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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Quainton Road railway station/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 00:03, 24 September 2010 [1].

Quainton Road railway station edit

Quainton Road railway station (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s):  – iridescent 19:43, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you'll all be sad to know this is the last visit to Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville and his very expensive train-set. When you read this, you'll see why I left it until last; for somewhere so obscure, Quainton Road has a very tangled history.

Those who've read the others in this series will notice that this one is a radical departure in style, and concentrates on the people and companies involved rather than on the layout and design of the station. The significance of Quainton Road isn't in the station itself—it was an utterly generic small rural station—but in the politics of its history. Only built because the Duke of Buckingham pestered the developers to route a new railway near his house, a series of unforeseeable decisions led to it becoming a major junction station, before going into a long decline and eventually closing. The derelict station was then taken over by enthusiasts, and eventually became a major museum in its own right.

This one also has more "background" sections than the others in the series. I know it makes the article longer, but I think it's necessary. For most of these articles, the majority of readers will be people interested in railways or engineering history, who'll understand the historical background. In the case of Quainton Road, I suspect a significant proportion of readers will be people visiting the museum or people interested in TV shows filmed there, and I don't really want to send them on a scavenger-hunt of (often very technical) railway articles in order to understand who these people were and why these railway lines were opened and closed. – iridescent 19:43, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. No dabs, no dead links. You may have gone a little overboard with the background information, but I can see the motivation. No issues, except that File:First_Quainton_Road_station_layout.png is missing a copyright tag. Ucucha 20:28, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixed the licensing. My thinking with the extended background is that it's unfair to make someone read Brill Tramway and Metropolitan Railway to find out what was going on. Since the significance of Quainton Road was purely down to it being the choke-point through which Brill Tramway traffic passed, the fortunes of the station rose and fell with those of the Tramway. – iridescent 20:41, 14 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Oppose 1c only over the issue of price series, easily fixed by rerunning the calculations at MW and using an appropriate measure. 2c is excellent good. I really like your books in volumes, series, series titles, etc. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:41, 15 September 2010 (UTC) As discussed below, the price issue is a matter for reasonable difference over, and the editor has a clear understanding of their current decision which I still disagree with Fifelfoo (talk) 15:47, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • 2c: Leboff, David; Demuth, Tim (1999). The title ends with an exclamation point, followed by a period. Only the exclamation point is necessary. Thompson, F. M. L. ; Feuchtwanger, E. J.. . Incorrect citations of ODNB, containing work not listed. The ODNB entries are Authored "Subsiduary works" contained in an Edited A greater work.
  • 1c: [no longer a cause to oppose] Capital and Consumer expenses operate in radically different manners in relation to inflation. Capital expenses are the dedication of a proportion of the total social product towards the creation of social utilities. Sending a man to the moon in 1930 would have required the entire world's output. Sending a man to the moon in 1970 merely required a massive fraction of the USA's output. Neither was experienced as the price of a sausage from a street vendor (ie: CPI). CPI is not an appropriate measure for capital goods expenditure over time. ^ a b c d e f UK CPI inflation numbers based on data available from Measuring Worth: UK CPI. "Two traction engines converted for railway use were bought from Aveling and Porter at a cost of £398" See MW "Retail Price Index:This is an index used in the United Kingdom that measures the cost in a given period of the goods and services purchased by a typical consumer in a base period" Use Share of GDP for capital goods see MW "Share of GDP: Share of GDP, measures the consumption or production of a subject (commodity or project) against the output of the economy, that is, the given monetary amount is computed as a percent of GDP. This measure indicates opportunity cost in terms of the total output of the economy." Instead of £398 being £26,400 it is the much more comprehensible share of total output in terms of 2009: £455,000.00. Engines are expensive.
