Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Archive: 2012, 2

File:Spuyten.jpg

File:Spuyten.jpg, a map of NYC train lines, is up for immediate deletion as being unsourced -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 14:29, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Rationalising infoboxes

We currently have:

• {{Infobox heritage railway}}
• {{Infobox railway}}
• {{Infobox rail}}
• {{Infobox rail network}}
• {{Infobox rail company}}

It would be good to rationalise those into a smaller number, perhaps two, or even one. How can we best do this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:57, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Why do you think this would be a good idea? Edgepedia (talk) 14:13, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Because it's not currently clear which should be used in any given circumstance, and to reduce the maintenance overhead. Why do we need more than one or two templates? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Note: as {{Infobox railway ‎}} has only a single transclusion, I've nominated it for deletion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

In principle fewer infoboxes is good since there's clarity about which to use and it cuts down on back-end maintenance. While I'm usually supportive of Andy's rationalization efforts I'm not convinced at first impression that there's much that can be done here. It might be possible to merge {{infobox rail}} and {{infobox rail company}}; there's a mix of US- and UK-specific parameters but that's no hardship. Heritage railway really is doing its own thing. I'd never seen {{infobox rail network}} before today but it's functioning at country-level. At the very least it needs to be cut over to use {{infobox}} as its base. Mackensen (talk) 14:42, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

So there's a *{{Infobox heritage railway}}" template? Good. I'd like to whip one up for the Railroad Museum of Long Island. --DanTD 15:44, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Currently {{Infobox heritage railway}} is used in heritage railway articles (e.g. North Norfolk Railway), {{Infobox rail network}} in Rail transport in country pages (e.g Rail transport in Germany) and {{Infobox rail company}} in the UK Train operating companies (e.g. Anglia Railways. These look like distinct uses with little overlap. Edgepedia (talk) 17:17, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Rapid transit move

Someone else informally requested a move months ago with the discussion stalling. I've decided to make it a formal discussion. Please see Talk:Rapid transit#Move 5 part b. Simply south...... eating shoes for just 6 years 21:06, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Alleged La Salle, Rockford and Central Railway

I've started a discussion at Talk:La Salle, Rockford and Central Railway#Fantasy railroad? It doesn't seem legitimate to me. Help from people who can smell the difference would be appreciated. --Closeapple (talk) 22:50, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Problems with SNCF article WWII section

Hello to the members of this Wikipedia project, my name is Jerry Ray, and I am a consultant to SNCF in Washington, DC. The SNCF entry includes a link to this project, which is why I have come here. My colleagues have been aware for some time that certain sections of the company's entry, particularly related to WWII, contain a number of inaccuracies, and presents events in a distorted manner. The sections in question are "World War II involvement" and "Reactions to World War II involvement".

It's a very complicated and sensitive subject, however, I'm afraid the presentation of facts in this entry is flawed. I would very much appreciate it if independent editors from this project were moved to help me correct the record, in the interest of historical accuracy. I have provided the details of one relatively small issue to begin with, which you can see via this link: Talk:SNCF#Problems_with_the_WWII_section... Is there an editor here who is willing to assist? Thanks, Jerry M. Ray (talk) 16:01, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Ampang Line

Could somebody who understands about templates and infoboxes please fix this article? Somehow the whole article has got inside the infobox and it has been like this for two years! I seem to be too old and stupid to understand how to put it right. Thank you -- Alarics (talk) 21:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

My quick fix was to take the map out of the infobox. I remember an entertaining evening trying to get a map to work inside an infobox. Anyway, I think it's better outside, as it's rather wide. Edgepedia (talk) 22:26, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't broken for two years - more like eight hours. There was a series of edits to Template:Ampang Line this afternoon where the editor kept adding and removing stuff, but didn't realise that the number of table-end markers |} at the bottom was critical - at one point they added two, later on they removed three. An infobox is a table, so the missing one meant that the table-end marker which should have closed the infobox actually closed the RDT, leaving the infobox open; and in HTML, if you don't close a table, it persists to the bottom of the article, which is why the whole article seemed to be inside the infobox. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:40, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought it was broken for 2 years because when I looked at a version from two years ago in the article's history it showed the same problem. I didn't realise that the incorrect edits were to the template itself and not the article. -- Alarics (talk) 10:03, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

redlinked image

The Beijing–Baotou Railway article has a missing file and is giving two red links in the route diagram template. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:56, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I've replaced the missing images, but the RDT as a whole still renders quite badly, with gaps between rows (maybe due to size?) bobrayner (talk) 09:33, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmm - the gaps seemed to happen where there are distance markers (and the distance is more than 100km). I've fixed that too. bobrayner (talk) 09:36, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

And a few more at Formosa Boulevard Station. Cheers. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:47, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Also fixed, in a more direct fashion! It seems that those images were supposed to be logos of some kind, which would probably fail WP:MOSICON. bobrayner (talk) 15:12, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

George England - Shannon

In the page re George England the 0-4-0 loco allocated to WTC was originally built for the Sandy and Potton railway and the name Shannon was after a ship named by Captain Peel who built the Railway. the loco shed is still here in Potton. These facts and others can be confirmed by the NRM in York/Shildon who own the little loco, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.9.55.73 (talk) 10:32, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Anonymous IP asked me about the NY&NE

Some semi-anonymous IP asked my permission to add and correct new data related to the New York and New England Railroad, as if somehow I was in charge of this. Here's the message he left on my talk page. I had to split it off. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 22:29, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Penrose railway station

We have articles at Penrose railway station and Penrose Railway Station currently, each describing different stations. They need to be more clearly named; does this project have a standard convention for disambiguating similarly named stations? - TB (talk) 13:10, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Mmm .. a few more like this also:

• Penrose Railway Station / Penrose railway station
• Meadowbank Railway Station / Meadowbank railway station
• Panmure Railway Station / Panmure railway station
• Linden Railway Station / Linden railway station
• Stoke Railway Station / Stoke railway station
• Tsumeb Railway Station / Tsumeb railway station
• Helensville Railway Station / Helensville railway station

- TB (talk) 13:26, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've placed a {{about}} hatnote on those articles, except the last two which were duplicate articles. Edgepedia (talk) 16:33, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

To return to the original q: if only there were a standard naming convention, we could avoid lengthy threads like #Parentheticals again above. There are a few conventions on a per-country or per-system scope (e.g. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK stations)), but no general guideline. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:09, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay ta - question answered, there is no convention. That would explain why I failed to find any pattern to follow when trying to fix these. I'll fix any further duplicates I come across per Edgepedia's lead and standardisation can wait for a future date. Cheers. - TB (talk) 18:19, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Routebox border widths

Under some circumstances, the border widths in routeboxes can appear to be double width, as seen at Shildon railway station. I've worked out what causes this, and have started a discussion at Template talk:Rail line#Border widths. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:26, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Bahnhof and Template:Infobox Deutsche Bahn station

Template:Infobox Bahnhof and Template:Infobox Deutsche Bahn station are nominated for merge. Please comment at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 November 7#Template:Infobox Bahnhof. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Parentheticals again

The issue of (XYZ station) after station names has come up once again. Please see Talk:Durham–UNH. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 01:56, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

• Sigh. I don't like parentheticals all that much (we really ought to call things X railway station or X train station), but it's still a standard worth following. Mackensen (talk) 02:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
• If anyone's at all curious the old discussion for that is here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Archive: 2007, 4#American transportation naming conventions. I really do think it would be a net improvement to go in this direction. This convention would actually be more precise than parentheticals, and would bring the US station articles in line with the rest of the encyclopedia. Mackensen (talk) 02:15, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I don't think it would be an improvement to go in that direction at all. With that system you've got names of railroad stations that look like something altogether different Having said that I remember during one of your past attempts to change the naming conventions, one of the names you suggested for Diridon Station was San José Diridon Station, and I liked that one. -------User:DanTD (talk) 03:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Dan, for those who weren't around for the previous discussions could you please expand on your argument and explain what those problems would be? I'd like to respond to "you've got names of railroad stations that look like something altogether different" but I'm not sure what you meant by that. Most articles would be named as they are now, save losing the somewhat meaningless parenthetical disambiguation and picking up the far more useful "station" or "railway station" or "railroad station" (I have no opinion on which of the three is superior). I would note the the railway station articles for every other country follow this convention. It makes very little sense to me for the US articles to be named different, and arguably all these articles fall under this WikiProject. I would further note that the existing disambiguation produces odd outcomes when applied to stations with multiple service providers. Mackensen (talk) 04:14, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's the issue of being mistaken for other objects besides train stations, as well as the issue of being mistaken for other train stations, and even non-train stations. -------User:DanTD (talk) 04:40, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I fail to see how that could happen when the article is named X railway station (for example). Obviously in a city with multiple stations we would disambiguate by company, as we do now. Mackensen (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Has anyone looked into what pattern might exist in the NRHP? Mangoe (talk) 17:57, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

NHRP stations generally have special names. Here's a few:

• South Station: "South Station Headhouse"
• Union Station (New Haven): "New Haven Railroad Station"
• New London Union Station: "Union Station"
• Pennsylvania Station (Newark): "Pennsylvania Station"
• Hartford Union Station: "Hartford Union Station"
• Kingston Railroad Station (Rhode Island): "Kingston Railroad Station"
• 30th Street Station: "Thirtieth Street Station"
• Wilmington Station: "Wilmington Amtrak Station"
• Newark Rail Station (Delaware): "Newark Passenger Station"
• Pennsylvania Station (Baltimore): "Pennsylvania Station"
• Union Station (Washington, D.C.): "Washington D.C. Union Station"
• Main Street Station (Richmond): "Main Street Station and Trainshed"

So, in general, there's not a lot of a pattern. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 18:20, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know there's no standard applied with NRHP. There's a school of thought that says use whatever NRHP calls them, but that's not backed up by any policy I know of and probably breaks all our naming conventions. That list is a perfect example of why we need a better convention. Here's a sample of what those names would look like (under one possibility):

• Boston South railway station
• New Haven Union railway station
• New London Union railway station
• Newark Penn railway station
• Hartford Union railway station
• Kingston railway station (Rhode Island)
• Philadelphia 30th Street railway station
• Wilmington railway station (Delaware)
• Newark railway station
• Baltimore Penn railway station
• Washington Union railway station
• Richmond Main Street railway station

Note that there would be two examples of geographic disambiguation because of existing articles. In the case of Wilmington I think a good case could be made for the Wilmington in Delaware being the primary topic since Wilmington railway station is disused, but it's easy to disambiguate. Mackensen (talk) 22:21, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

All of which look pretty bad, actually. Not just because the strange-to-the-American-ear use of "railway", but because of the imprecise mess of some (Newark? Which Newark?), and the insertion of "railway" (or "railroad") where people never actually say it.

People don't say "Union railroad station", they say "Union Station". And note the capitals; the word "station" is part of the proper nouns that these are, so isolating them renders it a violation of WP:COMMONNAME. Especially for terms such as "Union Station" and "Penn Station" that have been used for multiple major stations, a parenthetical disambiguator by city is the best way to go. But that's for big city stations.

Smaller cities and towns, especially on commuter systems, are usually just known by the town name in common parlance; for those, using the railroad name to disambiguate the station from the town where it's located is easily the best method, and then might as well throw in all stations as a matter of consistency.

Especially when it makes the successor templates work far more smoothly. And that's exactly how we arrived at the current conventions. The only argument against them is that it somehow offend some editors' sense of order to have a project use WP:CONSISTENCY to vary from the general guideline. A sense of top-down order in a crowd-sourced project which has WP:IAR as a pillar. (Note: That's a guideline, as in recommendation.) So I see no real reason to change the current conventions. They work, and that is the most important thing. oknazevad (talk) 01:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

PS, not directed at you, Mackensen; you just provided a good jumping off point for my response. I see that you've argued against changing station article titles individually and arbitrarily, even if you aren't convinced that its a good convention. That is admirable; now, where'd I leave that integrity barnstar?

Well, then use "train" or "railroad". Look, here's the thing. We're already violating WP:COMMONNAME all over the place. We capitalize inconsistently. We use proper names in some cases (Kalamazoo Transportation Center) but not others. As one of the authors of {{s-line}} I'm well aware of the succession template issue; frankly I think they would be more efficient with a more standard convention. Some of the station templates have an impressive list of exceptions. Most of your argument would also be a pretty good argument against the world-wide naming convention, but it was adopted for consistency and uniformity. Ultimately we're disambiguating one way or another; the problem is people get all hot and bothered by parenthetical disambiguation. Changing the US articles to match everyone else threads the needle and eliminates that trouble spot. I must also take issue with the notion of what people say as a valid naming convention. We need to name things in a way which makes sense to us and which makes for a well-ordered encyclopedia. Most people are going to say "the train station" without reference to whether it's named after the town or some dead local worthy. Anyway, I'm about done with my yearly spleen-venting. I consider the current convention a disgrace that should never have lasted this long and makes very little sense, all the more so for never having been properly documented. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations) was never adopted, after all. Mackensen (talk) 01:41, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I never liked calling Wilmington (SEPTA station) just "Wilmington Station," or Atlantic Terminal (LIRR station) simply "Atlantic Terminal," so there are certainly existing names I don't agree with here. With Newark (Delaware and New Jersey), you've got two stations that were both former Pennsylvania Railroad stations, and Oknazevad already brought the issue of those two stations up. With 30th Street Station, you've also got the issue of the SEPTA MFL/SSTL station that's considered separate. Regarding the NRHP stations, the general consensus I've noticed is that most inactive ones have the old names with qualifiers when needed, which is quite often, and the ones that are active combine the NRHP names with the current naming standards. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:09, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Over here across the pond we go by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK stations) and if somebody moves a page matching this convention to one that doesn't (such as Foo railway station to Foo Station) it pretty quickly gets moved back; if the log entry for the reverting move includes a link to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK stations), they tend not to do it again. There are a few situations which are not covered, such as the problem of disambiguation when the station names are identical - do we use locality (e.g. Ashton (Devon) railway station) or railway company (e.g. Ammanford (GWR) railway station); should the disambiguator go before the word "railway" (e.g. Ammanford (GWR) railway station), or after the word "station" (e.g. Brentford railway station (GWR))? But by and large it works. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:16, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

There is no reason why stations (any kind) should get standard parenthesised disambiguators. Having the "XX station" naming is sufficient for probably 95% of all stations. The minority that would be ambiguous even then should get a disambiguator, but there is no reason to give many articles a non-standard name to match the few that need it. The argument that otherwise, the name may refer to something else than a station is not convincing, since that applies to all Wikipedia articles. You are free to start an RfC to disambiguate all Wikipedia articles by default to make them more descriptive, but until you get consensus for that, there is no reason why stations shouldn't follow the standard naming procedures which work fine for most other articles on Wikipedia. E.g. Littleton/Route 495 (MBTA station) should be at either Littleton/Route 495 or Littleton/Route 495 station, and Prides Crossing (MBTA station) should simply be at Prides Crossing station. And if you want clarity: it is not clear that Dune Park (NICTD) is a station either, it's a for most people meaningless disambiguator. Dune Park station works perfectly allright. Fram (talk) 14:36, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

"No reason!?!" Your examples are worse than most of what Mackensen is proposing, and your actions with the Sacramento and MAX Light Rail stations are proof of that. "Littleton/Route 495" doesn't even indicate it's a railroad station, and looks more like some state route in a state that doesn't even exist. "Dune Park station" could be any "Dune Park," in any type of station. "Pride's Crossing station?" What the hell is that? It looks like something from the midwest! -------User:DanTD (talk) 14:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Woggle looks more like a word game or a racial slur than a piece of clothing to me, but we don't disambiguate that either. Aalstar? Bafra? Linkin Park? Cadbury? If you are not familiar with it, you don't know what many of our articles are about without reading them. So? Our titles are not intended to indicate what kind of subject they are about, but only to give the name of the subject. Any reason why this should be different for train stations? Fram (talk) 15:04, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Because they're clearly for train stations, and specific types of them. Not cities, villages, hamlets, parks, streets, squares, companies, etctetera. -------User:DanTD (talk) 15:20, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is that names of stations are very frequently one of two kinds of synecdoche: either the station is named for the railroad, and the location has to be inferred, or (as is typical with subway stops) the location is the name, and that it is a station has to be inferred. Thus, MARC Station doesn't cut it, and it has to be identified as lying in Laurel, Maryland; conversely, Greenbelt has to be disambiguated from, well, Greenbelt. And then there is Union Station, which as you might have already guessed is a huge disambiguation page.

It seems to me that, somehow, the articles names should always include the word "station", since after all that is what they all are. For American subway/transit systems, there is some sense to always including the system name somehow and redirecting to it with a systemless version of the name for searching sake. For American rail stations, I don't see why we can't use the same convention the Brits are using. If we have to disambiguate multiple unnamed stations in one city, we can use the system code/name as the Brits do as well. Mangoe (talk) 15:46, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

...and obviously all the "Union Stations" must be disambiguated by location; it might make the most sense to do "City Union Station" rather than using parentheses. Mangoe (talk) 15:54, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes and no. I'm not sure if all Union Stations are generally known as $CITY Union Station. Some are known only as Union Station. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:31, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

One case where parenthetical names are needed occurs when the official name of the town itself has parentheses. This is common practice at least in Germany where e.g. Schönhausen (Elbe) station is the railway station in Schönhausen (Elbe)... --Bermicourt (talk) 20:50, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

So I ask the question "Any reason why this should be different for train stations?", and the reply I get is "because they're stations"? Anyone want to provide a better answer? Why are all other articles normally at a non-descriptive title, which gives no indication of what kind of subject the article is about, but is this somehow unacceptable for train stations? Why is a title like Cinder Road acceptable for a band, and Reservation Road acceptable for a movie, but such names would be suddenly unacceptable for a station? Fram (talk) 07:14, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't accept it; every time I survey WP:AFD, with its running supply of NN bands, I have to read all the entries just to figure out what-in-the-heck they are. The legalistic obsession with avoiding this sort of qualification is the source of a lot of needless confusion, and I don't see why the rockheadedness of the film and band people should be inflicted on us. Mangoe (talk) 13:29, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

• • It's not just the band and film people, and not just about barely notable things; every article, on every topic, uses this system, just like in any other encyclopedia. This is a global consensus, which you are free to try to change it with an RfC or so, but which shouldn't simply be ignored because you don't like it. If you want non band or non-film examples of similar titles as some stations should have: Parc des Princes, Suzuki Boulevard, J Street, DSV Road, Gerard Way... And are you actually complaining that at AfD, you have to actually "read" the entries? What's the problem with that? Fram (talk) 13:47, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't make sense to omit "station" because most are named after places and so you would have to disambiguate e.g. "Foo (station)" from "Foo (town)". And they're often called "Foo station" anyway. The convention "Foo railway station" is used to avoid confusion with other types of station e.g. "Foo bus station". That said, I can understand why, for articles on stations in the US and other places that use the term "railroad", people would prefer "Foo railroad station". And that's allowed under Wiki conventions. But elsewhere "railway" is the international English term used e.g. by the International Union of Railways. --Bermicourt (talk) 14:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Ys, I have commented in previous discussions and here that I am not opposed to such a convention: while it may not be the official name, it often is in common use to add "station" or a variation thereof to the station name. But above even something like Pride's Crossing station was opposed because "it looks like something from the midwest". Fram (talk) 14:27, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm an Aussie, and to me, Prides Crossing station looks like the name of a cattle station (American English: ranch) in the Outback. That's one of the reasons I prefer Foo railway station for articles about individual railway stations. Bahnfrend (talk) 15:01, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

An Australian perspective, and a helpful one at that. The point I was trying to make though is that the name Prides Crossing station doesn't seem like it's anywhere in Massachusetts, let alone a commuter railroad station with the MBTA. -------User:DanTD (talk) 15:45, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Dan, maybe the following further observations would help. If you were to say to me "Prides Crossing station", then, as indicated above, I would have visions of cattle grazing in the Outback. If you were to say "Prides Crossing railway station", I would assume that the station is in a Commonwealth country or the Republic of Ireland. If you were to say "Prides Crossing railroad station", I would assume that it's in the USA, but wouldn't know where. If you were to say "Prides Crossing (MBTA station)", I would probably google or wikipedia search "MBTA", in which case the search would come up with "Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority". I guess that means my line of reasoning supports the current convention for naming articles about US railroad stations, right? Bahnfrend (talk) 04:37, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Wrong. Why do train station article titles need to make it absolutely clear to everyone what the subject is, where it is located, which company is operating it, and so on? That's what the article is for. We don't have "explanatory" article titles for other subjects. And if your title is so explanatory that you first have to search what the abbreviation in the disambiguation stands for, then what is the actuakl use or benefit? You can just read the article to find out what it is about, instead of Wikipedia searching for MBTA first. "Prides Crossing (MBTA Station)" to me sounds like some Transfer station (waste management), not a train station. Anyway, you argue "If you were to say "Prides Crossing railroad station", I would assume that it's in the USA, but wouldn't know where." So what? Why does the article title need to give an obscure reference to the state the station is in? Note that e.g. Haverhill (Amtrak station) also doesn't indicate where in the USA it is, so the system doesn't work anyway. Fram (talk) 07:35, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Amtrak stations only exist in the USA. The stations they serve in Canada tend to be owned by VIA Rail. So Haverhill (Amtrak station) can't exist anywhere else. A station with a name like "Prides Crossing" makes me think of some station in a field in the midwest, where the cows graze, or used to graze in front of a railroad junction or former railroad junction. -------User:DanTD (talk) 11:43, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

So? Bahnfrend argues that "MBTA" has to be added, or else he or she won't know where in the USA the station is located. For Amtrak stations, this doesn't seem to be a problem though. Seems a bit bizarre. That the name of a station makes you think of the midwest, or a Picasso painting, or a film noir, or whatever else you want to see in it, is not a reason to change the name of the article. The same argument applies to every other article on Wikipedia. I wonder whether everybody who passes this station also believes they are in the midwets though: File:MBTApridescrossing6.jpg. It's good enough for the station, but not good enouigh for Wikipedia apprently. I still haven't gotten any explanation why train stations need to be treated differently than all other articles on Wikipedia, apart from the reason that you suddenly get confused when the actual name of a station is used as the title of the article on that station. Fram (talk) 11:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I would have thought that Haverhill (Amtrak station) should be named Haverhill, Massachusetts (Amtrak station) to match the name of the article about the place where it is located (ie Haverhill, Massachusetts). Bahnfrend (talk) 13:45, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

That would really only work if there were other Haverhill Amtrak stations. This is why we have Ashland, Kentucky (Amtrak station) and Ashland, Virginia (Amtrak station). ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:55, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be Haverhill, Massachusetts (Amtrak and MBTA station) instead? After all, it is a station for both... Seriously, this is way too detailed. Wikipedia:Article titles is policy: any reason why it can't be followed? Specifically the section "Precision and disambiguation" applies here, with things like "when a more detailed title is necessary to distinguish an article topic from another, use only as much additional detail as necessary."; so if there is only one station article with a particular name, adding "station" (or railroad station or whatever) is sufficient: adding a parenthetical company name is overkill, and so goes against policy. Fram (talk) 14:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

