Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Archive: 2010, 2

Pittsburgh Light Rail stations

Why are so many Pittsburgh Light Rail station articles being tagged with Project rapid transit parameters when they should get the Project streetcars parameters? ----DanTD (talk) 05:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Separate articles for historical and current stations and lines?

With the current revitalization of rail transport in the NYC metro area, many formerly used lines are restoring passenger service. One such line receiving recent attention on Wikipedia is the Lackawanna Cut-Off, from Scranton, PA through New Jersey to NYC. With the newly coming service, I have 2 questions regarding appropriate placement of content.

First, should there be a separate article for the new service (to be provided by New Jersey Transit) be created - leaving the current article, Lackawanna Cut-Off as a historical artice; or should information about the new service be incorporated in to the existing article. I prefer having just 1 article, as the proposed line completely encompasses the historical line, and all of the historical contents of the article could be indented under a "History" heading.

My second question is regarding articles for stations. Many historical stations are now privately-owned and have commercial uses; however new stations are being proposed/built in the immediate vicinity of the old buildings. For example, the former station in Scranton is now the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel, and the proposed new station is a few blocks from the old. Do there need to be separate articles for Scranton (NJT station) and Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel? If this distance would warrant separate articles, what if the new station was less than a block from the old? Or what if the new station was in the same place as the old, but did not utilize the old station building? Or if the old station has been demolished and a new station is built on the old site. I ask all these possibilities because all are occurring on varying passenger rail restoration projects in the NYC area. --Scott Alter (talk) 00:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I have no expertise in this topic at all, but just as a reader who might come to it to get informed, here are my thoughts:

It's already a lengthy (though very well-written and well-sourced) article. Personally, I would rather see a separate article created on the new service - because in the course of time, no doubt that will grow into a lengthy article all by itself. I notice that separate articles have already been created for the other rail and light rail lines that NJT operates, so why not do the same for the new line when it gets cranked up?

As to the various stations and structures, I think it would depend on how notable each one is in its own right, and how much there is to be said about each one. As a reader, if I wanted to something about a particular building I wouldn't want to have to wade through a long article about other stuff just to learn about that one particular place; the beauty of wikilinks is, we can make it easy for readers to jump from one article to another closely related one, without making them climb a mountain of words and pictures to get to where they want to go, right?

In the case of a building that once was a railroad station and is now occupied by a totally different kind of business, again how notable is/was each one, and how much is there really to say about each? And what name would a reader typically be typing in the search box to find an article about each one? If Bloomingdale's turned Grand Central into a branch department store tomorrow, I'd still expect to see a separate article on the building's extensive history as a railroad terminal. In the case of a small suburban or rural station, it might be better to leave past and present uses combined in one article - depends.

Since we don't have to worry about "killing trees" to make new articles, I think reader-friendliness should be a focus of your attention here, if you see what I mean. Just my 2c. Textorus (talk) 12:55, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Separate articles, with a linked mention or a "See also" link are the way to go, especially for well documented articles like Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel. Perhaps both the historic station and the new station can be in the same article, especially if the old one is demolished and replaced. Getting photos and information about the old station before demolition is a worthy goal. There may be small stations in small towns where combination is more appropriate than in larger places. --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:21, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Cool "front door" - WikiProject Arkansas

Howdy guys, it's always been a puzzlement to me why there doesn't seem to be as much activity on the Trains WikiProject as there is on some others, when I know there are thousands of railfans out there. I thought as one means of maybe encouraging a little more participation and interaction, we might consider imitating the very neat, easy-to-read way the Arkansas folks have got their front page set up: check it out. Just a thought. Textorus (talk) 12:20, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Railway stations

I mentioned this to User:Markussep who is diligentally working through creating articles on French railway stations. Shouldn't it be Castres Railway Station rather than Gare de Castres per WP:ENGLISH? Gare isn't actually the name of the building, its just the French word for railway station isn't it? I propose that they are renamed to ..... Railway Station. Any thoughts? Dr. Blofeld 16:11, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd say "Castres railway station"; as you say, "Gare" is just the French for "station". I'd make exceptions for those stations where the foreign-language word for "station" is part of the name in common English use (Gare du Nord, Berlin Hauptbahnhof, maybe Praha hlavní nádraží, etc). – iridescent 19:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

English title with redirect from the French title would seem to be a reasonable solution, with some exceptions as noted above. Mjroots (talk) 19:28, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I see there was some discussion about naming conventions for stations: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations), but it seems inactive at the moment. I continued using "Gare de X" titles because most of the existing articles had that, I assumed that was the consensus. Obviously I don't think "Gare de X" is bad, I wouldn't have used it then. "X railway station" or "X station" makes sense to me too. Markussep ^Talk 21:37, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

EMD FP7 images

I guess it's EMD day at TWP ;). I've raised a question about images at Talk:EMD FP7; it's something I'd rather not do off my own bat. Comments appreciated. Mackensen (talk) 18:08, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Template:S-rail/lines

I have proposed the icons be removed from this template per WP:ICONDECORATION . Please discuss Gnevin (talk) 11:11, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Anyone care if I remove these icons? Gnevin (talk) 22:18, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you should. If you're wondering why I haven't replied to this, it's because I can't find the discussion you were talking about. ----DanTD (talk) 22:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

There was an edit request at Template_talk:S-rail/lines which lead to this discussion. Why do you oppose Gnevin (talk) 23:49, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The logos help to make the infoboxes unique, and a little more pleasing to the eye. ----DanTD (talk) 01:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:ICONDECORATION say we shouldn't add icons just to make thing look good as one man's pleasing icon is a other man's eye sore Gnevin (talk) 14:29, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:ICONDECORATION is a moderately contentious guideline (as opposed to policy) that is ignored in practice (by consensus) in many articles. I tend to believe its development suffered from limited consensus among a few contributors, those who tend to see icons as eyesores. After all, if one has no problem with them, why would they contribute to a guideline calling for their removal. I don't favor using it, as the broad consensus of practice tells me the broader community doesn't see their removal as necessary. oknazevad (talk) 15:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:ICONDECORATION is a widely accepted guideline with a wide consensus across the community. It is also a highly stable guideline which would indicate its not contentious . The number of articles and wikiproject choosing to ignore this MOS is decreasing day by day. Typically people can't counter the arguments put forward by WP:ICONDECORATION and so instead attempt to muddy the waters by claiming limited con etc. This is simply not true Gnevin (talk) 22:11, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:ICONDECORATION permits purely decorative icons that "have a useful purpose in providing navigational or layout cues outside of article prose".

In the UK we have something over two dozen passenger train operators. Some of them have logos that are more easily recognised than others, partly because of the geographic area covered, partly due to the length of time each has been in use. But icons need not be present in order to distinguish between different operators - they may indicate the type of service. See, for example, Ealing Broadway station#External links where the s-rail box has three different icons. Of these, the first is for "London Underground" services, a single operator but with two completely separate lines (this logo has been around since 1913 but with periodic changes); the second is for "National Rail" services, provided in this case by two different operators (this logo has been in common use since 1966 without alteration, apart from colour); the third represents a new route presently under construction, which will be partly underground, partly surface. The first two of these are, I believe, recognisable enough to provide a "navigational cue outside of article prose"; and whilst the third is not yet in everyday use, it may well become as well known (in the London area at least) as the other two. In such cases, if the icons are small, and free-use (ie they are not subject to the restrictions of WP:NFCC), I don't have a problem with them. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:43, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

"have a useful purpose in providing navigational or layout cues outside of article prose" only applies when your are navigating. In the cases you highlighted have no navigation. The words beside the pointless icons do a far better job of distinguishing which operator is which. All that being said. I've found it is pointless to discuss icons with people who are so set in there position so I will leave it be. Gnevin (talk) 12:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:ICONDECORATION as written is open to a degree of interpretation, perhaps deliberately so. I can imagine situations where icons just become irritating, although I haven't seen any. In this case I think the icons reinforce the words - one of the benefits of images - and they are not unduly intrusive IMHO. --Bermicourt (talk) 13:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Marshall (Amtrak station) & T&P Depot revisited

This issue has been on and off my mind for the past three years, but I still think that there should be a merger between the Marshall (Amtrak station) and T&P Depot articles. More specifically, I think the T&P Depot should be a chapter of the Marshall Amtrak station article. Let's face it; they even have the same address. ----DanTD (talk) 12:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

UPDATE I just tried it with this edit. Reverse it if you must, but let me know of your opinion of it. ----DanTD (talk) 14:56, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely. The same station, completely. I say merge away. Though, the name should likely not be under Marshall (Amtrak station), as it has a proper name. The Amtrak station name can be a redirect. 15:14, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I almost got ready to do it, but there are some conflicting coordinates involving both articles. ----DanTD (talk) 18:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I personally agree that the merge should go in the opposite direction, especially considering the relative impermanence of Amtrak stops. But shouldn't "T&P Depot' (a) be spelled out, and (b) be disambiguated according to place? I find it hard to believe that there is only one surviving Texas & Pacific station. Mangoe (talk) 18:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I suppose the person who wrote the article must not count the station in Fort Worth. Unfortunatley, he left along time ago. ----DanTD (talk) 18:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

UPDATE: I just found three other Texas and Pacific Railroad Depots, and added the one in Marshall. Maybe there are more, I don't know. You'd have to ask an expert about this. RI-Bill, if you're reading this, I'm looking in your direction. ----DanTD (talk) 18:41, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

UPDATE #2: DONE. But before I merged them, I found that the coordinates given for the station in the Amtrak article were way off, and the one for the T&P article were right on target. ----DanTD (talk) 19:06, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Coal tipple

A coal tipple is a structure used to load coal into railroad hopper cars, or sometimes barges or trucks, but there is no article on it. I did not find much from a Google search, but I hope some other editor will follow up on this. The tipple article is a disambiguation page. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:44, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Is coal drop what you're looking for? --Bermicourt (talk) 22:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

No. A tippler holds the wagon and turns it over to empty it. I think they were used for materials other than coal too. Some of the coaling towers in Britain were effectively tipplers, since the wagon was lifted on a platform up the side of the tower, and then tipped over at the top, the coal falling into dispensing hoppers beneath. British Rail(ways) made a variant of its 16T mineral wagon specifically for tippling: it had no doors (usually they had a combination of side/end and bottom doors) and was marked 'Ore Tippler' on the side.

OK, that was from memory. Looking at David Larkin's book "Working Wagons (Volume 1 1968-73)", Section 9 covers the BR 27T Iron Ore Tippler wagons, of which some 9000 were built, mostly for iron ore, but some for chalk traffic. And they were based on the 16T mineral, with heavier-duty running gear (iron ore is heavy, compared to coal!) and marked "Iron Ore Tippler". Larkin notes that despite the fact that tipplers had been around for some time, few purpose-built wagons were built before Nationalisation. No pictures of the tippler equipment though.

EdJogg (talk) 00:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Based on a quick internet scan, "coal tipple" seems to be purely a US term. Not sure if it's the equivalent of what you're describing though - it seems to have a range of meanings: a structure for (sorting and) loading coal, a place where "mine cars" were tipped and emptied... Needs some research. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:32, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

WP Trains in the Signpost

"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject Trains for a Signpost article to be published this month. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 18:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

And it looks as though it is in the next issue. Simply south (talk) 20:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Narrow gauge categories

Currently narrow gauge railways are categorised by imperial units e.g. the Category:Two foot gauge railways "...contains articles about narrow gauge railways with a track gauge between 1 ft 10 3⁄4 in (578 mm) and 2 ft (610 mm)." This is very confusing for the many lines around the world that are measured primarily in mm. For example, there are dozens of 600mm gauge lines that, under the present system, should be categorised as "Two foot gauge", but this is not obvious when creating an article, so the vast majority go uncategorised by gauge. It is also not clear why this type of category is useful: if we are looking for all 600 mm lines; it is not clear from the category which they are. Also if we start adding all the 600 mm etc lines to the category, it will eventually become very large and unwieldy - the 2' category already has over a 100 articles and this would more than double if we start adding all 600 mm lines. I would therefore like to propose the categorisation of mm-gauge lines by size (600, 750, 900, etc - noting that a metre gauge category already exists). Whether we keep the present imperial unit categories as they are (with a range of gauges) or split them into separate imperial sizes (2', 2'6", etc) is a separate debate. I appreciate this will result in a number of additional categories, but it will aid clarity and keep category sizes both meaningful and manageable. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:10, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK, the alleged "1 ft 11+1⁄2 in" and "1 ft 11+5⁄8 in" railways in Britain were, in fact, all 600 mm - an early engineer having borrowed European designs for his line, and the rest simply copied that line. Metric units were routinely converted to imperial by some engineers right down to the 1970s. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:23, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

The creation of mm-gauge categories is a good idea. Countries whose railways used metric measurements should be categorised in metric (except standard gauge, of course). Countries whose railways used imperial measurements shoud be categorised in imperial. Mjroots (talk) 20:04, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Unless there is general consensus against this, I will crack on and begin creating the new categories. I will only create those where they predominate in countries using metric and were clearly designed in metric units from the outset, starting with the 600, 750 and 900 mm categories mentioned above. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:39, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I am against this change. The so-called 600mm in Britain comes from the time when wheels were double flanged and the gauge was measured between the centre of the rail. This is especially true with the North Wales lines. I do not believe putting 2 foot gauge lines into 600mm is a good idea. With this I am with Mjroots --Stewart ^{(talk | edits)} 06:59, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

But the North Wales lines would remain firmly in the Two foot gauge railways category, as the UK used Imperial measurements. On the other hand, the Chemins de Fer du Calvados in France was built to 60 cm (or 600 mm) gauge, and should therefore be categorised in a metric category. I've made a clarification to Category:Two foot six inch gauge railways, other Imperial gauge categories will need similarly clarifying. Mjroots (talk) 07:18, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Wrong the north Wales lines were not 2' they were 1'11.5" (597mm) gauge, so you will need another category.... --Michael Johnson (talk) 07:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

From the lede of Category:Two foot gauge railways - This category contains articles about narrow gauge railways with a track gauge between 1 ft 10 3⁄4 in (578 mm) and 2 ft (610 mm). Therefore we don't need a new category for 1' 11½" gauge railways, such as the Festiniog. Mjroots (talk) 07:31, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

You want to abandon the principle of grouping gauges for metric lines but not for imperial lines? That strikes me as totally inconsistent. What about the many lines built in Australia to metric gauges but in an imperial country? Are we to see two railways of precisely the same gauge in two different gauges because of the historical measurements that existed in each country? What about railways that were built to the Swedish measurement system? Are we to have another group of categories for them? --Michael Johnson (talk) 07:40, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I did not say that I wanted to abandon the principle of grouping gauges for metric lines. Three Swedish Feet is as near as dammit 891 mm. A railway built to that gauge could be listed as a 900 mm gauge railway. There may be some justification in merging the 750 and 760 mm gauge railway categories, but that is another discussion. Mjroots (talk) 07:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

If it is justified to bring together railways that are 891mm and 900mm, why not railways that are 760mm and 762mm gauge? --Michael Johnson (talk) 07:47, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

For the reason I have already stated below. Mjroots (talk) 07:57, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry I don't understand what the unit of measurement used by the builders of the railway have to do with anything. --Michael Johnson (talk) 08:32, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

So I see it is here that there the "consensus" to overturn practice of 4 years standing. The reason the "grouping" of close gauges was adopted is that there is almost no engineering difference between, say, a 750mm, 760mm and 762mm (2'6") gauge railways. In fact the equipment as far as gauge goes is normally interchangeable. The idea was to allow comparison between like, so that the curious reader could compare the different approaches taken towards the same engineering problems. I mean trying to split 760mm and 762mm gauges into different camps strikes me as just silly. In practical terms there was no difference. If you must go ahead with these "micro-categories" please leave the broad categories in place. --Michael Johnson (talk) 07:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

760mm is a metric railway. 762 mm is a metric conversion of 2' 6". Mjroots (talk) 07:32, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Please provide a reliable source that there is something intrinsic in a "metric" railway. --Michael Johnson (talk) 07:34, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I see no consensus here - two editors in favour, two against, and one making a comment on fact. Please desist in trying to ramrod these changes through. --Michael Johnson (talk) 07:42, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Whoa! Let's cool it folks! The reason I raised the issue is that I translate lots of articles on German railways. They always refer to the gauge in metric - perhaps because they were designed in metric units - the round numbers (600, 750, 900, 1000) tend to suggest that. However the current system of categories is imperial and each cat covers a range of gauges, something not obvious from its name e.g. Category:Two foot six inch gauge railways covers all gauges from 2'4" to 2'7". That is not intuitive. To categorise a 750 mm railway an editor must somehow know that it measures 2'5½" in imperial units and that it fits into Wikipedia's 2'6" category because it falls in the zone from 2'4" to 2'7". And the reader of a 750 mm railway article clicks on its category (assuming wrongly that 2'6" is the imperial equivalent) to look for other 750 mm railways, only to find out that he is looking at a range of articles of different gauges. I can sort of understand the logic of grouping railways by 'broad' categories when we started Wikipedia up, but as the number of articles burgeons, I sense we need to expand the categorisation to cope and to be more precise and less confusing.

So the proposal is to group railways by their actual gauge. This gets rid of all confusion, making it easy to categorise and to find articles on the same gauge. There are various options including:

1. Categorise all by their correct imperial gauge
2. Categorise all by their correct metric gauge
3. Categorise all by their correct gauge, metric or imperial, the choice depending e.g. on the country of origin
4. Categorise all continental lines by their correct metric gauge; leave all imperial gauge lines in the current 'broad' categories for now

Having had no kickback (see above), I had started following the first part of option 3 in good faith - recategorising all continental lines to their correct metric gauge, but then noticed Michael adding back the current imperial cats. I don't have a major issue with this - keep them for the imperial gauge lines if you will. However, for now, I would just like support to continue adding the metric categories for continental lines.--Bermicourt (talk) 19:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Option 3 is my preferred choice. However, you may want to consider merging the 750 and 760 mm gauge lines into Category 750 and 760 mm gauge railways. The metric cats could be made into sub-cats of the Imperial cats. The issue of non-English feet gauge railways will probably also need to be addressed, per the 3 Swedish Feet gauge railways I mentioned above. Mjroots (talk) 20:22, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks that's helpful. I will proceed with caution! --Bermicourt (talk) 20:38, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pulling back and letting us all discuss this. First up let me disclose that I was involve in setting up the cats 4 years ago. Actually my preference was for the use of metric measurements, and that remains my preference. I get the feeling here, and I could be wrong, that part of the problem is an Eurocentric approach. That is the Germans had one type of narrow gauge railway, the British had another, and so on. My personal interest is in narrow gauge railways outside Europe, and the position there is much more variable. You can find railways with British, US, German, Swiss, Belgium, French, even Japanese built equipment operating side by side. But lets examine the main issue that concern me in the current proposals, the artificial division of gauges into "metric" and 'imperial". This is artificial and counter productive, as well as raising problems. Artificial because the adoption of, say 750mm and 762mm, was made for the same engineering reasons, even if the gauges are slightly different to each other because of the "rounding off" to the closest "whole" gauge in the measuring system that happened to be in force at the time. Counter productive because the reader is unable to make comparisons between the various systems with closely related gauges. And of course problematic, and here are a number of examples:

• The British constructed both 750mm and metre gauge railways, but in the engineering texts of the time described them in the imperial gauge equivalents. Do you put them under imperial or metric cats? Don't think this is a trivial issue, a majority of the worlds route kilometres of metre gauge was constructed in British colonies in East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.
• Australia has been a metric country for almost 40 years. Are the constructions since then in 1600mm, 1067mm, 720mm and 610mm gauges (as they would have been described in permits and engineering documents) to be classified on the imperial or metric side?
• Metric countries often constructed in imperial gauges, for instance the Dutch in Indonesia.
• The gauge difference in each gauge "group" was so minimal that equipment could be transferred between railways, for instance the 750mm Egyptian Delta Light Railway and 762mm Indian lines, where locomotives destined for one sometimes ended up on the other.
• And how do you intend handling the Matadi–Kinshasa Railway which was nominally constructed to a gauge of 750mm but the line was built in its entirety to a gauge of 763mm because local labour couldn't get around the concept of gauge widening on curves.

Let's not forget there were definite trends in "gauge choice", for instance the swing towards 750mm/762mm at the end of the 19thC. It would be hard to observe that if the two gauges were split along this arbitary "metric/imperial divide. My proposal is simple, leave the groups as they are, and rename the categories to include the metric gauges, for instance 710-790mm (2'6") gauge railways. --Michael Johnson (talk) 09:56, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

These are all well-made points which need to be acknowledged. Fundamentally I'd like to see a more direct connexion between the gauge of the railway (presumably as stated in the infobox/text) and the category. It's about clarity and accuracy, especially for the reader. A 600 mm railway should be in a category for 600 mm railways. How we arrive at the gauge is preceding step. It would be neat if e.g. all English/US/Commonwealth railways had been designed to imperial gauges and all the rest to metric. The split would simply be by country of origin - some imperial, others metric. But reality is more complicated. I still think we come back to one of the 4 options above if we want to move forward. I personally favour no. 3: imperial and metric depending on country of origin, noting that although UK has nowadays gone metric, the railways were designed and referred to in imperial units when built. And where e.g. Britain 'borrowed' a metric gauge, we could categorise by it's British designation (presumably imperial) and explain in the category notes that e.g. 1'11½" is the imperial size used by countries that imported the 600 mm gauge. In essence what I am saying is why don't we use the terminology of the country of origin. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we should look at the categories for metric gauges. I'm putting the following up for discussion -

Category

400 mm gauge railways

500 mm gauge railways

600 mm gauge railways

700 mm gauge railways

750 and 760 mm gauge railways

800 mm gauge railways - covering 785 mm and 800 mm gauge railways

900 mm gauge railways - covering 900 and 950 mm gauge railways

Metre gauge railways - covering metre, 1,009 and 1050 mm gauge railways.

Other categories may be needed. Those railways with gauges measured in non-imperial feet should stay in the equivalent Imperial category. Mjroots (talk) 09:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I am with Mjroots here, and would suggest that North Wales is an area where an Imperial category is required. AKAIK North Wales did not 'borrow' a metric gauge, rather previously used an imperial gauge for double flange wheels of 2 foot between rail centres. As waggons got bigger, rails got bigger and single flanged wheels were introduced the (just under) two foot guage emerged. --Stewart ^{(talk | edits)} 20:01, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Notification of AN discussion regarding Template:Trainweb

There is a discussion at the administrators' noticeboard regarding {{trainweb}}. Magog the Ogre (talk · contribs) is starting to tag files to be deleted in a week and some have been removed from articles. What should we do here? — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 18:09, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

• This is probably as good a time as any to revisit the use of those images and see about replacing them when possible. Mackensen (talk) 19:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Replacing images, if possible is always a good idea. But if they're not available, they should be kept. ----DanTD (talk) 20:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
    • In the latter case we need to write up proper fair use rationales. I've done a half-dozen already. On the other hand, some are replaceable. I think we've got a far better image on California Zephyr now, for example. Mackensen (talk) 20:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
      • I've done plenty of those, but the images have been tagged and deleted anyway. ----DanTD (talk) 20:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
        • Well, we recently saved the Pioneer Zephyr image, so there's hope. Bottom line, if there's a free equivalent the non-free image is doomed. Mackensen (talk) 20:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
          • Yes, this is true. I recently checked out a Trainweb image of Santa Fe 3751 that's threeatened with deletion, and I tried to scope Wikipedia for more images that were not only free, but just as good as the one Lordkinbote uploaded, before he got fed up with the whole bureaucracy and split. I think in this case we can let this one go. This may not be the case with a lot of others. Perhaps we should bring a lot of this thread to the discussion that Train2104 has showed us, though. ----DanTD (talk) 10:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Rail tracks

This is under discussion of being moved. See Talk:Rail tracks#Requested move. Simply south (talk) 23:52, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

EMD SD40-2 loco article merge

A thread has been raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Locomotives task force#SD40-2 Merge, a talk page which doesn't seem to have much activity, probably few watchers. Could any GM/EMD specialists please take a look? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Copy of the LTF post. "Can you take a look at my merge of the articles, EMD SD40-2(main article), EMD SD40-2W, EMD SD40-2S. The merged article is in here. Thanks" --intelati1^(Call) 19:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll merge the articles in one day, If nobody has an objection.--intelati^(Call) 23:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

 DoneRedirected SD40-2W and SD40-2S to the respective sections. Please review.--intelati^(Call) 15:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Formatting issue in rail transport timeline articles

Hi, I came here via The Signpost's article on this Wikiproject, and because I've been gnoming through some articles that need their date formats fixed. All of the articles in this timeline seem to have been given clunky date-range titles. Here's an example: "May 1 - May 9".

I've been fixing this to, for example, "May 1–9", which looks a lot neater and uses the correct punctuation (an en dash). Please see WP:MOSDASH and WP:MOSDATE.

Please let me know if there's a problem with this. And could editors who maintain these articles use this format in the future? (I don't watchlist this page, so responses on my talk page, if there are any, please.)

Thank you. Tony (talk) 08:41, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Of course the format "1–9 May" is also acceptable per WP:MOSDATE. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:32, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

SW900RS model correction needed

Hi. I have been researching the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) / BC Hydro (BCH), now Southern Railway of BC (SRY). I have dug deep into its diesel motive power and have learned that all 12 of the EMD / GMD SW-type switchers they purchased are model SW900, not SW900RS, and that, in fact, there was never a SW900RS model produced by EMD / GMD. My sources for this info are Doug Cummings, a former BCER/BCH employee and retired locomotive broker, and EMD itself. I received an official corporate response recently, from two employees in their Service Parts Engineering Group, Jim Rusin and Yuk Mui.

The main SW900 article is correct, because it does not mention an RS designation anywhere and it also correctly lists the infor for BCER. However, a page linked to from that page, List of GMD Locomotives does have an RS category. What is the proper way to fix this issue? I am not sure, for example, if the 11 supposed-SW900RS total should be added to the 86 SW900 total immediately above it. Kent Sullivan (talk) 16:01, 21 September 2010 (UTC)Kent Sullivan

I did a bit of research, and found this edit, adding the disputed info on 4/1/2009 to the General Motors Diesel Division article. The locomotive section of this article was later spun off into it's own article at List of GMD Locomotives. Perhaps you could ask the editor who made the change what his sources were? WuhWuzDat 18:42, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

F40-PH

There needs to be some information on the fact that the F40-PH has become an internet meme. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.75.149.94 (talk) 02:55, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Considering how ephemeral and non-notable Internet meme's usually are, and the need to avoid trivial pop culture references in serious articles, not really, no. Plus what reliable sources for this would there be? At most, a mention at the list of Internet memes article is all that's warranted. oknazevad (talk) 03:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Korea Train Express

There's a debate/slow-motion edit war in progress at Korea Train Express, additional comments from third parties would be most welcome. Jpatokal (talk) 12:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Infobox sizes

I just did some minor edits on the CP and CN pages and noticing how large their infoboxes (=logos) were I had a look at BNSF's - also really really huge in comparison to other wikipedia articles. What's with this? The effect is to make a really really big logo, and to push text off to a narrow column; there are too many factors within the table - the logo size, the map size - for me to know how to reduce them; but they're clearly - clearly - too large. Would someone please reduce these, and keep and eye on advertising-promotional scale use of logos? Wikipedia articles are not the sides of boxcars....Skookum1 (talk) 11:40, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

300px is plenty large enough for any image in an infobox. Mjroots (talk) 17:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Britannia Locomotive Class - the "Unnamed" Britannia 70047

My Uncle worked for many years at Stratford and told me that all the "Britannia" crews from whichever Region were a little "club" and used to meet up socially.

