist, but I feel there's a cultural shift
that needs to happen, or I am just personally ruined and doomed to get irked
at verbose articles the rest of my days.

~~~
ams6110
I'm the same. I have noticed that more and more, if a web-posted article
doesn't get to the point in a couple of sentences, I move on.

I don't find this to be the case when I'm reading printed matter such as books
or newspapers though.

~~~
toadworrier
And yet it was print newspapers that had the rule that important stuff must
come in he first column inch.

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danpalmer
This reminds me of the trains CrossCountry use in the U.K. (as well as a few
other names, East Coast Mainline too maybe?).

They have the air con intake next to the toilet ventilation, so the whole
train just smells like a toilet. They are kept clean enough, but it’s got that
combination of strong cleaning products and a slight background hint of
something else that is very reminiscent of public toilets. Throughout the
whole train.

~~~
theoh
The ECML uses Intercity 225 sets, which is a much more prestigious kind of
train. Cross Country appear to use the older IC 125 (among others, due to lack
of ubiquitous electrification), which is diesel-powered. So it doesn't sound
plausible that the ECML trains would suffer the same problem as more regional,
modest services.

~~~
danpalmer
I don't know about the specific rolling stock, but Cross Country are not
regional – they do long distance journeys and have things like catering
onboard for first class, so I wouldn't call them modest either.

I could be wrong about the design flaw being on the ECML though - it might be
the long distance Virgin services that I'm thinking of.

~~~
theoh
The Cross Country trains _are_ InterCity trains, just not as prestigious, or
as high speed (and not electrically powered).

Correcting what I said before, according to Wiki, the Cross Country services
are now operated by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_170](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_170)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_220](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_220)

The story in question seems to be this one:
[https://metro.co.uk/2013/10/06/virgin-trains-to-
spend-3-5m-r...](https://metro.co.uk/2013/10/06/virgin-trains-to-
spend-3-5m-removing-toilet-smell-from-train-corridors-4135746/)

So it's Class 220s (the Cross Country trains) and Pendolinos that had the
problem. All were being operated by Virgin, the Pendolinos on the West Coast
main line.

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bambax
> _Some people are apparently able to discern difference between high-street
> chains_

Yes, I'm one of those people. Or at least I can tell McDonald's/non-
McDonald's. I also can smell them from quite a long way away.

Once I spotted one while driving in a city in Spain, it was almost 1 km away
but we found it by circling around it by smell. This was before smartphones,
GPS and such, and before generalized air-conditioning in cars (which happened
in Europe fairly recently) and pollen filters.

Indeed today when driving in a car I don't smell anything, and it's
disturbing. One of the pleasures (not often discussed) of riding a motorcycle
through the country is experience all the different smells of the outside
world. (Of course you can always drive a car with open windows but it feels
weird and if you're not alone in the car inevitably other passengers will
complain).

~~~
mirimir
> Indeed today when driving in a car I don't smell anything, and it's
> disturbing.

What about people smoking tobacco in other cars? That disgusts me. But maybe
it's because I'm a former smoker.

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INTPenis
>and it is impossible to entirely verify this solution without having
terrorist-levels of access to the underground system

Isn't it already "terrorist-level access" for a privately owned restaurang to
"inject" their "air" into the tube station ventilation?

~~~
GuB-42
That's the issue. The restaurant ventilation is compilant with the regulations
in place.

So is the restaurant injecting their air into the tube station or is it the
tube station pulling their air from the restaurant?

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mirimir
It's likely that exhaust from the kitchen of a burger seller (Bleecker) is
getting sucked into Victoria station. It's a classic ventilation fail. One of
them needs to move their ducting.

Edit: At least it's not CO from a parking garage.

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eveningcoffee
For more than year station air has been contaminated and nobody has done
anything.

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neals
Tldr: restaurants/kitchens push smelly air out. Subway station sucks smelly
air in.

~~~
mboto
Thanks!