That is one thing that has been standardized on - when multiple agencies serve a station, the parenthetical is the owner. See Providence (Amtrak station) for another example. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 15:35, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

There happens to be an example Fram is talking about with Ardmore (SEPTA and Amtrak station). Part of the reason for that seems to be the service of both systems, and the other part looks like the dab with Ardmore, Oklahoma (Amtrak station). I once tried to suggest renaming Old Saybrook (Amtrak station) as Old Saybrook (Shore Line East station), but other editors said I should only do it if CDOT owns the station. -------User:DanTD (talk)

Old Saybrook railway station is the obvious solution. And how about Old Town Transit Center (MTS Transit Center)? That is one of the most redundant and silly titles! It is only one transit center, there is no need for disambiguation or clarity and Old Town Transit Center is the common name. Sw2nd (talk) 17:31, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Silly? Because without that parenthical I'd think it dated back to the days of the San Diego Electric Railway or something like that. And I'll stick with the current name for Old Saybrook for the time being. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 01:53, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Who said Old Saybrook was silly? Read it again. Secondarywaltz (talk) 15:09, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I never suggested that anyone said "Old Saybrook" was silly. You suggested that "Old Town Transit Center (MTS Transit Center)" was silly, and I was trying to explain why it isn't. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:46, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Of course "Transit Center (Transit Center)" is silly! If you need some form of disambiguation, that is not it. Just "Old Town Transit Center (MTS)" would have done, or even "Old Town (MTS Transit Center)" if you're attached to that structure . Secondarywaltz (talk) 21:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, "MTS" makes a little more sense. Even your second alternative isn't so bad. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

This was so obvious to me that I realized I was not explaining myself properly. Thanks. Secondarywaltz (talk) 16:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. And while we're at it, I think I like "Old Town (MTS Transit Center)" better. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 21:05, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

... and here there's a whole lot more of them. Secondarywaltz (talk) 21:16, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Rupashi Bangla Express

Hi. I am not too familiar with notability of train routes and was wondering if someone could comment on my proposal at Talk:Rupashi Bangla Express. Thank you. --Odie5533 (talk) 03:34, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

InterCity 125 and the use of nouns to make verbs in English

An IP maintains that "re-engined" and "liveried" are not words in English, and replaced them with various circumlocutions in InterCity 125. I reverted this on the grounds that they are perfectly good words (and I have certainly read them in the railway press). The IP has reverted my revert. I don't want to be accused of edit-warring. Does anyone have a view? -- Alarics (talk) 18:17, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Liveried is in both the OED and Merriam-Webster. Re-engined derives naturally from engine. Both seem fine to me; I can only speculate, but they may sound archaic to U.S. ears? - TB (talk) 18:25, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

"Liveried" may be just a little bit obscure for readers not familiar with transport in the UK. I could live with it, but a rephrase to use the word "livery" instead might help a bit. bobrayner (talk) 18:51, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

As an Aussie, I'm comfortable with the word "liveried". In any case, what would be an appropriate alternative? "Painted" may be true for old motive power and rolling stock, but modern stuff is often decorated in wrap advertising or similar, and therefore not necessarily painted. Bahnfrend (talk) 00:58, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

"Liveried" is listed in the Oxford Dictionary of English, International Edition, so is definitely okay. "Re-engined" isn't, but it's not uncommon as a specialist word and I would have no problem with leaving it in until further research is done. --Bermicourt (talk) 06:47, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Would someone like to amend back the article then? -- Alarics (talk) 07:07, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

 Done It's not a total revert, since some of the edits seemed valid to me. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:36, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Dunno if "liveried" is part of American English (I'm Canadian)—outside of referring to New York City Taxicabs—but "re-engined" is certainly in common use. Useddenim (talk) 17:29, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

It is not so Useddenim, engine is not a verb (to engine). One cannot engine some thing. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 20:42, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Descriptivism should take priority over prescriptivism here. You may well argue that "engine is not a verb", but people do treat it as one in the outside world. "Re-engined" is a perfectly cromulent word. bobrayner (talk) 21:13, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, we should embiggen our articles with such cromulence. Note that dictionary.com has an entry for re-engine: "[ree-en-juhn] verb (used with object), re·en·gined, re·en·gin·ing. to equip with a new engine or engines, as an aircraft." I'd also note that I've seen it used in various print publications dealing with the refurbishment of diesel locomotives. As such, I'd suggest it's perfectly appropriate for it to be used here. Zzrbiker (talk) 22:38, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

My great mind is not embolded by your words. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 14:38, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey Cap’n: I never said that it was a verb, just that it was in common use. Useddenim (talk) 18:10, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Concern over category structure

Today someone has created a category which suggests that Rail museums are Hobbies - they may well be, but I suspect it is a deviation from what I would have thought would be more appropriately linked to aspects of the museums and train category trees:

Somehow I find the categorisation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rail_transport_hobbies somewhat suspect, if not conflating some items, that are not necessarily connected. Any ideas on this would be appreciated...

On closer inspection on some categories - the conflation of modelling activities with life size rail machinery somewhat problematic... maybe a subset of categories (or category explanations) needs to be made to make the distinction clearly SatuSuro 14:07, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

While not one who particularly cares about categories (not a favored way to navigate for me), I think this is a good category. There are multiple different rail-related hobbies and that there is some overlap between them (rail fans often have models as well as take pictures, for example), and that is a strong enough connection to warrant a category.

That said, the inclusion of railroad museums was a good faith error; some rail museums are heavily supported by volunteer efforts, and that work may be considered a hobby by those people, but many museums are professionally staffed and to call all museums a hobby is an inadvertent insult to all those professionals. oknazevad (talk) 15:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Indeed - thanks for responding - the true agenda by the editor was revealed in edit history - another hobby identified was Train surfing I figure the general contribution to categorisation was best reverted and ignored SatuSuro 23:25, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:Access icon

Template:Access icon - which is used in all transclusions of

• {{Infobox station}} where |ADA= is non-blank
• {{Infobox London station}} where |access= is non-blank

- has been nominated for deletion. Please comment at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 November 12#Template:Access icon. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:05, 12 November 2012 (UTC) amended Redrose64 (talk) 16:57, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

That is the most untruths I've ever seen in a deletion nom. This is a vital template. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 16:33, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The discussion was closed as kept. Thank y'all. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 04:45, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Silver Fox models additions

Good morning Trains people! Although I would normally come here only to advance the cause of, as you put it, technical righteousness, today I have a slightly different query, with which I hope that you may be able to help me.

At this link there is a list of the contributions of User:Bigbruce354, which are almost all additions of mention of the availability of model trains made by a company called Silver Fox Models, to the articles about various British Rail rolling stock. All of the additions were sourced solely to the company selling the models, i.e. Silver Fox Models.

Given the determined way in which this editor added this material, almost all on the same day, I would commonly remove the whole lot and then give the editor a stern warning and perhaps appropriate chastisement. However, I'm not sure whether people from this project feel that such additions might in fact be worthwhile, valuable, or potentially appropriate.

Just to confuse me slightly more, respected contributor Redrose64 has already commented about this on Bigbruce354's talk page.

I would welcome your views. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:37, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

This appears to be an assume good faith scenario. In my view, articles about individual locomotive classes are likely to be significantly enhanced by a "Models" section. There's a well known German magazine that publishes a prominent multipage "prototype and model" article every month, with details of all models of the featured locomotive class that have ever been marketed. I'm planning one day, when I have the time, to use these articles as source material for the relevant en.wikipedia articles about the featured (mostly German) locomotive classes. So I believe that the content that has been added by Bigbruce354 to the articles he has edited is worthwhile.

It would, perhaps, be preferable if the source material cited by Bigbruce354 were independent. However, I believe that it's reasonable to assume that the model maker's website is a reliable source, and in my view reliability is more important than independence. The material that has been added to the articles is encyclopedic rather than promotional in form. The articles that have been modified appear to be about obscure prototype classes, and Silver Fox's website indicates that that type of subject matter is Silver Fox's specialty. Thus, it may well be that Silver Fox is the only manufacturer of models of most of the particular locomotive classes in question, in which case the information that a model is available is perhaps even more useful to a Wikipedia reader than it would be if the subject matter of the article were a well known class (such as the BR class 37 or class 47). Bahnfrend (talk) 08:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC).

Silver Fox do get writeups in the model railway press, which should satisfy WP:3PARTY. Bigbruce354 (talk · contribs) left me a message, which I copied back to their talk page, with a note about third-party sources and the WP:EL guideline. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:16, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Central station discussion

An editor has been removing links at Central station prompting a discussion at Talk:Central station#Removal of links to central stations in German-speaking countries which you may be interested in. --Bermicourt (talk) 14:35, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

National Toy Train Museum at AfD

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article National Toy Train Museum is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/National Toy Train Museum until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Djembayz (talk) 14:05, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

SNCF WWII

Earlier in the fall I posted a message here asking for input on the article about the French train company SNCF, where I am an outside consultant. The question I raised was about the appropriate weight and content of the article's treatment of the company's role during World War II. The section at the time, and I am afraid still, represents inaccurate and hostile sentiments left over from an edit war in January 2012. I received some useful feedback from editors, and prepared a new section based on it. But discussion has been slow and the problems I raised initially have not been fixed. I would like to invite anyone reading this to comment on this thread if you are interested in helping out. Thanks in advance, Jerry M. Ray (talk) 22:19, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Have you also tried for input from WP:FRANCE ? -- 70.24.250.110 (talk) 02:23, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I visited the WikiProject France discussion page and found that it was not very active, but I did leave a comment there anyway. The conversation has now progressed somewhat, focusing on whether to move extensive commentary about a court case and political controversies in the 2000s to a related article (link). Another editor proposed this, and I have agreed. Would anyone watching this page be interested in joining the conversation? Thanks in advance, Jerry M. Ray (talk) 16:27, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Linking to railway station

Please see discussion at WT:UKRAIL#Linking to railway station, which apparently also affects non-UK articles. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:12, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Template coding glitch?

Can someone take a look at the route maps in the Overlander (train) and Northern Explorer articles? they show a bit of wikitext in the template. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:24, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The problem wasn't with the template; the diagrams were coded incorrectly. Everything displays correctly now that the diagrams are in separate templates. Useddenim (talk) 02:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

New template for train consists

I've developed a new template for representing individual consists in a tabular format: {{Infobox train consist}}. I've been kicking this around in my userspace for a while; I wanted a standardized way to represent the information that didn't involve huge chunks of text in the middle of an article (see 20th Century Limited for example of what I'm talking about). Feedback appreciated. Mackensen (talk) 17:35, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Japanese trains to categorise on Commons

Hi all. Commons admin Russavia just uploaded a bit under 4k photos of Japanese railways. Could someone help categorise them please? A list can be found on ja.wp - http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%A9%E7%94%A8%E8%80%85:Russavia#Trains -mattbuck (Talk) 23:21, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Odd font

Does anyone know why certain templates are showing with the font Aerial Black? Please see WP:VPT#Template font link. Simply south...... walking into bells for just 6 years 23:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

• I'm looking at Stoke Mandeville railway station and everything looks fine. I'm using Google Chrome. Mackensen (talk) 23:42, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Looks like it might be something weird with Firefox. Simply south...... walking into bells for just 6 years 23:47, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Can't reproduce in Firefox either. Try clearing your cache? Mackensen (talk) 23:51, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Should Template:Rail navbox titlestyle be used

{{Rail navbox titlestyle}}

What is the point of putting two large blocks of colour in the title bar of template? Surely the colour could be better integrated ?

