Talk:Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad

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It's been about 2 years since I first discovered this article, and it's been a fascinating experience adding to it. I think it has progressed well beyond its humble beginnings, and I thank all who have contributed. I'd like this article to be as useful as it can be, and so I've requested others to offer their impressions of it as it is now and to give their constructive criticism for its improvement. Thanks. MDK33 (talk) 03:28, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Contributing to good article review

I do not think at this time that I can review, as a first ever for me, this article for its status as a Good Article, but I'd like to contribute a bit to that.

• checked for copyright violations using Earwig's Copvio Detector. Result was "violation unlikely"; see https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Turtle+Creek+Industrial+Railroad&oldid=&action=search&use_engine=1&use_links=1&turnitin=0 .
• added short description for Wikidata use.
• Boucher citation in infobox and predecessor information: The text cited does not make it clear that there is a direct relationship between the two, and some additional supporting information would be useful, or an embellished explanation of how the predecessor relationship was established.
• There is inconsistent use of date formats. Looking at early versions of the article, it appears that the first format used was MDY, as illustrated by this version from August 2017. Based on this, I will shortly affix a date format hatnote and do date format revisions alongside other edits.

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:53, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your contributions and help, Ceyockey. The Boucher citation of the predecessor dates from before I began editing the article, though I did re-direct the citation form a website which copied Boucher to one hosting the book itself. While the Turtle Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad could be considered a predecessor of the Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad, it is not the predecessor. The line of succession is outlined and referenced in the text of the article. It begins with the Turtle Creek Valley RR, which was owned by George Westinghouse and eight other men. It was then taken over and became the Pennsylvania Railroad's Turtle Creek Branch. The Pensy merged with 2 other RRs to form Penn Central, which went bankrupt and was resurrected as Conrail for its freight lines (and Amtrak, for the passenger lines). Conrail's track diagram indicates that the line was renamed to "Turtle Creek Industrial Track", though the name didn't seem to catch on, as many references kept using the term "Turtle Creek Branch". In any case, it was Conrail which owned and operated the line directly before it was sold and became the Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad. Therefore, I've changed the predecessor listed in the info box to Conrail, and changed the ref to the track diagram which lists the last official name of the line before its sale to Dura-Bond. Several references linked in the text discuss the sale in varying degrees of detail. MDK33 (talk) 01:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Turtle Creek Industrial Railroad/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Hog Farm (talk · contribs) 06:04, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Hog Farm for doing this review. I've taken your suggestions to heart and worked to make improvements. I'll summarize my changes below on a point-by-point basis.MDK33 (talk) 23:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Criteria

1. Well-written

Prose clear, concise and understandable  Partly done Most of the railroad jargon is wikilinked. However, the term "switcher" appears in the rolling stock section, and is not defined. This term should either be wikilinked or defined.

I gave switcher a link, and started interspacing it with the synonomus and more intuitive "switch engine" to give it some context.MDK33 (talk) 23:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

MOS Lead Y

MOS Layout Y

Buzzwords/fiction/lists Y

Copy edit N Some minor stuff in most of the article, mostly commas and similar in-sentence punctuation marks. I've tried to fix a few as I go along, but I'm not the best at spotting these. For instance, use of the Oxford comma is sometimes present and sometimes absent. Usage should probably be standardized one way or another, per individual preference. The section about the railroad stock needs a heavy copy edit.

Other concerns - distances are only given in miles, and the English Wikipedia is the standard Wikipedia in several countries that use kilometers. I believe there's a template that automatically converts to km's and then places the km into a parenthesis. This would be helpful for non-US users.

I've worked to eliminate the oxford commas and fixed improperly formed compound sentences as I went along. I added conversions from miles to kilometers, except in some charts and graphs where I think it would have messed up the format.MDK33 (talk) 23:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

2.Verifiable

No original research  Possibly (See comment under Short Line section)

Inline citations from RS N

No COPYVIO Y None detected

3. Broad in coverage

Covers main aspects Y

Stays focused on topic Y

4. Neutral Y

5. Stable Y

6. Illustrated if possible

Media tagged for copyright status Y Images tagged as own work.

Media relevant Y

Comments as I go along

Founding and acquisition by Pennsylvania RR: 1886-1982: "A branch along Lyons Run was built in 1892/1893" - does this signify that the year of construction is not known, or that construction occurred in both years? A slight rephrasing here would help make the meaning more evident.

I changed the slash to "or". The two references have a small disagreement on the date that I have not definitively resolved.MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

"In 1968 the owner of the Turtle Creek branch [...] merged to form Penn Central" It would be helpful here to know how Pennsylvania Railroad Company merged with (if not Penn Central).