70047 was a London Midland loco and some names were actually suggested for her. One was "Tempest" to complete a series of World War II aircraft, another was "Princess Anne" to replace 46202 lost at Harrow & Wealdstone in 1952.

Another suggestion was to name her after the Chief Locomotive Engineer of British Railways 'Robin' Riddles. Mr. Riddles modestly declined the accolade but thereafter 70047 was known unofficially as "Riddles". 86.133.122.207 (talk) 09:26, 29 September 2010 (UTC) John Walden —Preceding Signatures comment added by 86.133.122.207 (talk) 09:21, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thankyou, but (a) this comment does not belong here but at Talk:BR Standard Class 7; (b) we cannot incorporate information based on hearsay (see the policy on original research) - we need a reliable published source (see the policy on verifiability). --Redrose64 (talk) 19:24, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Vancouver SkyTrain station renaming

After my recent renaming spree of DART Light Rail stations, and Trinity Railway Express stations, I think the same thing should happen to ****(Vancouver SkyTrain station), such as King George (Vancouver SkyTrain station). Honestly, I just looked at the list of recent changes, and when I saw it, I thought of King Street (WMATA station). Then I realized I thought of the wrong name, but renaming them is still a good idea. ----DanTD (talk) 00:29, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Your best route would be to go to WP:RM, tag all articles (that is quite a job!) and leave notes at the relevant projects. Simply south (talk) 20:11, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll keep this in mind, and I agree this will be quite a job. ----DanTD (talk) 15:10, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Gartsherrie East Junction

The article Gartsherrie East Junction has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references failed to find significant coverage in reliable sources to comply with notability requirements. This included web searches for news coverage, books, and journals, which can be seen from the following links:
Gartsherrie East Junction – news, books, scholar
Consequently, this article is about a subject that appears to lack sufficient notability.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Official Name of "Yangon Circular Railway"

I just visited Yangon, Myanmar, in mid-September and also went to see the railway station there. Inside the tourist office, there is a route map of "Yangon Circular Railway" hanged on the wall. But the wordings "Yangon Circular Railline" was printed on the route map. So I wonder which is the official name, Yangon Circular "Railway" or Yangon Circular "Railline"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Islandsouthwilson (talk • contribs) 16:00, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The Myanmar Government's English language press office calls it "Yangon Circular Railroad". I suspect the same Burmese word translates equally well as "Railway", "Railroad" and "Rail line" and there's no right answer here. – iridescent 16:08, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The UIC term is "railway". "Railroad" is the usual term for lines in North America. "Railline" and "rail line" are incorrect - you won't find them in dictionaries - general or specialised. --Bermicourt (talk) 05:56, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

And Myanmar isn't a member of the UIC, so their definitions hold no weight there. "Rail line" (with or without the space) is unusual, though, and likely an errant translation. I'd go with "railway", as Burmese English, presuming there is such a thing, is likely more influenced by British usage, as a former colony.oknazevad (talk) 19:45, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

The UIC terms are universal, not country-specific, i.e. it is the terminology they use in English, French, German, etc, to describe a railway feature or function anywhere. However I guess if a non-UIC government chooses to use American English that is up to them. --Bermicourt (talk) 06:27, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Without trying to be conclusive, any government is free to name a railway they own whatever they want. Many governments have official English translations of many of their names (such as agencies and railway lines), while others have no official policy on such matters. This is important when trying to determine if this document should dictate the article title. Arsenikk ^(talk) 15:51, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:BSkm

FYI, {{BSkm}} has been requested to be renamed. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 02:31, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Strand Beach Funicular

FYI, Strand Beach Funicular has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:00, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Railway icons

WTF (I left a message on User_talk:AmosWolfe#Railway_icons), but I guess it's not their fault. Did I miss a memo?

The problem is that any template using "continue arrows" is now bust eg http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Aberford_Railway&oldid=385417202 (was correct before) Sf5xeplus (talk) 20:05, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I've traced it to this : see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Axpde#No_Nein_Niet_Non

I don't know enough to know what is correct here.Sf5xeplus (talk) 20:24, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

There has been ongoing work to change names of icons to reflect a standard, for example the "left" and "right" arrows are supposed to represent the direction of travel from top to bottom so what looks left on the screen is actually right and vice versa. Some work was done by User:Chrisbot but nothing recent. I simply spotted some broken icons and another user has been fixing a lot of them so I thought I'd help out. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 01:07, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Which is pointlessly confusing. Direction of travel shouldn't be the basis for a digram, the direction that appears on the diagram should be. Any current effort to impose the direction-of-travel basis serves to make the digrams harder to use and edit, and should be reversed. oknazevad (talk) 01:18, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm in total agreement with Oknazevad. If an arrow is pointing left, the the code should end in an "l". Makes it easy to remember when compiling a diagram. Mjroots (talk) 05:08, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Route diagram template/Catalog of pictograms#The CHRISBOT ate my icons…. In summary: since  (tCONTl),  (exCONTl),  (uCONTl) etc. all point right,  (CONTl) should have pointed right also (similarly, CONTr should have pointed left to match the other *CONTr ones), and so somebody on Commons decided to exchange CONTl with CONTr without actually setting up a task to fix their transclusions. Despite comments left by Axpde (talk · contribs) on that thread, I am unable to find the discussions on Commons to which he refers.

nb: I linked four icons above. If you see all these pointing right, you're seeing what I'm seeing. If the first three point right but the fourth points left, you probably have an old version of the icon cached by your browser. Force your browser to WP:REFRESH the icons, and you should then see all pointing right. Then you are ready to fix bad RDT templates. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:11, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Only railway enthusiasts would have come up with a nomenclature based on the direction of travel! Rivet-counting gone mad!

These things are far too complicated for the average editor to maintain now, it's bad enough (for English editors) that the names are based on German abbreviations, without left and right not matching the screen display. I never managed to get the right icon first time, so I've given up -- I just fix the links now.

-- EdJogg (talk) 08:48, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Although I have changed icons to conform to a consensus that apparently does not exist I too feel that they should face the way they do on the screen. Why should they do anything else? And the arrows on most lines face the direction of travel whichever way they point as most lines have trains going both ways. Britmax (talk) 09:13, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Unaltered RDT

RDT manually fixed

The direction that they face on screen is not the issue: the issue is their naming. See the discussion at WT:RDT/C which I linked earlier: the two icons  (CONTr) and  (CONTl) were exchanged on 9 October 2010 purely so that the names would be consistent with the other left/right pairs such as  (tCONTr)/ (tCONTl),  (exCONTr)/ (exCONTl), etc. When Chrisbot (talk · contribs) did such exchanges in the past, it also went through every page which used the icons concerned and adjusted the names, so that the visual appearance of the RDTs remained unchanged. In this case however, no bot update of RDTs has occurred, so we're left with a horrendous mixture of unaltered RDTs which now look wrong (see upper RDT at right) and RDTs which have been manually altered so that they now look just the same as they had done prior to 9 Oct (lower RDT at right). --Redrose64 (talk) 11:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Although I have changed icons to conform to a consensus that apparently does not exist I too feel that they should face the way they do on the screen. Why should they do anything else? And the arrows on most lines face the direction of travel whichever way they point as most lines have trains going both ways. Britmax (talk) 09:13, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Would someone point out to me the place where this was discussed and consensus arrived at, because if not and even if it makes more work in the short term I would suggest we go with the WYSIWIG principle and have left and right according to what is visible on the screen. This, as has been pointed out, would be hard to do with a bot as it would find discrimination between those that need doing and the others difficult. Britmax (talk) 11:54, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to have been a big discussion. At a basic level the person responsible for creating the icons have decided to attempted to standardise the icons (one of the two possibilities has been chosen). http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Axpde . It would be difficult and tiresome to change back what is primarily a semantic difference. I think similar changes have been made before, but weren't a problem since the bot that cleaned up afterwards was still working. Sf5xeplus (talk) 12:07, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Ignoring right or wrong - can we fix the articles

AmosWolfe (User_talk:Sf5xeplus#Railway_Icons) tells me that a bot is supposed to fix the problem. There are over 1500 pages affected, and the ones I've looked at haven't been fixed. I think trying to do this manually is a mistake .. we need a list of pages fixed and pages not fixed. (Otherwise we'll end up with an unbotable mess)

Is there a list of manually fixed icons - the bot needs to ignore these.Sf5xeplus (talk) 11:44, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no list of manually fixed RDTs. Users like myself, Britmax, DBailey635, SilasW and others have manually amended from what was the correct icon to what is now the correct icon, as and when we've noticed them. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:27, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

How many have you done? Is it enough to make a bot fix worthless?Sf5xeplus (talk) 12:42, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Personally I've done only four: Template:Bury Lines, Didcot Parkway railway station, Template:Salford Lines, Template:South Wales Railway. These are pages which I happened to be visiting for some reason, and noticed the arrow pointing the wrong way. I can't speak for others, other than the fact that some of their CONTl/CONTr fixes have shown up in my watchlist. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:14, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

And the bot's operator appears to have retired .. anyone know how to work the bot?Sf5xeplus (talk) 11:47, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Chrisbot (talk · contribs) wasn't intended to fix up problems caused by a manual exchange of icons (as has happened here) - it was intended to carry out the whole of a multi-stage process whereby two icons would have their names exchanged, and it relied on there being no manual changes occurring.