• We appear to be following the practice of the Japanese Wikipedia, though we certainly don't need to. The template appears to be used (mostly) on Japanese articles. I confess I've never seen it before today. Mackensen (talk) 13:13, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
  • It seems to be mostly in the far-east. There are others in places like Taiwan, and I don't really mind. It should at least be optional. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 13:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:Suburban Transit Access Route

Could I have some assistance at Template:Suburban Transit Access Route? A new user, KMCDOnough3439 (talk · contribs), continues to add unsourced names for stations on the proposed line (we might consider deletion; it's unlikely the Suburban Transit Access Route will actually be built). I've left messages on his talk page and the template talk page but haven't gotten a response. Thanks, Mackensen (talk) 02:34, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

New Jersey Transit ridership data

This document of detailed station-by-station ridership numbers was noted on the railfan forums the other day. I'm not terribly involved with NJT articles so I'm not sure if I'll have the motivation to go through station-by-station updating the numbers, nor do I have anything like AWB to make the task easier. Is anyone willing to update the numbers? Pi.1415926535 (talk) 04:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Done. That was boring, whoever keeps the Amtrak station articles up to date has greater patience than I. C628 (talk) 00:28, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Canadian Northern Railway

Canadian Northern Railway has a 1905 image of the 1st train to reach Edmonton. The sign on the train says CNR not CNoR though. Is there an error somewhere?--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:12, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

• The sign clearly says Canadian National Railway, and so does the source description. Why do you think it's not a CNR train? Mackensen (talk) 00:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

The CNoR was absorbed after they reached Edmonton according to the article text. Should the sign have read Northern not National then?--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:27, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• "On December 20, 1918, a Privy Council order directed CNoR and CGR to be managed under the moniker Canadian National Railway (CNR) as a means to simplify funding and operations, although CNoR and CGR would not be formally merged and cease corporate existence until January 20, 1923, the date that CNR was formally consolidated."--Canoe1967 (talk) 00:31, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

AFAIK, the abbreviation CNoR was something created by the enthusiast community to differentiate the Canadian Northern Railway from the Canadian National Railways. Useddenim (talk) 00:44, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I am just wondering why the sign says National 10+ years before it existed. Nickname for CNoR?

• Because the photograph was taken in 1926, according to the source. The location of the locomotive when photographed is unknown. FairFare (talk) 17:17, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Ooops! My bad for not checking sources. I suppose one could email museums etc. in Edmonton to see if they have more information. Should we re-write the caption somehow to reflect that?--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:24, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Alberta Railway Museum is not far from me. I phoned them and got a machine. The article says it is on an old CNoR subdivision which could be where the the picture was taken. I may have time to drive down there and take some pictures possibly. Loco 103 is not listed in their collection but they may know the fate of it. I will resolve this section for now unless anyone has anything further to add.--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

The museum phoned back. Their records haven't been catalogued yet. The curator assumes it was scrapped for the war effort, a shame but understandable.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:52, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Route boxes on station articles: contrast problem

For some time now I've been considering the problems of WP:CONTRAST in station routeboxes like this. Briefly, the problem is that blue link text on a purple or blue background is almost invisible, and even on other colours it is not very readable. Some people have attempted to fix this by forcing the linked text to be white, but this also goes against WP:CONTRAST (links should clearly be identifiable as a link), as well as not providing a distinction for non-existent pages ("red" links).

I have devised a solution which I have applied to all the stations in the Cardiff Valleys network, like this. The horizontal coloured stripe is narrower than the stripe it replaces, but the essential feature is that colour is not being used as a text background. Besides the benefit regarding contrast, routeboxes modified in that manner occupy slightly less height - but are still slightly taller than those without any route colour (the exact difference in height probably varies between browsers).

To use this feature, the |lightcol= parameter has been provided on many of the templates in the {{rail line}} series (specifically, {{rail line}} itself, plus those listed at Template:Rail line#See also). Those with the facility for displaying two or more rows, such as {{rail line one to two}}, have been provided with a set of |lightcol1=|lightcol2= etc. for the individual rows (as seen at Treforest railway station), as well as |lightcol= which applies to all rows (as seen at Abercynon railway station). --Redrose64 (talk) 22:10, 6 January 2013 (UTC) amended Redrose64 (talk) 15:46, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

For the first rev, do you mean this one? Simply south...... walking into bells for just 6 years 23:11, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Not really... that's from after I started converting the routeboxes. Whilst converting, I fixed some red links and I also put colour back into the Coryton line which had lost it four years earlier. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that's a good improvement. The line could be made thicker if people want, but I don't really think there is a need. Thryduulf (talk) 16:24, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The line is 8px high. I picked that size because I didn't want it to be so narrow as to lose the impact; at the same time, I didn't want it to be too broad as that would significantly increase the height of the routebox row compared to the variety without a "light" colour. Consider the relative heights of these (cribbed from Bowness railway station):

Preceding station	Historical railways			Following station
Annan Shawhill		Caledonian Railway Solway Junction Railway		Whitrigg
Annan Shawhill		Caledonian Railway Solway Junction Railway		Whitrigg
Annan Shawhill		Caledonian Railway Solway Junction Railway		Whitrigg

In my browser (Firefox 17.0.1 under Windows XP), the respective heights of the three rows (excluding the 1px borders) are: 56px; 53px; 45px.

For those technically minded, the line is achieved by using an empty <div /> element with a style= attribute, and setting the height and background-color properties, also switching off border and margin.

