Talk:Edinburgh–Dundee line

Merge

Shouldn't this be merged into the page on the East Coast Main Line?

Anonymous173.57.37.111 (talk) 23:28, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Glasgow-Aberdeen line

I propose that these two pages are merged into one, called "Glasgow and Edinburgh - Aberdeen line". Unfortunately I can't find the timetable online any more (presumably due to coronavirus), but these routes are both included in a single timetable. It would also avoid duplication. I want to add some information about the single-track section south of Montrose, at the moment this would be duplicated exactly between both articles. To avoid this duplication, I propose the pages are merged. One difficulty would be creating a new diagram of the track - alternatively these could just be kept separate and the new article would have two track diagrams. Thoughts? NemesisAT (talk) 12:42, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

NemesisAT, for timetable data I suggest you use RealTimeTrains and set it to sometime in late autumn.

Re the proposal, I'd oppose a merger, and suggest a complete rewrite of both articles because to me this is not a railway line, it's a service. The fact that a train goes from A to B does not make A to B a railway line - otherwise we'd get things like East Croydon being on the same line as Milton Keynes, or Penzance being on the same line as Inverness. Services are unlikely to be notable in of themselves, but the infrastructure stays the same. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:34, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I think I agree with what you're saying here that the article should be written from the perspective that this is a physical line, not the railway service? Perhaps in that case we could split Dundee to Aberdeen into its own article. In terms of the infrastructure, Dundee to Inverness is a single line, but I think it works well keeping Aberdeen to Inverness as a separate article. I appreciate I may be over-complicating things here, it's the duplication of routes I want to avoid. NemesisAT (talk) 12:46, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Correct. If that means splitting the article then that's fine - Paddington to Penzance comes under Great Western Main Line, Bristol to Exeter Line, South Devon Main Line and Cornish Main Line. -mattbuck (Talk) 12:59, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

While we're at this, the Edinburgh to Dunblane Line, by definition, ends at Dunblane. So what does Dunblane to Perth fall under? -mattbuck (Talk) 13:51, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

At the moment, Dunblane to Perth is part of the Glasgow–Aberdeen line page, so I don't think that's an issue. Where you around when these articles were created? I'm just trying to get my head around why the lines are split up like they are. What do you think about splitting it into the following: Dundee–Aberdeen line, Glasgow-Dundee line, and Edinburgh–Dundee and Perth line (that's a bit messy). I am assuming of course that the creation of these articles was arbitrary and not based on an industry definition that I'm not aware of. Thanks for your consideration! NemesisAT (talk) 15:03, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I have no idea why the lines are split this way, I just happen to be working on a personal database and have reached Scotland with assigning lines. Most of my early railway line assignment is at commons:Commons:UK Train Categorisation, but I never really got further north than Birmingham there.

I think the issue we're running into is that a lot of this stuff was the Scottish Central Mainline, from Motherwell to Dundee via Stirling. The bit from Ladybank to Perth (a remarkably featureless line for such mileage) for some reason appears on Highland Main Line, which also includes a map down to Larbert, despite repeatedly claiming it is Perth to Inverness. In ELRs we have the Perth to Ladybank Line, but ELRs shouldn't really be used to determine line assignments.

FWIW, RailScot says that Dundee is on the Perth to Dundee Line, Edinburgh to Dundee Line and Dundee to Aberdeen Line. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:51, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Ping Geof Sheppard -mattbuck (Talk) 16:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Oops, just had an edit conflict and I managed to delete my response. That sounds interesting, you'll be much more knowledgeable on this subject than me then!. I'm sorry, I can't find the content you're referring to on Commons, the link isn't working. Railscot is interesting, they have split up the operating railways, but I can't find a way to see them all. I noticed though that they have a page on both Edinburgh to Perth and Edinburgh to Dundee which are identical from Edinburgh to Ladybank. So copying that certainly isn't desirable. NemesisAT (talk) 16:50, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Fixed link, and there's nothing in particular wrong about having overlap between lines, some places are just on two lines, it happens. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:42, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, in that case I propose leaving these two pages as separate articles and instead forking Aberdeen to Dundee into its own article. An argument could be made as well for merging that with Aberdeen to Inverness (Creating an article on Dundee to Inverness via Aberdeen) as there are no passenger junctions between Dundee and Inverness and the new local stopping service runs between Inverurie and Montrose. However that doesn't sit right with me. To propose this, should I launch a new discussion and replace the "merge" templates? NemesisAT (talk) 18:11, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm certainly in favour of making the articles match the physical line rather than today's service pattern. Trains change but junctions and stations don't so much!

The historical pattern seems to be Dundee-Edinburgh, Aberdeen-Perth, and Inverness-Aberdeen. However I'm not totally opposed to Dundee-Perth and Aberdeen-Edinburgh. Perth to Falkirk makes sense as part of the Highland Main line but could be part of an Aberdeen-Perth-Falkirk route if needs be.Geof Sheppard (talk) 16:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for my slow response here, I support your first proposal. Dundee-Perth would be a very short article which I think would be fine included to create Aberdeen to Perth. NemesisAT (talk) 21:09, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

The recent crash at Stonehaven got me thinking about this again, and I've now created a new page Dundee–Aberdeen line. This avoids duplication of the Aberdeen - Dundee portion. I think this could work quite well. NemesisAT (talk) 18:24, 14 August 2020 (UTC)