Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/SECR K and SR K1 classes/archive1

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 22:53, 30 January 2010 [1].

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SECR K and SR K1 classes

Nominator(s): Bulleid Pacific (talk) 12:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/SECR K and SR K1 classes/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because it has just gone through peer review, and all issues have been addressed. The article is on course for FA, and any further suggestions for improvement will be gratefully received. This is also a particularly important class of locomotive for Britain's railways as a whole, as it was the first of its type specifically built to haul passenger trains. Its involvement in the Sevenoaks disaster and subsequent rebuilding also makes it prominent amongst the locomotives of the Southern Railway.Bulleid Pacific (talk) 12:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• Support. I very much like this article and I believe that it meets the FA criteria. I do just have a few small things I think ought to be addressed though (inevitably).

• "... No. 31806 and is currently under overhaul". Can we say when "currently" is, as it will surely age, and I've got no easy way of knowing when that was written. As of 2010?

• "It was capable of high speeds on express passenger duties, although success was limited by the lower storage capacity of tank locomotives". The word "success" bothers me here. Success at what? Achieving high speeds? Something else?

• "This group had modified suspension on the bogie and leading axle, in an attempt to address complaints of rough riding experienced with earlier members of the class". This doesn't quite work for me; as written it suggests that it was the complaints that experienced rough riding. Could the word "complaints" simply be dropped, as in "attempt to address the rough riding experienced ..."? Or "complaints from the crews of rough riding experienced ..."?

--Malleus Fatuorum 19:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Support by Ruhrfisch - as requested I have read the article and find it to be another fine addition to the series on British locomotives. I agree with the suggestions above and have a few suggestions / quibbles of my own, which do not detract from my support:

• I know 2-6-4 is linked in the lead, but I think it would help to add a descriptive sentence at the start of the Design section to explain the ntation / design better for those less familiar with it. Perhaps something like "In the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, a 2-6-4 locomotive has two leading wheels, six coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels." from the 2-6-4 article would work.
  • Would something like this modification of the current first sentence in the section work? The 2-6-4 wheel arrangement[, with two leading wheels, six coupled driving wheels and four trailing wheels,] was not in common use in Great Britain at this time, as many railway companies operated routes that required locomotives with greater fuel capacity, or short branch lines that necessitated smaller locomotives." I always think it useful to provide context to the reader and to the uninitiated Whyte notation is mysterious stuff. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
• Need references for the following:
  • Construction of these locomotives had not begun by the time the SECR had been merged with other railways in southern England under the Railways Act 1921 to form the Southern Railway on 1 January 1923.
  • These were allocated the numbers A610–A629, and work had begun on building the frames and cylinders when the order was cancelled following an accident at Sevenoaks in 1927 involving locomotive No. 800.
  • When rebuilt into the U and U1 classes, the locomotives were repainted in the olive green livery with "Southern" added to the tender tank. This was carried into the Second World War when labour shortages meant that many U class locomotives were painted in plain black, with the result that by 1945 all the class were running in black. The livery was reverted to olive green, after the war, when overhauls were due.
• I would make it clearer that only K1 was built (the use of K1 class made me think there must have been more than one). One place this could be added is in the table "K and K1 class construction history", add a column on class. I would also mention it explicitly in a few places, so "The [sole] K1 class locomotive No. A890 was named River Frome.[24]" or perhaps "Numbers were changed to the British Railways standard numbering system: the series 31790–31809 was allocated to the K class rebuilds, and 31890 to the [one locomotive of the] K1 class.[40]"
  • I have reread the article - I think it would still help to add in the section on the K1 class that the prototype was the only one ever built. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

How's this? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Very nice thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 21:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Overall this is quite well done, thanks for an interesting read. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I've added a column on class to the abovementioned table.