I named the parameter |lightcol= because of the existence of colour templates named {{Caledonian light}} etc. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:28, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

For those pages which use {{s-rail-national}}, they can all be changed over with a single edit to {{National Rail lines/branches}}. Compare these:

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Terminus		First ScotRail Glasgow South Western Line		MetroCentre
Terminus		First ScotRail Glasgow South Western Line		MetroCentre

The new form is admittedly slightly taller than the old. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I think the new form looks better than the old. If it's easily demonstrable then I wouldn't mind comparing these with a mockup where the coloured stripe is central rather than at the bottom. Thryduulf (talk) 00:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I did consider a central stripe - but didn't want to complicate the way that the {{rail line}} series is used. Presently these take four parameters |previous= |next= |route= |col= (the junction variants may have |previous1= |previous2= etc. but there are essentially four param groups in all of them). My intention was to create the simplest possible change from the point of view of the non-template editor: add a fifth parameter (or param group) without changing the meaning of the existing four. The normal usage of the |route= parameter is

|route=[[major railway company/operator]]<br /><small>[[minor company/branch/route]]</small>

With route colour identification we've traditionally done this by styling the second half of the |route= value:

|route=[[major railway company/operator]]<br /><p style="background:#colour"><small>[[minor company/branch/route]]</small>

It is possible to add a central stripe, but that adds even more clutter to the Wiki markup in the articles, because the stripe needs to go into the value fed through |route= - it can't easily be built into {{rail line}} (but see later):

|route=[[major railway company/operator]]<br /><div style="height:8px; background-color:#colour; border:none; margin:0;" /><small>[[minor company/branch/route]]</small>

and would look like this:

Preceding station	Historical railways			Following station
Annan Shawhill		Caledonian Railway Solway Junction Railway		Whitrigg

Besides fixing the contrast issues, I wished to cut down on the markup, not increase it. This is why I put the extra markup into {{rail line}}, which in turn forced me to have the stripe either before or after the |route= text. It could have gone "inside" the |route= text, but only if |route= were itself split into two parameters - |routemajor= and |routeminor= perhaps. I didn't want to do that.

For {{s-rail-national}} it's just as easy to put it in the centre as at the bottom (or even at the top), but I would prefer to have those routeboxes consistent with {{rail line}}. This is not so much a problem where a given article uses exclusively one style or the other, but where both are used, it would look odd to have some stripes central, the others at the bottom. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:20, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I think I prefer it in the centre, but it's not worth it if the code issue is that significant. I completely agree about the need for consistency. Thryduulf (talk) 12:36, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

City of New Orleans

There is a proposal to move City of New Orleans to City of New Orleans (train). Please see Talk:City_of_New_Orleans#Proposed_move. Mackensen (talk) 00:29, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Template: Rail color box

I had noticed that a lot of articles were putting rail line color boxes by using the following code:

[[Purple Line (Chicago Transit Authority)|{{color box|#{{CTA color|Purple}}}} Purple Line]] 

and I wondered why they didn't use Rail_color_box. I saw that Template:Rail_color_box uses template:legend as the way it was displaying names and colors and therefore isn't suitable for using inline. It seemed a little silly to me, why have rail_color_box if it was only going to be useful in bulletpoints or the infobox of an article so I expanded on it at template:rail_color_box/sandbox. I added a new parameter, inline, which if yes will give a template:color box and if small will give a small box. For example:

(normal; no inline parameter is passed)

  Purple Line

(inline=yes)      Purple Line (inline=small)   Purple Line (the above code for comparison)   Purple Line

The downside of this is the colorbox is not linkable, but I don't think that is a major issue. I'm curious to hear if others feel this is worth rolling into the main template.

• If that is the only downside, then yes go for it. Thryduulf (talk) 12:33, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree. Useddenim (talk) 14:01, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe it should be made linkable. On a slightly related topic, is there any way we can combine rail color services in single infoboxes? I've never liked not being to add only Metro-North parameters to Yonkers (Metro-North station), and leaving only the color bars and Amtrak services to stations like that. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Making the box itself linkable inside the template would be pretty difficult. I did add a new option, inline=box, that would just create a color box in the correct color for the line. This could be put inside a wikilink if that was desired, ie.[[Blue Line (Chicago Transit Authority)|{{rail color box/sandbox|system=CTA|line=Blue|inline=box}}]]      -Killian441 (talk) 05:35, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Would the {{RouteBox}} template accomplish what you're trying to do? Useddenim (talk) 13:30, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

For all except the palest background colours, {{RouteBox}} has problems with WP:CONTRAST, very similar to those described in the section above. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:06, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Underground ages

I've been browsing various underground pages and noticed a lot of discrepancies in the list of 'oldest underground'. For example,

1) Mersey Railway claims to be the second oldest underground in the world 2) Glasgow Underground claims to be the third oldest in the world (after london/budapest) 3) Budapest claims to be the fourth oldest in the world (after london/athens/mersey) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.87.21 (talk) 14:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The claims are different: In no particular order (so I've made the table sortable)

System	Date opened	Claim in article
Mersey Railway	1886	underground railway
Glasgow Subway	December 1896	underground metro system
Budapest Metro	1896	underground railway system
Athens Metro	1869	Athens-Piraeus Electric Railways opened as a suburban railway, was electrified in 1904 and gradually converted into a Metro

As far as I can determine, the Athens system was not underground and the status of the Mersey Railway as a Metro system is disputed. So the order is going to depend on what you are comparing. Edgepedia (talk) 17:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm being to suspect that the Athens Metro claim on this list is original research. Tyne & Wear Metro runs through Walkergate Metro station on infrastructure that opened in 1839, according to the article. I'm sure others can be found. Edgepedia (talk) 18:27, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Of course, at random, the London Underground Hammersmith & City line between Paddington and Westborne Park follows an alignment that opened 4 June 1838. I'm sure that's not the oldest. Edgepedia (talk) 18:32, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

That bit's not in tunnel; at least, the "tunnel" section (the dive-under between Royal Oak and Westbourne Park) is somewhat newer than 1838. How about Marc Brunel's Thames Tunnel? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

AFIK the Athens Metro is not in tunnel, at least most of isn't according to the map in the article. The point I was trying to make was that claiming to run on infrastructure built 1869 is nothing special. Edgepedia (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2013 (UTC)