Having determined the pair of icons to be exchanged (let's call them AAAl and AAAr), it went something like this:

1. on Commons, move File:BSicon AAAl.svg to File:BSicon CHRISBOT1.svg, and move File:BSicon AAAr.svg to File:BSicon CHRISBOT2.svg, in both cases leaving a redirect behind;
2. go through every page on every Wikipedia (the icons are on commons, remember) which uses either the AAAl or AAAr icons and alter these to CHRISBOT1 or CHRISBOT2 respectively;
3. delete the redirects left behind at stage 1;
4. on Commons, move File:BSicon CHRISBOT2.svg to File:BSicon AAAl.svg, and move File:BSicon CHRISBOT1.svg to File:BSicon AAAr.svg, in both cases leaving a redirect behind;
5. go through every page on every Wikipedia which uses either the CHRISBOT1 or CHRISBOT2 icons and alter these to AAAr or AAAl respectively;
6. delete the redirects left behind at stage 4.

AAAl and AAAr have now been exchanged, and at no stage was the visual appearance of any page compromised - even though the whole thing could take several weeks, most of which was spent in carrying out stages 2 & 5.

However, what happened in this case was:

1. move File:BSicon CONTr.svg to File:BSicon CONTr temp.svg without leaving a redirect;
2. move File:BSicon CONTl.svg to File:BSicon CONTr.svg without leaving a redirect;
3. move File:BSicon CONTr temp.svg to File:BSicon CONTl.svg without leaving a redirect.

CONTl and CONTr have now been exchanged, and from the very moment of the first move the visual appearance of all transcluding pages has been compromised. The upside? It took under two minutes. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:27, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes so we need a bot to:

1. go through every instance of CONTr on wikipedia, change that to "tempCONTr"

2. then go through every instance of CONTl on wikipedia and change that to CONTr

3. then go through every instance of tempCONTr and change that to CONTl

Starting at somewhere in the "B"s since some have already been done (alphabetically starting at A I think)

Is that correct - it would fix the problem slowly.

or we could complain loudly for the commons icon swap to be reversed.

I prefer just fixing it.Sf5xeplus (talk) 12:40, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Since any fixing is going to require some work I would rather have the icons correspond to the way they show on the screen. And if that means reversing work I've already done in the long term interest so be it. Britmax (talk) 17:08, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your understanding - I think the best bet would be to leave the ones you've fixed, and if the bot accidentally unfixes them (ie unswaps), then just revert. The main problems currently is that the bot operator has retired.. I'll see if I can find someone to do it.Sf5xeplus (talk) 18:07, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd already fixed quite a few before I came across this page and I think that as the icon codes themselves are now all corresponding, it would be best just to just manually change them until we can get a bot to run through the rest and fix any we left out. WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 18:19, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The bot won't know which have and haven't been fixed.. If possible please leave a list of ones already fixed below. I can remove these from the bot "to do" list when the time comes.Sf5xeplus (talk) 18:23, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

↓See my suggestion below.↓ WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 09:24, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Not needed any more, someone has decided to fix all the CONT arrows anyway. WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 10:05, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

List of articles already fixed

please list below any articles manually changed (please list the template not the article if transcluded)

• All pages up to Template:Bristol Harbour Railway RDT

Template:Bury Lines, Template:Ouse Valley Railway RDT, Template:Salford Lines, Template:Railways around Didcot RDT

My turn:

• Template:Llanidloes and Newtown Railway
• Template:Merthyr, Tredegar and Abergavenny Railway
• Template:Newport and Pontypool Railway
• Template:Selby to Driffield Line
• Template:The Railways of Lydney
• Template:Severn Bridge Railway
• Template:Forge Valley Line
• Template:Forest of Dean Central Railway
• Template:Ledbury and Gloucester Railway
• Template:Welsh Marches Line
• Template:Cairnryan Military Railway
• Template:Brecon and Merthyr Railway (also moved template on to it's own page from article)

I fixed all those yesterday and I'll continue to manually fix as many as I can, logging them here, so as few people see arrows pointing the wrong way. Just let me know when to stop when the bot is ready to pick up my work. Also would it be possible to add a notice at the top of the 'Railway Line Header' template above all the maps saying 'due to a temporary error you may see arrows pointing the wrong way, editors are currently working to fix this problem' or something like that? Then visitors can see that the problem is being fixed. WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 09:11, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

This list is from my page. I have worked the list over the last few days doing the icons. Britmax (talk) 23:06, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

A

Abbotsbury branch railway

Alston Line

Alton Line

Ambergate to Pye Bridge Line

Anglesey Central Railway

Arun Valley Line

Ascot to Guildford Line

Ashbourne Line

Ashford to Ramsgate (via Canterbury West) line

B

Bala and Festiniog Railway

Banbury and Cheltenham Direct Railway

Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway

Belfast and County Down Railway

Bishops Castle Railway

Blackpool Branch Lines

Bluebell Railway

Bridport Railway

Brighton Main Line

Buxton Line

C

Cairn Valley Light Railway

Cambrian Line

Carmarthen to Aberystwyth Line

Central Line

Chatham Main Line

Chiltern Main Line

Chester-Manchester Line

Circle Line (London Underground)

Conwy Valley Line

Cromford and High Peak Railway

Culm Valley Light Railway

Cumbrian Coast Line

D

Derwent Valley Line

Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway

Dundalk, Newry and Greenore Railway

Dundee and Newtyle Railway

E

East Kent light railway

East Kent Railway (heritage)

Eastleigh to Fareham Line

Ely and St Ives Railway

Esk Valley Line

F

Fawley branch railway

Fullerton to Hurstbourne Line

G

Glasgow Subway

Gloucester to Newport Line

Great Central Railway

Greenford Branch Line

GNR Derbyshire and Staffordshire Extension

Great Western Main Line

H

Heads of the Valleys Line

Heart of Wales Line

Heart of Wessex Line

Henley Branch Line

Hope Valley Line

Hounslow Loop Line

Hull to York Line

I

Isle of Wight Railway

Ivanhoe Line

J

Jersey Railway‎

K

Kent Coast Line

Kingston Loop Line

L

Lea Valley Lines

Leamington to Rugby line

Liverpool to Manchester Lines

Liverpool Overhead Railway

Liverpool to Wigan Line

London, Tilbury and Southend Line

London Victoria to London Bridge via Gipsy Hill

Lymington Branch Line

M

Medway Valley Line

Meon Valley Railway

Mid-Cheshire Line

Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway

Midland and South Western Junction Railway

Mid Hants Watercress Railway

Midhurst Railways‎

Midland Main Line

Mid-Suffolk Light Railway

Mid Wales Railway

Motorail‎

N

The Nicky Line

North Downs Line

Northern line

North Wales Coast Line

O

Oxted Line

P

Peak Rail

Portishead Railway

Portland Branch Railway

Portsmouth Direct Line

Q

R

Ribble Valley Line

Ruabon to Barmouth Line

Rugby and Stamford Railway

S

Salisbury and Dorset Junction Railway

Settle and Carlisle Railway

Sheerness Line

Sheffield to Hull Line

Slough to Windsor & Eton Line

Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway

Southampton and Dorchester Railway

South Eastern Main Line

South London Lines

South Western Main Line

Sprat and Winkle Line

St Helens and Runcorn Gap Railway

Staines & West Drayton Railway

Staines to Windsor Line

Stourbridge Branch Line

Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway

Sutton & Mole Valley Line

Swanage Railway

T

Taff Vale Railway

Thames-Clyde Express

Thameslink

Transportation on the Isle of Wight

U

Uckfield Line

V

Valley Lines

Varsity Line

W

Waveney Valley Line

Welsh Marches Line

Wensleydale Railway

West of England Main Line

Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway

Wessex Main Line

West Coastway Line

West Somerset Mineral Railway

West Somerset Railway

West Sussex Railway

XYZ

Yorkshire Coast Line

Oops

I hope nobody minded that i moved some templates whilst this discussion was going on. Didcot in particular can now be found at {{Railways around Didcot RDT}}. Simply south (talk) 17:20, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't change anything important. Britmax (talk) 17:50, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Probably best not to change at the moment - specifically any templates that have already been fixed should be left where they are for now, especially if the move changes the alphabetical ordering of the page.Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:39, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

To anybody moving templates which contain an RDT (whether or not the old or new names contain the letters "RDT"): if the RDT as displayed has "[v-d-e]" links in the title bar, please make sure that you amend the second parameter of the {{BS-header}} template to match the new template name, like this. This parameter is used to generate those links: if it's left alone, the v-d-e will link to the redirect, not to the template itself. Compare this: to this: . --Redrose64 (talk) 16:03, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

RDT

I hope someone can enlighten me. Where did the "standard" for RDT at the end of every railway route map come from? I have just gone through a 25% sample of the diagrams in Category:Rail routemap templates and found very few with the RDT suffix. Even in the UK only a few currently have the RDT suffix. Are we sure this is going the right way?

Some examples

• Category:Templates for railway lines of Australia 4 out of 70
• Category:Templates for railway lines in Catalonia None out of 36
• Category:Templates for railway lines of Ireland None out of 32
• Category:Japan railway line templates None out of 229
• Category:Templates for railway lines of the United Kingdom 42 out of 197 (currently changing)
• Category:Templates for railway lines of the United States None out of 163
• Category:Templates for New York City Subway lines None out of 36
• Category:Templates for railway lines in Norway None out of 68
• Category:Templates for railway lines of Scotland 4 out of 164 (currently changing)

To date the template has had the same name as the article, this is now changing - and there are now many articles going to require changing to remove the redirects. I can see a considerable amount of maintenance coming up.

--Stewart ^{(talk | edits)} 19:01, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Route_diagram_template/Archive_6#Suffices which was no consensus either way. Simply south (talk) 19:12, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Usually no-consensus means don't start changing it.Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:16, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

You mean don't contune? Should i transclude the discussion and reopen it? Simply south (talk) 19:25, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. reopen the discussion (Don't change any more without consensus anyway - assuming Pencfn comment can be taken as an objection, and given SilasW's extant strong objection).Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Done. Simply south (talk) 19:44, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Suffices

I think this should be added somewhere.

These templates may ideally be distinguished from others by having the suffices "route diagram", "route map", "map" or "RDT".

Simply south (talk) 11:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Strongly disagree, there is no need to change them, generally RDT's appear to have the same name as the article they are included in, this is a good way to organise them. This is just moving things for the sake of moving things. Jenuk1985 | Talk 12:35, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I going to create a new section for other people's general opinions. Simply south (talk) 20:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposal

1) Should suffices be added to RDTs to distinguish them from other templates? 2) If so, should a single suffix be used such as RDT, route diagram or equivalent? Which?

Also, Jenuk 1985, is it okay if i move your opinion to this subsection? Simply south (talk) 20:42, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a debateable proposition, but I think overall a good idea - reason - especially in terms of editing wikipedia - having similar templates distinguised helps.

Comment - I've been trying to find the 'instructions' (ie this page) for weeks - if the templates were all called "template:RDT-myfavorite-railway-line" I would have been easily able to search for "RDT" and find this page.

Definately a simple suffix or prefix - ie strongly recommned using the prefix "RDT" as standard. (Question what about other languages - can there be a multilingual term?)FengRail (talk) 21:13, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not multilingual much, sorry so i don't know. (Btw, a prefix is where it is added at the start of a name, suffix is at the end but either can be suggested) Simply south (talk) 21:25, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I have used the suffix "_map" on the 130ish route diagrams I have created. I would prefer something readable, rather than a (fairly incomprehensible) acronym. Bob1960evens (talk) 22:22, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I am wholeheartedly against this sort of change except maybe where a really represenative majority (not just of "activists") is in favour and real benefit could come. Unfortunately there are editors, not in this case, who have an idea, self-evaluate it as a miraculous improvement, and then proceed to slam it in everywhere they happen to think of, damning all previous use as wrong even when the "rules", old and "new", fail in some cases (see the map in User:SilasW/Sandbox2).
Here (adding RDT) "BSheader" templates were not amended when the maps were renamed and so v-d-e stopped functioning and would-be editors of the map were sent into an encircling redirect. It's not enough that "Some good might come of it", the ramifications of the change have to be thoroughly thought out beforehand.--SilasW (talk) 19:58, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I think its a good idea, roughly the some thing as the "Infobox ..." prefix. I propose maybe "route map" as a suffix or prefix. ChrisDHDR 19:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I am totally against this change. The (majority of the) current templates have the same name as the article for the line that they relate to. I echo and support the comments made by SilasW. I see no benefit whatsoever from this proposal. --Stewart ^{(talk | edits)} 20:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I guess I agree with you. ChrisDHDR 14:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

 Reopened

New discussion

Per above. Simply south (talk) 19:44, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

• The majority of pages use simply Template:railway line name, without any suffix or prefix, and I've done the same on the few I've created. That gives an initial working suggestion of a standard, and I wouldn't suggest changing from that - I haven't yet seen a suitably convincing argument to change from what already exists. vote against proposal (keep de facto standard, unless further arguments convince me)
  • Comment - if a change was agreed to be made, not only should the pages be move, but the article links to those pages be changed too (no redirects). This task would be best done by a bot. No manual attempts please. The affected articles include most (all?) in Category:Rail routemap templates and probably some more elsewhere.Sf5xeplus (talk) 20:34, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm just going to apologise now and stop moving the RDTs. Simply south (talk) 23:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway

Does anyone else feel that this diagram could profitably be shortened by removing the N&S joint railway sections and replacing them with a link to the joint line's own article? Britmax (talk) 10:25, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. We certainly don't need Cromer High shown. Lamberhurst (talk) 08:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

M&GN Extract
West Runton File:BSicon ABZ rd.svg Cromer Beach Norfolk and Suffolk Jt. Rly. North Walsham North Walsham Town (Bittern Line) Honing to Norwich Stalham

Would you replace the area with something really minimal as the detail is covered by the line's own article, say this? Britmax (talk) 11:12, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Would the diagram include North Walsham Main? I also thought that it might be useful to incorporate the {{show}} parameters into this diagram (like with Template:Metropolitan Main Line RDT) to enable long sections with many small stations (e.g. Honing to Caister) to be hidden. Lamberhurst (talk) 14:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

As you can see, that can be done although I fail to see the logic of keeping this and losing Cromer High. And personally, I dislike hiding diagrams in any form and you won't catch me doing it. Britmax (talk) 14:29, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Do we need the Yarmouth tramway shown (assuming that it's correct)? Ditto the NNR detail? With the removal of the tramway, the diagram could be trimmed back to Yarmouth Beach with an arrow pointing off to the Yarmouth - Lowestoft line. Lamberhurst (talk) 14:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Any reason why only a short stretch of the GER is in Luecke style, as opposed to most of it? The portion concerned has only one station, Gunton. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:29, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

• Q. Why discuss here and not at WT:UKRAIL? --Redrose64 (talk) 10:29, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, but there's also Roughton Road. WP:TWP seems to get more attention than WT:UKRAIL where these sorts of questions meet with a deafening silence. Lamberhurst (talk) 11:24, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I've tweaked the area around Cromer in the article diagram somewhat. Thoughts? Britmax (talk) 17:38, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Grand Junction, Birmingham, England

The article Grand Junction, Birmingham, England has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references failed to find significant coverage in reliable sources to comply with notability requirements. This included web searches for news coverage, books, and journals, which can be seen from the following links:
Grand Junction, Birmingham, England – news, books, scholar
Consequently, this article is about a subject that appears to lack sufficient notability.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:21, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The PROD has been contested. After four years, the article is still completely unreferenced. I've therefore tagged it with {{notability}}, and will allow a couple of weeks for improvement before taking the issue to AfD. I'm open to persuasion that the junction is notable, but this has got to be shown in the article. Mjroots (talk) 10:50, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Someone with coding skills

Could someone with coding skills fix something I've noticed thats amiss with the Romford to Upminster Line i.e. why all the info appears in the infobox? Simply south (talk) 12:56, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I fixed it temporarily by taking the route map out the infobox. Suspect something's wrong with the route map template, but I don't have time at the moment. Edgepedia (talk) 13:18, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted the edits done earlier today to Template:Romford to Upminster Line, and that's cured it. An expert can presumably fathom out what was wrong with those edits. David Biddulph (talk) 13:29, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I have managed to fix it. There were some erroneous <noinclude> tags in the diagram possibly left over from a pervious copy-paste edit. I also linked the template outside of the infobox so as to include the standard header which gives links to view or edit the template or view the template_talk (discussion) page (the [v • d • e] ). -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 13:53, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

OK. Simply south (talk) 22:48, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

H0 or HO?

I've proposed to make it HO scale; please join the discussion at Talk:H0 scale#Formally requesting move. Mangoe (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Lordkinbote's images are under attack again

Once again, former User:Lordkinbote's images have been tagged for mass deletion. Many of them are the only ones of their kind on Wikipedia, so I encouraging anyone who can do so to start saving them now. ----DanTD (talk) 17:12, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem appears to be that these non-free images do not have Non-free fair use rationales, hence the tagging. Mjroots (talk) 13:53, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, we should start addimg more of those tags to the images. Granted there may be a few that could be left to be deleted, and can be replaced with external links, but a lot of the ones I've seen are too good to drop. ----DanTD (talk) 21:44, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of High rail

The article High rail has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references ("High rail" "O scale" S scale") did not find support to meet the requirements of WP:N for the content of this article as written. gbooks gets 4 hits, 2 are mirrors and the other 2 don't seem to support the premise of the article

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:52, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested article

Hi WikiProject Trains! I have recently been reading RailVolution and came across the passage "The underframe is designed to withstand an end-on compressive force of 2,000 kN, and complies with the UIC 566 standard."

