Talk:South Australian Railways Redhen railcar

Length of "Preservation history" section edit

At more than half the length of the article, the " Preservation history" section is too long and far too detailed; the focus is that of a railfan site rather than an encyclopaedia for general readers. It's also out of date.

One solution could be to heavily condense the text into a table and change from a chronological approach to listing by running numbers. Is there a better way than that? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 06:07, 8 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Intention to cut down "Preservation history" section and add text edit

Further to the above, I plan to reduce the preservation history section. Despite recent additions of citations to the tables, still only half the table entries are up to date and cited. My intention is to summarise the disposition into categories of, say: operational, on public display, in private ownership / status unknown, and to list car numbers under those categories.

The additional text, which I'm researching at the moment, would be about the reasons for and development of the cars, and technical details not yet covered.

Comments? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 04:31, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

The main reason why I believe the cut-back is needed is the undue length of post-revenue service text -- taking up two-thirds of the article -- and the high amount of detail in it, more attuned to a specialist website than an encyclopaedia. Also, there is a high incidence of unreferenced material. The main problem is (WP:RECENTISM and fancruft).
Two tables (one of power cars, one trailers) with the headers shown below could accommodate the important details in the tables. Based on the information currently available, only the 4th would be unreferenced -- but retention is probably justified in the cause of completeness of the record, even though many of them are getting long in the tooth:
Power cars
Operational Non-operational pending return to service Public static display Privately owned or status uncertain
Car numbers go here (referenced). For example:

321,[a] 334[b] ...

Car numbers go here (referenced) Car numbers go here (referenced) Car numbers go here (not referenced)
Notes to table
  1. ^ National Railway Museum, Port Adelaide; used on special events days.
  2. ^ SteamRanger heritage railway.

As shown, the citations would be retained in the table for easier reference.

Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 02:05, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply