Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Peer review/Winschoten railway station

Winschoten railway station

I would like to receive some feedback from members of the WikiProject Trains before nominating it for good article status. – Editør (talk) 12:29, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Comments from -mattbuck (Talk)

Please note that I am an author of British station articles, so not all of this may be relevant, but...

• The lede could use some reworking to use longer paragraphs.

   Done – Editør (talk) 14:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• Is there a specific article for the Dutch Arriva ToC (along the lines of Arriva Trains Wales) rather than direct linking to Arriva?

   Comment: There is no separate article (yet), only this section Arriva#Netherlands. – Editør (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• "Location", "Building" and "Track & Platform" sections should be combined into a single "Description" section.
  • Consider adding distances to the line's termini.

     Done – Editør (talk) 13:38, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

  • Could you expand on the building information a bit? Other than a waiting room, what facilities are there? Is there a car park?

     Comment: The building is closed during renovation, apart from the waiting room. The parking info was in the road facilities section, but is now in the description. – Editør (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

  • What is the local area like - how wide a region does the station serve? Are we talking a small suburban halt or a large city transit hub?

     Comment: It is difficult to find explicit information about that directly related to the railway station, however the bus connections with destinations give somewhat of an impression. – Editør (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Separate out the historical aspects of other sections into a single "History" section. Try and expand it.

   Done I think this is an improvement. – Editør (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Train and road services can probably be combined - I tend to do this with train info followed by succession boxes followed by notes on buses.

   Done I've combined them in the section Services with separate subsections for Trains and Buses. – Editør (talk) 19:00, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

  • Passengers per day should probably be moved into description. UK stations tend to use passengers per year rather than per day - is this just a bit of difference between how the UK and Dutch railways are run?

     Comment: The passenger data is specific for train services, so I think it should be in the trains section. I couldn't find annual data for single stations, only for all railway lines of the particular concession combined. – Editør (talk) 19:00, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

  • Is there a standard type of rolling stock used on these services?

     Done Added – Editør (talk) 19:00, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Take a look at articles such as Nailsea and Backwell railway station or Sea Mills railway station for ideas about how I write this stuff. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:20, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Also the two articles are helpful. The reworking and resectioning will take me some time, but I will report here afterwards. – Editør (talk) 09:31, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

@Editør: Just drop me a line if you want me to look at it again sometime. I know my personal style of writing station articles isn't to everyone's taste - too much detail about related issues (such as franchise holder, line history, etc), but I like to try and be comprehensive and let people get all the relevant facts in one place. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:15, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mattbuck: I've responded to all points of the review. I think the article has improved considerably. Thanks! – Editør (talk) 14:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Second viewing:

• Generally significantly better and more informative.
• I suggest moving history below description and services
• History
  • In 1860, the Dutch government passed a railway law for the construction of ten state railroads - The article uses the term "railroad" only twice, here and in what appears to be a name. I suggest you change this to In 1860, the Dutch government passed a law for the construction of ten state railways
  • The Harlingen–Nieuweschans railway or Staatslijn B should probably be changed to The Harlingen–Nieuweschans railway, also known as Staatslijn B,
  • The station building was completed three years before the line opened?
  • You say the station was expanded in 1904, but you don't state what it had originally.
  • The railway through Winschoten was completely closed for two years? This seems like a major event and could probably use a bit of expansion.
• Description
  • As mentioned previously, a bit of the local area would be good - does this station serve the whole town, or just the immediate surroundings? While you can't really get explicit references for what the station serves, if you know that this is the only station in the town that would mean it is the station for the entire town.
  • What is the immediate local area like - a shopping centre, residential area, farmland?
  • I don't think you need the subsections here, separate paragraphs would be fine.
  • Point of grammar: "to the terminus at Harlingen Haven" is better than "to railway terminus Harlingen Haven".
  • Either Bad Nieuweschans is a terminus or it connects to the German network (or are you saying that it's a terminal station with divergent routes toward germany and Winschoten?
  • What does SS 3rd class imply, and what does SS 4th class do differently?
  • In the building section, "were built" would be preferable to "have been built" - while both are technically correct, the latter implies the building of such structures is ongoing.
  • Risalit links to avant-cours - from the article they seem to be interchangeable, but a tooltip preview is rather confusing here.
  • The "left" wing - from what angle? A compass direction would be better here.
  • On that subject, maybe state roughly what orientation the station is on, eg east/west, north/south, etc.
  • The layout section needs a fair amount more work:
    • One cannot access somewhere via tactile paving.
    • How are the tracks laid out? From what it says I'd guess P|||P, with the central road used for overtaking stopped trains, but that should be explained.
    • You need to state which platform is platform 1 and which platform 2. For instance "platform 1, on the north side of the tracks, is used by trains travelling west towards Groningen".
    • There is a lot of "there is" repetition in the final paragraph.
• Services
  • General consensus, for UK stations at least, is that there is no need to state every station the train calls at. I tend to put a bit more detail than most in service descriptions (see eg Filton Abbey Wood), but it's probably best to say "calling at all stations to X". Note that some trains reverse at Winschoten, giving 2tph to Groningen and one to Bad N.
  • Is it Dutch railway article standard to have the route boxes in the infobox rather than in the main body?
  • A service does not ride, it runs.
  • I still think that the passengers number is not actually relevant to the trains section, but to the station itself.
  • The future plan could probably be moved to a "future" section, if there is sufficient extra detail. I noticed the reference for the passenger numbers has some artists' impressions - is this something new they plan? If you can find enough to warrant a "future" section then I'd move the concession dates out of the services section and into the "future" as well.
  • Why is the bus station picture narrower than the others?

Overall a significant improvement on the first version. It's pretty close to GA status now. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:19, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your additional comments! I will go through them in detail in a couple of days, so I can look at the article with fresh eyes. I'll let you know when I have, like before. – Editør (talk) 19:13, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

I went through all bullet points of the second viewing and used many of the suggestions to improve the article further. – Editør (talk) 15:03, 27 April 2016 (UTC)