  • Regarding the reference for No Need to Ask!, I know that the punctuation is jarring, but I can't see an obvious way around it. I believe that, except in a few exceptional cases, one should use citation templates instead of writing the reference out longhand; otherwise, any change to Wikipedia's in-house citation style means manually amending thousands of articles. However, both {{citation}} and {{cite book}} have punctuation after the title.
  • I'm not 100% clear what you mean regarding the ODNB references. Are you suggesting treating the entries as de facto articles within a single-issue journal? If so, while I can see the argument I'm not sure I agree.
  • I made a conscious decision to use CPI rather than share of GDP on these articles. In most cases I agree that share of GDP is more appropriate for capital expenditure, but in the contexts in which prices are used here, I think consumer pricing is more relevant as a comparator. The Brill Tramway was essentially a hobby of the Duke of Buckingham, not a viable business; in my opinion "what else could he have bought with that money?" is more illustrative in this context. Share-of-GDP also gives ridiculously overinflated figures in this context; yes, locomotive engines are expensive but we're not talking about true locomotive engines but what were in effect very primitive automobiles with a top speed of 8 mph, and a modern equivalent of £450,000 is far too high. – iridescent 09:50, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm glad you understand the economic issue at stake. I'm still very wary of you using CPI here, as the Duke of Buckingham wasn't in the habit of purchasing a "normal consumer bundle" with his disposable monetary assets. I'd urge using GDP per capita to reflect Buckingham's access to money flows, "includes consumption of fixed capital and undistributed corporate profits -- flows that are not part of national personal income." (indicated by "what else was he going to use it for). If you still believe personal income should be used, which I disagree with, you ought to use the GDP deflator ("is an index number that represents the "average price" of all the goods and services produced in the economy."). Thank goodness these aren't late medieval or early modern numbers where I'd argue that the non-capitalised economy was dominant! As this is a matter of editorial decision, not of research failure, I'm changing my oppose to support but still urge you to reconsider using a CPI based figure. Fifelfoo (talk) 15:47, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think we're singing from the same hymn-sheet here (some people here may remember my rants about the misuse of wage/price indices). The problem is that there isn't really any accurate index in this context. This was the era of tied-cottages and sharecropping, where cash incomes were low but an extensive barter network was in place, so earnings always appear deceptively low. Basically, percentage of GDP will make the prices appear artificially high, but CPI/RPI makes the larger prices artificially low. As for most of the prices CPI is undoubtedly the correct one to use (ticket prices and so on), I think the confusion that would be caused by jumping between different indices outweighs any benefits from using two different indices. When all is said and done, this is an article on civil engineering, not on economics, and the prices are only there to emphasise how cheaply run the operation was. – iridescent 16:00, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:08, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I think this is an extraordinary piece of work in more ways than one, and easily meets the FA criteria. I fixed the ODNB citation issue that Fifelfoo raised above btw. Malleus Fatuorum 14:29, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Fascinating stuff, and very readable. Is it possible to avoid the close conjunction of "opening" and "open" in para 1? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:07, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Problematic sentences: "The 2nd Duke had spent heavily on artworks, womanising, and attempting to influence elections, and by 1847 he was nicknamed "the Greatest Debtor in the World"; "After the death of his father on 29 July 1861 he became the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, and resigned from the chairmanship of the LNWR, returning to Wotton House to manage the family's remaining estates." Suggest splitting both in two to avoid the repetition of 'and'.
  • Spelling: what is "Six miles (10 km) northwast of Aylesbury"? Also, I'm not too keen on "resite"/"resiting" as neither appear to be a word. I think they should be hyphenated.
  • "It is likely that the station had a single timber-covered earth platform and minimal buildings". Bit weaselly.