It was not unusual in the UK to have a locomotive "class" which contained just one member; the most common reason was a prototype which was not multiplied for whatever reason. The Southern Railway only had one 2-6-4T with three cylinders and 6-foot driving wheels - it was K1 class, in order to distinguish it from other 2-6-4T/6-foot (K class, 2-cylinder), other 3-cyl/6-foot (U1 class, 2-6-0) or other 2-6-4T/3-cyl (W class, 5'6" wheel).

The problem with mentioning K1 class in the British Railways renumbering paragraph is that long before these locomotives became BR property, every single one had been rebuilt to the U or U1 classes, so to mention K/K1 in the context of BR numbers would be misleading. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that edit. The more I think about it, I would add that there were 20 K class and one K1 class in the lead. As for the rebuilt sentence, I was merely quoting what was already in the article "Numbers were changed to the British Railways standard numbering system: the series 31790–31809 was allocated to the K class rebuilds, and 31890 to the K1 class.[40]" with my suggested possible addition in [square brackets]. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:02, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Lede amended --Redrose64 (talk) 19:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I want to explicitly say that I looked at the three images. All are clearly sourced, and the licenses seem OK to me (though I am not an expert on British copyright law for the first two images). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comments; Support per discussion. 20:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC) bordering on support, pending reply from the nominator. Full disclosure: I was asked here by the nom after reviewing his previous nomination. The main issue that time around was the prose; this article seems to have come to FAC from a much better starting point. Depending on who turns up to review this, you might get some comments over technical descriptions that might only be understood fully by the layperson's clicking through to other articles. But I think you've more or less hit the right balance; each train article can't contain a history of locomotive design, after all. For the delegate (to know what kind of review this was): I've reviewed the article fully against WP:WIAFA while reading it three times; once this morning, once this afternoon, and again just now. The images seem to check out and the sources pass muster as reliable for their use. I couldn't check the content of the major sources, as they're almost all offline and unavailable to me without a lot of hassle, but I trust the nominator. I've got a couple of nitpicks, mainly relating to the prose, but they're so minor I'm not even going to bother listing them here. I'll either fix them myself tomorrow or dump them on the article's take page; frankly, if this article were to be passed in its current state it wouldn't be an issue for me. Oh, and I haven't checked for MOS-compliance yet, but I'll do that tomorrow too. For the nominator, a question: the inclusion of a "further reading" section sometimes indicates that not all resources have been tapped, in which case the article may not satisfy 1b. Have you access to these, and is it likely that the books listed will contain major details relevant to the article? If not, what's their relevance to the article? Otherwise, nice work. The subject isn't one that particularly interests me, but it was a pleasure to read something for once that was so well prepared. All the best, Steve ^T • C 23:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The "further reading" section was my suggestion. It's mentioned at MOS:APPENDIX as the fourth of five standard appendices. Later at WP:FURTHERREADING it's given a fuller definition - the operative phrase here is "recommended publications that do not appear elsewhere in the article and were not used to verify article content". After all, we're not here to write the definitive account - professional authors do that; what we should be doing is stimulating peoples interest so that they can then go and read the definitive account written by these writers. IMHO, anything explicitly permitted by MOS cannot be criteria for denial of FA/GA classification. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Sure; I'm not saying that "Further reading" sections are unsuitable in featured articles, or that I'm going to oppose because of it. It's just that in my experience their presence is sometimes, by no means always, an indication that major sources have been ignored. I just wanted to make sure that—rather than merely giving fine detail outside the scope of this article—the publications didn't recount major events that we ignored. Steve ^T • C 11:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