I do not really understand this passage, but part of the reason is that there is no article for underframe. If someone here is an expert on the subject, I humbly request that they look into creating such an article, or redirecting to an existing article with this information. Perhaps more information should be added about the various UIC standards, as I found this to be lacking to an amateur/enthusiast such as myself. Thanks, Ynhockey ^(Talk) 23:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There are some interesting sources out there; I might create an article when I have spare time. Unless, of course, somebody else gets there first. :-) bobrayner (talk) 00:20, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I've started it, but my information is sparse! --Bermicourt (talk) 08:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest that the chassis article is a better home for that info. Maybe as a section, with underframe redirecting to that section. Mjroots (talk) 12:28, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I was going to say the same thing. "Underframe" is just a synonym for "chassis". No separate articled is needed.oknazevad (talk) 13:41, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Rail transport articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Rail transport articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:36, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Merge proposals

• I have raised a merge prop at Talk:WD Austerity 2-8-0#Merge. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:29, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
• Another at Talk:LMS Fowler Class 3F#Merge. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:58, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know why you're rasising this here. As I said there, the BR ex-WD Austerity 2-8-0 article describes those taken into stock by BR. The WD Austerity 2-8-0 describes those in stock by the War Department. Although all of the former belonged originally to the latter, they are different classes because they are owned by different companies (and one which is not a successor to the others). See for example how the British Rail Class 77 is separate from NS Class 1500. Thank you for your understanding. 18:59, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I didn't raise it here, I raised it at the proper place: the talk pages of the articles concerned. I posted a message here, notifying the project of the merge proposal, which is common courtesy. I also posted a similar message at WT:UKRAIL, because as pointed out by Lamberhurst (talk · contribs) earlier on this page, it will gain more attention from interested parties that way. See WP:MULTI and please discuss the merge on the talk pages which I linked in the first place. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a preference between merged or separate articles in this case, but I would point out that "Look at those other articles..." is a very weak argument. We should judge articles on their own merits. Other articles may have their own reasons for being done in a particular way; they may not have been merged due to substantial differences in design or operation, or even lengthy content, which does not apply to the articles whose merger is now proposed. Sometimes, the "other articles" are flawed and would also need to be adjusted. bobrayner (talk) 00:22, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Bob, I was using those articles as examples to justify the reasoning that was explained. They are different classes because they were owned by different companies (and one company is not a successor to the other one). Tony May (talk) 18:30, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Thomas Gray review request.

Would appreciate a review of Thomas Gray (1788–1848) for consideration as an added entry on the railway history timeline for the year 1820. This date coincides his publication of Observations on a General Iron Railway. This promotional work coincided with much of the early legislation associated with steam locomotion in UK. Thank-you. CUoD (talk) 00:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Asia Jaya LRT station

Hello, my friends: A group of us are working on clearing the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_October_2006. The article in the above header has been without sources for the past four years and may be removed if none are added. I wonder if you can help do so. Sincerely, and all the best to you, GeorgeLouis (talk) 17:32, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Poplar DLR station/depot

I just stumbled upon two articles on the UK's Docklands Light Rail; One is Poplar DLR depot, which is tagged as an orphan, and the other is Poplar DLR station. The "station" article is linked to the "depot" one, and I almost thought the "depot" was a duplicate or a relief segment of the "station." However, the lead sentence of the depot article calls this "The Poplar Traincare Depot," which gives me the impression that this is actually a yard or storage facility. So why the duplicate if this isn't the case? ----DanTD (talk) 13:40, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

In British English usage a "depot" is where trains are stored (e.g. overnight) and maintained. The DLR station article refers to where passengers would join a train. They are adjacent as can be seen here. [1]. (Arrow points the maintainance building, blue circle with line through it to the station platforms). Edgepedia (talk) 14:58, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and confirms what I was thinking. ----DanTD (talk) 15:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Capitalisation of french railway stations

moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (stations)#Capitalisation of french railway stations

Réseau Nord and similar articles

Hi, I came across Réseau Nord, Réseau Montparnasse and a few similar articles. Basically these articles are about which destinations can be reached from the main terminus stations in Paris (gare du Nord, gare Montparnasse etc.). As far as I know, the national railway company SNCF isn't organised along these "réseaux" (networks). When the SNCF was founded in 1938, it was subdivided into régions (Nord, Est, Ouest, Sud-Ouest and Sud-Est), more or less conform the former railway companies that formed the SNCF. This structure existed until 1972 according to French wikipedia (couldn't find anything useful confirming this on the SNCF website). Currently the local trains (TER) are organised by administrative region, e.g. Picardie, Lorraine, Corse, Bourgogne. So I think the "Réseau X" articles are not very useful, and should be merged with the respective station articles (Réseau Nord --> Gare du Nord etc.). I think the Category:Région Nord and similar categories can be deleted as well. Thoughts? Markussep ^Talk 14:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Two articles with some valuable information are left: Réseau Nord and Réseau Saint-Lazare. The information is actually about the creation of some of the first railway lines in France, and should either be merged with articles about the former railway companies Chemin de Fer du Nord and Chemins de Fer de l'Ouest, or with articles about the lines themselves, if they exist, for instance Ligne de Paris–Caen. Markussep ^Talk 10:15, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Railway stations in country X

I've been doing a little work updating/correcting articles on railways in developing countries.
I've noticed that we have a swathe of articles along the lines of "Railway stations in country X" even when country X has no functioning railways, or has barely enough to fill the existing article on "Railways in country X" which sits awkwardly alongside. Also, the "Railway stations in country X" articles seem to have been built according to some set structure which, I think, could do with some improvement. For an example, see Railway stations in Niger. I think it's pretty redundant as there are no railway stations in Niger and there never have been, the layout is awkward, and we already have an article on Rail transport in Niger (a paragraph on proposed projects; the usual story of African infrastructure) as well as several more paragraphs on the same thing over at Transport in Niger#Railway(1). This applies to many other countries too. Hence we have lots of duplication (making it difficult to maintain accuracy) and some unattractive articles that try to fill a page whilst saying very little (and still manage to overlap with other pages while they do it).
Was there some policy reason, or some overarching consensus, which required the creation of "Railway stations in country X" articles in this way, regardless of content? If so, I shall abide by it, but if not I'd like to have a go at tidying this mess up. Any suggestions / comments / complaints?
bobrayner (talk) 13:36, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
(1) As an aside, it seems popular to write about gauge changes even when there is no railway built, and even if a railway were built it would have small traffic and slow operations regardless of gauge breaks. I'm not sure why this is such a popular subject, but hey.... over at Rail transport in Afghanistan somebody was banging on about building thousands of km of dual- or triple- gauge.

Sorry, I should really have given more examples to illustrate the scope of this problem. Here's a handful more African examples (starting from the top of the alphabet):

• Railway stations in Algeria: Incomplete, inaccurate, unsourced list. Realistically, SNTF station may be better placed in the SNTF article.
• Railway stations in Angola: Unstructured list, massive overlap with Rail transport in Angola but doesn't even link to the main article.
• Railway stations in Benin: Similarly poor list, half of it duplicates Rail transport in Benin (which is not linked), the other half aren't even in Benin.
• Railway stations in Burundi: There is a pageful of stuff including what appears to be a list of stations. Scroll down a surprisingly long way and you'll find a wikilink to Rail transport in Burundi which helpfully explains that there is no rail transport in Burundi.
• Railway stations in Cameroon: Dubious structure again. Has a helpful list of stations that were not built (with their altitudes). At least if you scroll down a couple of pages you can get to Rail transport in Cameroon; bafflingly, that page offers a wiklink with the text "Railways in Cameroon" which actually goes to "Transport_in_Cameroon#Railways".
• Railway stations in the Central African Republic much as before. There are no railways in the CAR but nonetheless the article is a couple of pages long and manages to duplicate some text from Transport in the Central African Republic.
• Railway stations in Chad: It's a couple of pages long although Chad does not have, has never had, and is unlikely to acquire any railways. A little WP:OR helpfully informs us that there are some railways in Libya and, well, that means a cross-border link is possible (doesn't mention that they're on the other side of the Sahara and there's no good reason to spend billions crossing the sandy wastes). Contains some overlap and some stuff that's not in the rail section of Transport in Chad and vice versa.

It's a mess. The closer I look the more work I find to do. Any comments, before I go about rationalising articles like this?

bobrayner (talk) 18:12, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm from the Africa Wikiproject and have encountered duplicate sets of placeholder articles fairly regularly. Looking at the corresponding articles of the United States, it looks like Railway stations in the United States is just a list of railway stations while Rail transport in the United States is actual content (I'm unsure why the first article is not called List of Railway stations in the United States). This seems like a good way to organize things to me. If a country has no railroads, then I would place a redirect to a section in the "Transportation in X" noting that fact.--Banana (talk) 03:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Railway stations in the United States is currently at AfD. I don't want to see it deleted but it is a pretty poor list. I also don't work in the subject area. Can an experienced editor with a good reference help save this one?--NortyNort (Holla) 12:46, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I'd rather see it added to Rail transport in the United States, and any genuine attempt at a list added as a chapter of that article. ----DanTD (talk) 15:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be foolish to add the list of railway stations to the main articles as they are huge lists (~2500 for the UK, >5000 for Germany etc.) The articles which are just lists need to be renamed "list of" and then cleaned up. Every entry in the list should be a link - even if the majority of them are red links or point to stubs. Railwayfan2005 (talk) 21:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be foolish to attempt that - for the minority of countries which have such an extensive list of stations (and which probably have many people watching their articles). However, there are plenty of countries which have just one freight line or no rail at all, yet they get 2 or 3 articles on their railways, including a 2-page list of railway stations; they list "breaks-of-gauge" with neighbours whose networks are hundreds of km and a few decades away; and so on. Typically, these also have multiple ELs to generic old maps which don't actually show the infrastructure mentioned in the article. Grand infrastructure plans cite a single forum post, and Larouche fantasies of transcontinental links are taken at face value. Somebody also seems fond of adding elevations for stations in some parts of the world (or proposed stations, or even "never built" stations); I suspect these altitudes came from fallingrain's notoriously unreliable stats for whichever town has a similar name - each rail line to a coastal city is given an elevation of 1m. And so on. That kind of content might be OK in a forum for railfan speculation, but this is meant to be an encyclopaedia.