Aiken (talk) 22:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Can't see any problem with either of these sentences; both are direct subject/object relationships. Splitting them would separate out the subject and object, and make the paragraphs in question more confusing, not less. – iridescent 19:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think a semi-colon for the first sentence instead of the 'and', and for the second sentence, move the 'and' to the last part. Aiken (talk) 22:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Concur with Iridescent; it is not usually problematic to repeat "and", and I see no problems with those two sentences. Ucucha 22:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixed "northwest". I've changed "resite" to "re-site" to avoid confusion; both are correct (this is written in en-GB, not en-GB-oed), but changing it does not harm and if it's causing confusion no reason for it to stay. – iridescent 19:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • No idea what you mean with this one. It's likely; it's not known for certain, and the fact that nobody's certain is directly cited. The blueprints are lost; the only known extant photograph of the first station is a photograph of a locomotive which happens to have a small, blurred part of the first station building in the background; none of the platform structure is visible, nor any significant element of the station architecture; the foundations were destroyed in the 1896–97 works which replaced the level crossings with the road bridge. Everything about the design of the first station building is inferred from the design of the other stations on the line. – iridescent 19:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps this could be explained in the article? This explanation is exactly what I mean. Thanks, Aiken (talk) 22:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not going to, and if you're going to oppose over that, so be it. This article is already extremely long; I'm not going to expand it further going into pointless detail about what isn't known about the station. – iridescent 22:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree with Iridescent again. There is nothing "weaselly" about stating that something isn't known for certain, and we generally should state what we think or know, not how exactly we came to think or know that. Ucucha 22:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "we generally should state what we think or know, not how exactly we came to think or know that" But, we don't know, we're guessing, at best. Aiken (talk) 22:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "what we think or know" (emphasis new). Ucucha 22:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Basically the same as guessing. Fact is, there is nothing certain about the station's architecture, and for all we know it could be radically different to other stations (which it is believed to be similar to). Historians can think what they like, whether it's true or not is another matter. Only primary sources (such as photos, blueprints) give any certainty. Aiken (talk) 22:39, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not our business to determine that. We go with the consensus of reliable sources, and as far as I can see, that consensus is that the station likely had a single such platform and minimal buildings. Ucucha 23:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not pointless, but your choice of course. "likely" is just very vague and subjective imo, and ought to be explained if you're going to use it. And you'll notice, I'm sure, that I am neutral not in opposition, as it's fine otherwise (though I haven't read it all). Aiken (talk) 22:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How about "Historians Simpson and Horne both believe that the station had a single timber-covered earth platform and minimal buildings"? Aiken (talk) 22:47, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is frankly ridiculous. The sentence "It is likely that the station had a single timber-covered earth platform and minimal buildings" is followed by two citations, one to Simpson and one to Horne. Anyone who wants to know who it is that thinks it's likely can simply follow the links and find out. Malleus Fatuorum 22:55, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I know it's sourced, but at the moment it lacks any credibility for me. I know I'm in the minority here (and perhaps the only person), but I believe such subjective statements should be made as clear as possible. I consider that reasonable. Even just using "historians" would be better. At the moment it's just left hanging. Aiken (talk) 23:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you were to say "historians believe", then that would imply that all historians believe. Where's the evidence for that? All that's being claimed is that two historians have offered their opinion. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what the article currently says, and your proposed change would clearly not be to the benefit of the article's credibility. Malleus Fatuorum 23:09, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree but I'm clearly in the minority here so I'll just let it go. Aiken (talk) 23:10, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What don't you agree with? That your suggestion of "Historians believe ..." would be retrograde and unsupported by the facts? Malleus Fatuorum 23:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My original suggestion was to name the two historians, so that the reader didn't have to navigate away from the text to see whose opinion it was. Aiken (talk) 23:16, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone who cares whose opinion it is would no doubt be quite happy to navigate away to find out. That's the wonder of hypertext links. Malleus Fatuorum 23:49, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose and comprehensiveness. I list below a number of observations for your consideration but these do not affect my support. *The lead's rather long, though it reads nicely and I admit it's not obvious how it could be condensed; currently it goes off the screen (on my viewing), so any condensing at all that brings it under one page would make it less daunting in appearance. But that may not be possible.