As has been previously suggested, the 'Further reading' section has been added to provide a starting point for in-depth research into the nuances and minutiae of the class. As a core of several monographs have been used, they are bound to provide comprehensive coverage of the subject. A lot of the material in this article could be double-referenced from the sources consulted, but as this would be 'overkill', some of these references are best left for a 'Further reading' section. A general synopsis of what's available can be perused in this website, and whilst not necessarily exhaustive, it gives a rounded overview of a lot of relevant material. Thanks, --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 17:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough; colour me satisfied. Steve ^T • C 20:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Update: Have referenced Ruhrfisch's suggestions. As for the first comment, it is possibly beyond the scope of this article to describe the wheel arrangement, which is why they have been Wikilinked. The problem with describing technical details is that they can affect the flow of the article. Therefore, its best to treat '2-6-4' as a technical term, and deserving of a link to a relevant article. --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 18:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Second response to suggestion: I'm sorry, but I beg to differ on this one. As several editors have pointed out, the context can be easily be found by clicking on the 2-6-4 Wikilink, which is a neat and tidy way of reducing the clutter in technical articles. As we have seen, an article about a particular class of steam locomotive is not the place to discuss the wheel arrangements involved, for this information compromises focus. This is therefore the reason why the creation of new pages should be encouraged to flesh-out specific terminology. To take a case in point imagine if, in the interests of 'providing context to the reader' by displaying the names of locomotives of a particular class, we had to copy and paste the entire table featured within List of West Country and Battle of Britain class locomotives onto the actual article. It would create a rather unsightly mess, drain computer resources in downloading the article, and would probably lose it the Featured Article status it currently holds. To achieve the current state of affairs, there were serious difficulties encountered in creating these 'appendix' articles to supplement the main articles, and no doubt pages about specific Whyte wheel arrangements were met with equal antipathy in the beginning. As such, by providing just the Wikilink in our articles, we are justifying the existence of these pages, which are important in keeping other articles tidy, and reducing the need to keep repeating the same information in every article about a 2-6-4, 4-6-0, 4-6-2 locomotive. I'm sorry if this has sounded blunt, but it needed saying. Cheers, --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 19:43, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I have already supported, so it was just an idea / suggestion. I would argue that the average reader inherently understands what a list of items entails, even without clicking on it. Furthermore, within this article, there is a brief explanation of the source of the names for the locomotives (rivers in the region served) in no less than three places (lead, infobox, and the "Naming the locomotives" section), as well as the wikilink to the complete list of names. As to the 2-6-4 arrangement, I doubt the average reader knows locomotives are classified by the number and type of wheels (or axles) they have. I fully agree that there should be a page on each of the different wheel arrangements and agree that the whole page should not be copied here (nor was I suggesting that). I just think that explaining briefly what 2-6-4 means (adding a total of 12 words to the article) might help reader understanding in addition to the wikilink. Be that as it may, thanks for the detailed reply, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
    • "support for everyone!" -- I understand where Ruhrfisch is coming from with this one, and I would agree that there is a need to explain terminology and that the suggested replacement is short and clear. But I must side with Bulleid Pacific -- adding the extra text would degrade the flow of the prose. I would also make the point that someone interested enough to read this article would probably either already know about the concept/meaning of wheel arrangement notation and/or the basic terminology surrounding railways and steam locomotives, or feel the need/have the desire to look it up and understand it, fairly quickly. Having just looked at the article, prior to the location Ruhrfisch suggested for the addition, the reader will have encountered 2-6-4 as the very first link in the article, and subsequently 2-6-0, 4-4-0, and 0-6-0 as well. For any article the editors need to decide on a level of 'technical' understanding on the part of the reader (supplemented by the excellent wikilinking facility) below which the decomposition of terms starts to obscure the story being told. I would suggest that we are bouncing around that boundary with this one.
    • EdJogg (talk) 21:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
      • I already struck my suggestion above, was just trying to explain why I though a dozen extra words might help. I am fine with it either way. I am not a train person and although I have read most of the FAs on British locomotives (and this) multiple times in either PR or FAC or both, I still have to click the link to remind myself exactly what the three sets of numbers mean. All done, I promise ;0) Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:51, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• Note, see my edit summaries, a bit more WP:NBSP attention needed, and citations don't list correct article titles, pls check throughout. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

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