Bizarrely, {{Railway stations in Africa}} only has a redlink for South Africa, one of the few countries in Africa that might actually have a worthwhile list of stations; but it has plenty of very real links to pages like Railway stations in Rwanda or Burundi or G-B. Such articles go into considerable detail - even a discussion of gauge-changing equipment - but a reader would have to find another overlapping article on the same subject (which is not always wikilinked) before they learned that there are no railways in these countries. Outside of the rich-world's well-watched pages, the overlapping and bizarrely-structured articles on railways make it harder for real encyclopaedic content to propagate (I could offer diffs that show one article being corrected to fit a WP:RS, whilst another overlapping article's errors are left untouched); yet the overlapping articles also make it easier for fiction to propagate (again, I could offer diffs that show somebody read fiction in one article, took it at face value, and pasted it into another article).

The more articles I check, the more I believe that this is a serious problem affecting many countries (I'm trying to work through hundreds of articles systematically). However, the problem does not affect developed countries such as the UK or Germany or the USA with lots of watchers. If any particular wikipedian is only interested in the accuracy of those articles, they may ignore my TL:DR rant. :-) bobrayner (talk) 19:25, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem is not only African. Working my way through the list I just tried Railway stations in Yemen. It has a fair amount of detail; alas, sparsely referenced, as it's hard to find sources when Yemen has no railways. Nonetheless, its nonexistent railways are also discussed in Rail transport in Yemen and Transport in Yemen#Railroads, neither of which is wikilinked from Railway stations in Yemen. bobrayner (talk) 20:53, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Could these be a WP:HOAX? If not, do they contravene WP:CRYSTAL? In either case, you should be able to remove the undesirable content. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:59, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on it. However, the battle is rather uneven. Investigating dubious claims and checking sources takes time, as does tidying up redirects & templates & links &c; whereas the person who writes this stuff need not carry such a burden, and has a years head start. Hoax is probably not the best word; people are only human, and some folk are simply more keen to write about their favourite subject than they are to follow encyclopaedic principles. There's probably no easy answer - anybody want to help clean up the mess? bobrayner (talk) 21:30, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) The scope of the problem is potentially boggling. In some countries any place there was ever even a platform is the subject of an article, and my attempt to try to rein that in failed utterly. Mangoe (talk) 20:31, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't knock them - even one of the smallest, most out-of-the-way stations can have enough written about it to reach FA status. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:14, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

(outdent)The Railway stations in the United States article was deleted, and I can't say I disagree with it too much. But has anybody saved the content of the article in a personal file? I keep thinking it might be good for something, even if it was written like crap. ----DanTD (talk) 18:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

While we're at it, of all the station lists that exist, why isn't there one for Metra stations? I'm glad that they've got them for my hometown of Long Island, and it makes perfect sense that they'd have them for Metro-North, Southern California Metrolink, Caltrain, and and MBTA Commuter Rail stations, but for a massive system like Metra, they deserve their own list too. ----DanTD (talk) 18:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. "239 stations on 11 different rail lines" could be hard work - and aren't there lists on each of the 11 "route" pages? If you wanted a grand merged list, though, I suppose it's feasible. Bear in mind that there's Category:Metra stations too. (Oops: forgot to sign. Here you go: bobrayner (talk) 20:31, 26 October 2010 (UTC) )

That's quite a task, Bobrayner. I'll admit that. But that doesn't mean such a list wouldn't be a good idea. As for the category, thanks to my massive adding of station articles a few years ago, it got so big that I split off the ones in Chicago to a sub-category. ----DanTD (talk) 20:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Back to Africa, I had a quick squiz at Railway stations in Kenya and Rail transport in Kenya and I'd recommend a merger given the huge overlap of the content as the pages stand. There seem to be no articles about actual railway stations linked to from Railway stations in Kenya, so List of railway stations in Kenya is going to be a page of red links. This could change over time but for now I'd support merging all the Railway stations in x page to Rail transport in x, and think about starting List of Railway stations in x for place where there is a hope of getting some articles to link to. (I don't consider categories as a substitute for lists - categories can't contain red links). Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I am currently working on it, systematically, country by country; there's a shortlist of specific problems (mentioned above) which are seen on many "national" rail articles (primarily but not solely African), which should be fairly quick to identify & repair if I go through each item in a checklist, one by one. That checklist has a lot of whitespace at the top but (a) I'm starting from the bottom, and (b) there's some countries I forgot to colour in. Oops. If progress grinds to a halt I may come back here and beg all you intelligent hardworking people for help ;-) bobrayner (talk) 21:44, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Work is still ongoing, slowly :-)

It seems that a lot of the "Railway stations in country X" articles are actually trying to be a map. The creator of the article often breaks the list stations into separate sublists corresponding to different routes on a UN map (or, rather, towns which a line on a UN map passes near, lacking any evidence that the line is used or that trains stop there). For instance, in the part of an article which lists "stations" along a railway in the east of a country, it's a list of towns with "(E)" appended to their name. If a junction is near a town, that town will be named more than once in the article. And so on.

So, in a lot of cases, I think these articles might reasonably be replaced with maps - create something using Wikipedia:Route diagram template, and put that in the "parent" article so we can clear up some of the clutter of duplicated content in sparsely-linked articles. However, creating these maps for many countries (and getting sourcing right) will take a lot more time. bobrayner (talk) 15:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

A-class review request

I'm requesting an A-Class review for Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, which has just become a GA. None of the involved projects have a formal A-Class method, so I'm requesting that two editors review the article and support its promotion. I'm reposting this request on the talk pages of all involved projects.
--Gyrobo (talk) 03:05, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick update: an editor at WikiProject Hudson Valley has volunteered to participate, so we only need at least one other editor.
--Gyrobo (talk) 23:56, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Eponymous categories

Anyone want to assist in populating Category:Categories named after railway lines by country? __meco (talk) 21:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Category hype

Categories on transportation accidents are hyped up to "disasters" as you go up the line in categorization. I have recategorized CSX 8888 incident so it rolls up into categorized "incidents" all the way up the line. Before, it rolled up into "accident" categories, which, in turn, rolled up into "Disaster" categories! While I have changed it for this one incident (for 2001 only, for example), many other categories need to be defined to replace ones that wrongly promote into worse-sounding categories. Student7 (talk) 14:03, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Air flight uses an "accidents and incidents" hierarchy which is named according to the official usage of the the governing bodies. Mangoe (talk) 19:12, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Are they then renamed "disasters"? Because that is what the current categorization does. Student7 (talk) 23:25, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Without prejudice to general rules, sometimes "disaster" is' the universally-accepted name for the incident. Rename Tay Bridge disaster to Tay Bridge incident, and watch the flames pour in. – iridescent 23:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Right, but I think Student7's point is that although all disasters are incidents, not all incidents are disasters; this isn't reflected in the current categorization system. His example of CSX 8888 incident is an "incident", of course, but you'd be stretching terminology a little to call it a "disaster".. no one was hurt. Mlm42 (talk) 00:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes; looking at the Tay Bridge disaster, it's in a subcategory of Category:Transport disasters in Scotland. So far, so good, but other members include a nonfatal derailment and a war-surplus naval vessel that was used for target practice in the Clyde...

I'm not sure there's an all-encompassing solution to this, though, and I don't mind too much if articles are indirectly members of a not-very-accurate category. bobrayner (talk) 02:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The Tay Bridge disaster was 100% fatal. A SPAD is reportable to the RAIB, even if the incident does not involve any collision and there are no injuries whatsoever. The problem comes in between. It is extremely difficult to draw firm boundaries in any subjective assessment, so I don't think that we should be too picky particularly for high-level (ie more general) cats. It does seem to me that the use of the word "accidents" in a cat name sits in between the stronger "disasters" and the weaker "incidents", so is probably the best compromise.

I note that CSX 8888 incident now sits in two redlinked categories, each of which has a single member: the article in question. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh. Membership of two redlinked categories may not be an improvement.

"accident" sounds good to me :-) bobrayner (talk) 16:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

New York Elevated Railroad

I'm very surprised that there's no article on this subject. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

See my response at WT:NYCPT, where the original question was cross-posted.oknazevad (talk) 03:39, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Network Rail Route #

Hi,

I just wanted to pop by and mention something with respect to the articles titles as above (I'm not a member of this project, and I haven't really done any editing on wikipedia at all for a long while). I work for NR and the strategic routes and sections and their numbering have changed. There are now 17 strategic routes (marked A to Q), so it's probable that there's some editing to do to these articles. However, I'm not sure how much of this information is in the public domain and therefore citable as a source, even if it's in common use in the company. This may well be already common knowledge to you chaps here, but if not and if there's a dearth of further info, I'll see what I can do to provide more, though naturally I'm restricted by confidentiality, etc. Let me know if more info is needed. Cheers. El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 17:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello, El Pollo Diablo!

Is this up to date? It seems to be different to the current article titles. IE. routes in East Anglia are bundled under "Route D - East Anglia" on the NR site whereas the current Wikipedia article is called Network Rail Route 7 (Great Eastern), if I'm reading it right. So, some work would need to be done.

Simply renaming/redirecting would be straightforward, but if there are changes to individual routes (ie. the boundaries have been redrawn to include/exclude different lines, or part of them) that would need quite a lot of effort to get right unless there's a source which highlights changes.

Broadly speaking, if it's been published somewhere so that a non-NR person can read it, it should be useful as a source. Got any good links? :-)

bobrayner (talk) 17:25, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe a better method would be to create a number of redirects rather than wholesale renaming of articles. Mjroots (talk) 20:30, 29 November 2010 (UTC)