  • I can't see an obvious way to condense it, and trust me I've tried. The trouble is that Quainton Road has had three very different incarnations (rural railway halt; the junction between London's transport network and the mainline from the North; museum) and each of them has to be covered, together with at least a minimum of explanation as to how and why the changes happpened. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Quainton Road railway station was opened in 1868 [...] In 1899 the new Great Central Railway (GCR) from the north of England opened" - the lead has meanwhile covered several other events without saying when in that 30-year gap they took place.
  • I don't really want the lead to be a parade of dates. The station opening is significant enough to mention, as is the opening of the GCR line (which transformed it from an obscure outpost into the de facto boundary between North and South. The Brill Tramway developed gradually from an industrial tramway to a passenger tube line, and has no obvious completion date. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"It was to run roughly southwest from Quainton Road to a Wotton railway station " - I take it "a Wotton" is intentional, e.g., the station did not yet exist?

  • Yes; that paragraph is written in the future tense as it's still discussing the Duke's proposal at that stage, rather than the line as built. It was built to serve Wotton House so was always going to have a station in Wotton, whatever happened with the rest of the line; I linked Wotton railway station there as the first occurrence. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"a 1 mile 57 chain (2.8 km) siding" - is the chain the unit the MoS would have us use here? Having done all those railway articles, I expect you will say yes, but it surprises me; do we expect the lay reader to know such a term?

  • Railways in Britain were and are always measured in chains, even today (aside from a few exceptions such as the Eurostar route). I can say "1 mile 57 chain (1 mile 1254 yards; 2.8 km)" if you think it's necessary, but the chains should stay; most people looking up this article will expect to see measurements expressed in chains. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ungainly as an extra conversion is, I'm inclined to think it's appropriate. PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"The lightly laid track with longitudinal sleepers limited the locomotive weight to a maximum of nine tons,[32] and it was thus necessary to use the lightest locomotives possible.[33]" - what point is being made by the second half? I notice it's cited to a completely different source from the first half, but it seems somewhat tautological (or worse, contradictory, depending on what sub-nine-ton locos the reader is to presume existed)

  • The track was built for horses, and thus used longitudinal sleepers (that is, each track was built on an independent long narrow wooden platform, rather than cross-ties which would have tripped horses). Without cross-ties to keep the two rails aligned, it was unable to take heavy loads without a risk of buckling. Thus, it couldn't handle "real" locomotives—which are by their nature big and heavy—and had to use what were in effect farm tractors adapted to run on rails. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I get that, but once we've said the design "limited the locomotive weight to a maximum of nine tons", isn't the rest axiomatic? (And why "lightest possible"?) PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The only available locomotive that was light enough to be used on the line were the Aveling and Porter converted traction engines, which were the lightest ones available at the time—that is, the only factor in choosing the engines was weight, hence all the later problems with unreliability, low speed, derailment etc. I don't really want to go into too much detail on the individual station articles; the technical details are better dealt with on the articles about the line itself. It's only mentioned here at all because the poor quality of services had a direct impact on use of the station. I don't agree that "limited to a maximum weight of nine tons" makes "it was thus necessary to use the lightest locomotives possible" redundant; unless a reader is familiar with how much various classes of 19th-century steam locomotives weighed, there's no reason for them to know that 9 tons was right at the lower limit of the range. – iridescent 16:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's just my point: there's no reason for them to know that. For all the reader knows, far ligher engines might have existed (2, 3, 5 ton?). I agree it doesn't need to go into a lot of detail, but if it is to successfully make the point you intend, it needs to explicate that that was indeed the lower limit of the possible range at that time. PL290 (talk) 18:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that does it—but "and it was thus ..." remains seemingly tautological. PL290 (talk) 18:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've reworded that to "The lightly laid track with longitudinal sleepers limited the locomotive weight to a maximum of nine tons, lighter than almost all locomotives then available, and it was thus not possible to use standard locomotives". I do think this is a point that needs hammering home, as it's so key to the rise-fall-rise-fall history of Quainton Road; the lack of foresight by the Duke when he built it led directly to the costly rebuilding and the ultimate collapse of all the grand long-term plans. (If it had been built to main-line specifications from the start, the Oxford scheme would almost certainly have been built, making Quainton Road the point at which the lines from north, south, east and west converged, and the Aylesbury Vale could have become the Ruhr of England.) – iridescent 18:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"taking 95–98 minutes to travel between Brill and Quainton Road" - would be enhanced by mentioning the distance (I don't think you said how far away Brill is, though I didn't actually go back and re-read to check that)

  • "As the only physical link between the Tramway and the national railway network, almost all of this traffic passed through Quainton Road station." - seems to need "As the line was the only physical link" or somesuch
  • No, Quainton Road itself was the only physical link. The Tramway didn't have its own station at Q.R.; everything passing to and from it literally had to negotiate this complicated arrangement around the station platform. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"With modern locomotives working services on the Brill–Quainton Road route (the Kingswood branch generally remained worked by horses, and occasionally by the Aveling and Porter engines), traffic levels soon rose." - unclear what made the levels rise. Is this connected with the locomotive purchase? Only one was said to be bought.