Done, with links to the railroad's wikipedia pages.MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Sale from Conrail to Dura-Bond "The newly purchased short-line railroad began operations in June 6, 1982 and experienced 12 derailments in its first month" Citation needed

Moved citation upward to clarify (If a citation applied to two or more consecutive sentences in a paragraph, I wasn't sure whether to put it after the first sentence or last).MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Short line operations: 1982-2009 "The TCKR employed 4 persons" Is persons or people the better word use here? I've used American English (although admittedly the dialect known as "redneck") my whole life, and people is generally preferred. The Cambridge English Dictionary also recommends the use of people. This isn't really a GA comment, it's more just my curiosity on this point.

I changed it to people. I think "persons" is antiquated, but still occurs in fossilized phrases.MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Two paragraphs beginning with "Reports do not state with certainty ..." Possible WP:OR and WP:SYNTH issues. I'll look deeper into the sources shortly, when I have a little more time, but I wondering if there's OR here. Generally, if the reports do not state specifically whether a profit was turned or not, personal analysis or comparison of multiple sources to determine if a profit was turned or not should be avoided. (I'm not stating that's what happened here for sure, but the wording of the paragraphs doesn't rule that out).

I revised this quite a bit to chose my words more carefully, in a way that presents the relevant data in chronoligical order without jumping to conclusions. I did not pick and chose data; I really combed through all the reputable sources I could find to try to get all the numbers I could on how much the railroad was hauling each year and how many customers it had. Readers will likely draw conclusions from the trends, though I'm trying to be very careful not to draw those concusions for them.

I could take the other extreme and present none of this data, but that would paint a false picture of the railroad. When I first read the article, it was a stub which simply stated the railroad ran for 27 years then was destroyed by a flood. The dozens of sources cited form a much richer history involving necessity, economics, nostalga and pride of ownership, all of which may have contributed to decision to keep operating the railroad for 27 years.MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

The flood, end of service and conversion to rail-trail: 2009-2019 This section heading could probably be tightened up a bit.

"its mayor commented that he had not seen water so high since the 1960s" Citation needed for this specific claim.

moved relevant reference forward to this sentence.MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

"As of September 2017, the tracks have been removed from most of the railbed, and several miles of the western section have been made into an extension of the Westmoreland Heritage Trail, with the remaining eastern section scheduled for trail completion by 2019" This sentence should either be updated or put into the past tense.

Updated to two newspaper sources indicating trail completion dates (work was done in two phases)MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Rolling Stock: Locomotives and Caboose Incorrect heading case. Copy edit issues more in this section than elsewhere in the article (for instance, it's usually recommended that sentences don't start with "so"). A parenthesis in this section is closed, but doesn't seem to be ever opened. There seems to be some tense issues too. This section needs a heavy copy edit.

This section got a significant re-write. I realized that trying to jam so many facts into paragraph form was making the sentences unreadable. I moved most of the fine details to a newly created chart, and reworked the text into two paragraphs, one on the locomotives and one on the caboose.MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

External links External links should generally be to functioning websites (see Wikipedia:External links#What to link). The external link is an archived page to the WAYBACK machine, so this probably doesn't meet the functioning website requirement.

Dura-Bond's current website no longer includes a railroad section, since that part of the business quit running in 2009. The Wayback macine link is to show than an official page once existed... I kept the wayback link in the references footnotes to memoralize the website's "officialness", while I added a functioning link to a mirror of that website in the "links" section. (I'm not sure why the mirror is still up, but it is, and it functions). If need be, I can switch both links to the mirror site.MDK33 (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• That's it so far, I haven't checked for COPYVIO or ensured the sources are RS and not deadlinked soon. Hog Farm (talk) 06:43, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

References

• Reference number 10 appears to be a link to a PDF, but following the link does not take me to the PDF. We need a link to where the PDF can be clearly accessed for verifiability.
• Reference number 28 has neither a URL nor an ISBN. What is this source? If it's a website, we need a URL, and if it's a book, we need an ISBN for verification.
• Reference number 36 is a bare URL. We need the rest of the information for this source.
• Reference number 39 is to a source of undetermined reliability. The place in the text it is cited at is a reference to "railfans". If this is a railfan website, it should be replaced. Fansites of any sort are generally not reliable.
• Reference number 42 is to a blogspot site. Blogs are not reliable sources.
• Reference number 43 is a sorting screen for government operational data statistics. Is there is way to get to the specific data, not the initial sorting screen? I can't figure out how to get to the data specifically for the Turtle Creek railroad.

One note in passing, the references have been updated, and some of the numbers no longer correspond to those listed in the review. Most issues were just linkrot, and have been fixed. Some references could still be improved in the future, particularly if information now available only offline becomes available online, or if deep links become available for information that currently takes more work to navigate to.MDK33 (talk) 07:09, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@MDK33: That's all. I'm gonna place this one on hold. The copy edit issues will take some work, especially in the rolling stock section, and the references will need some work, as noted. Hog Farm (talk) 21:32, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

User:MDK33 Great job on the article! Hog Farm (talk) 04:27, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Thnak you for your kind words and your time in reviewing this article, Hog Farm. The eyes of an objective reviewer and honest feedback are essential to help transform a decent article into a genuinely good one.MDK33 (talk) 07:09, 24 January 2020 (UTC)