  • I was trying to avoid going into too much details on the locomotives—they're all covered on Brill Tramway and Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway—hence an intentionally non-specific wording. Basically, one was hired, one was bought, and another was bought after that to replace the one which was hired. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • It struck me as odd; perhaps "another was bought" somewhere would suffice. PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"The A&B's trains at Quainton Road would miss connections with the Tramway" - unclear why high fees would cause that.

  • They didn't; the A&B had two strategies to discourage people using the Tramway. One was charging fees for anyone wanting to transfer onto the Tramway; the other was to time their trains to miss connections, in the hope that people would use road transport to complete their journey rather than the Tramway. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Would" doesn't bring that out; it just sounds as though they would often fail. Can it say they also scheduled their trains to miss connections? PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unfortunately, no; they never did this officially, so "scheduled" doesn't work; their trains would just 'coincidentally' leave Quainton Road when they saw a Tramway train approaching, before the Tramway staff had a chance to transfer the cargo across. I've added a "deliberately". – iridescent 16:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"operating expenses of either goods or passenger operations" - ideally reword to avoid "operating expenses of operations"

  • Not sure about that; there were essentially two different businesses going on here. The goods operations were a loss-leader for the farms and brickworks along the route, and even if they didn't turn a profit the Duke would have kept them going to support his tenant farmers. The passenger operations were a luxury, essentially kept going as a favor to local residents, and could have been abolished without affecting the core business. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • It was only the word; would "goods or passenger services" do it? But it's okay as it is. PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I prefer "operations" to "services" in this context; the goods side of things was broader than just shunting cargo about, as the Tramway also owned a brickworks and would make bricks which they'd then ship along the railway to various customers along the route. – iridescent 16:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "construction on the extension itself had yet to begin" - construction of?
  • No, "on" is correct Br Eng here. It can change to "construction work on" if you prefer. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • You use "construction of" everwhere else, including "The new company was unable to raise sufficient investment to begin construction of the Oxford extension". PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Late that evening, a two-coach staff train pulled out of Brill, accompanied by a band playing Auld Lang Syne and a white flag." - unclear how the white flag "accompanied" the train. Perhaps "and flying a white flag" or whatever verb applies (which will also help parsing; currently, the band were playing Auld Lang Syne and a ...).
  • The band accompanied the train; they played Auld Lang Syne and they had a white flag with them. Remember, the trains here ran at walking pace. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then perhaps "bearing" is the word that would make the difference. I had to back-track on an expectation that the it was going to be something like "a band playing Auld Lang Syne and a selection of other moving pieces suited to the occasion". (After all, they had 95–98 minutes—plus all that stoppage time while "The train stopped at each station along the route, picking up the staff, documents and valuables from each"!) PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "London Transport reduced the former A&B route between Quainton Road and Verney Junction to a single track in 1939–40.[107] LT continued to operate freight services until 6 September 1947, when it was closed altogether,[note 14] leaving the former GCR route from Aylesbury via Rugby as the only service still operating through Quainton Road." - unclear what "it" refers to in "when it was closed altogether".
  • "It" is the former A&B route between Quainton Road and Verney Junction. I don't really want to repeat it; it's something of a mouthful, but would need to be written in full as there were other parts of the former A&B, and other routes between Quainton Road and Verney Junction. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hm; I see the challenge. But it makes confusing reading. How about "that section of the route"? PL290 (talk) 16:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*"As one of the best-preserved period railway stations in England, Quainton Road is regularly used as a filming location for period drama, including The Jewel in the Crown and the Doctor Who episode Black Orchid." - needs a tweak to avoid the implication that it's regularly used for that Doctor Who episode etc.

  • Tweaked. I don't want an "in popular culture" section—this paragraph is just a summary of material that should be covered in detail at Buckinghamshire Railway Centre—but want those two as examples as they provide a broad range. – iridescent 20:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PL290 (talk) 20:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC) [reply]

  • Support Excellent. Looking forward to seeing this and its siblings at WP:FTC soon. --DavidCane (talk) 20:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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