Talk:Road roller

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Move to "Road Roller"?

Please see User talk:WikiDon#Roller-compactor: suggested move to "Road roller" (WikiDon is the first contributor of this article)

[edit] Suggested merge of Steamroller to Road roller

Rationale: The steamroller is historically the first kind of powered road roller.

See also User talk:WikiDon#Roller-compactor: suggested move to "Road roller".

RickP 18:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Steam Rollers are also covered under traction engine, I suggest road roller incorporates steam roller but steam roller gets redirected to traction engine in the first instance. GraemeLeggett 14:33, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Well actually, 'Road roller' is an Americanism for steamroller - they rarely use steam power any more, but that doesn't matter. The steamroller article predates this one by more than a year, so if anything Road roller should be merged into steamroller. There is a similar merge discussion for steamroller going on at Talk:Traction engine but that one is completely off track. -- Solipsist 12:01, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Go seek the "Road Roller Association", a UK organisation. Road roller is also one of the Groups that I don't have on my (UK) driving license.GraemeLeggett 12:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Further at first glance, I'd say the articles are of similar size and content which are my choices for deciding precedence.GraemeLeggett 12:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who never needed such a machine, I would accept that the UK usage 'steamroller' might be used for a non-steam device for rolling roads, but I don't see this as justification for using 'steamroller' here in that senses. I would say this was true when I was a lad, but I would not use steamroller for road roller now unless I wanted one powered by steam. Road roller should be used for modern vehicles, and steam roller for steam powered ones. So I also say that discussion of steam powered rollers belongs under 'Traction Engine', with all the other machines of essentially the same construction. That is no reason why the road roller article should not mention them, have a paragraph and a picture, but it should then refer people to 'traction engine' for more information.

I only got into this because I happened to have a picture of one and wondered if it would be useful on wiki. But I see there is a mess here. There should not be three articles about virtually the same machine, (steam roller, steam tractor, traction engine, maybe some more?). So whatever name is used they need to be combined with redirects or links in other article to send people to read about steam if that is what they want. Traction engine seems to me to be the most neutral name for the article about such vehicles. It perhaps needs a link mentioned right at the top for people interested in modern machines (yes rollers, but logically there should also be links for modern tractors, whatever)

So for the record, opposed to merging steamroller into roadroller, in favour of merging steamroller into traction engine. Sandpiper 22:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Steam roller is not a britishisim. Actually, "Road Roller" is a britishisim, the american term is simply "Roller" (c.f. "Grader", "Scraper", "Loader", "Excavator"). The issue here is that a steam roller is an archaic type of roller, but laypersons tend to use that term to describe a whole category. So the question is, do we go with the typical layperson's usage or the correct usage? (clearly calling a diesel-powered roller (as they all are these days) a steam roller is incorrect.) I vote for the correct usage. Toiyabe 16:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I ended up here because I was curious as to when steam rollers stopped using steam. I actually had no idea that there was another name for them, although I suspected as much. Had someone said "road roller" I'd have had no clue what they were talking about; "traction engine" wouldn't even have necessarily gotten me thinking about road equipment. Who comes up with these names? :-) I'd vote for putting it all under steam roller. Elf | Talk 18:04, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

If you are wondering, the first internal combustion powered rollers were already in use in 1909 (I have a book on highway construction published in 1909 which discusses them and their advantages/disadvantages vs. steam rollers. The exact terminology used is "Roller" for the general category, "Steam Roller" and "Petrol Roller" for the specific examples). At that time internal combustion engines were still small, so the big rollers were all still steam. I don't know when the last steam powered roller was built, but I'd be surprised if it was after 1935.

I guess it's not uncommon for laypeople to latch on to the wrong bit of technical jargon and continue to use it long after it becomes obsolete. The question is should wikipedia help perpetuate that. Toiyabe 18:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

It was my understanding that "steamroller" was the general term for what is apparrantly call a "road roller", regardless of them being powered by steam or not. I've never actually heard anyone call it a road roller before. (I'm from the US.)

So, I dunno really. --Ortzinator 19:38, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

"Road Roller" is also a bad name because many rollers are not intended for use on roads - landfills, dams, foundations, etc. "Roller" is best, or maybe "Roller-compactor" Toiyabe 20:21, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

No Merge Required - Road roller and steam roller can easily exist as separate pages - I have started to expand the information on both pages so that they have sufficient content to exist in isolation. (There's lots to add to steam roller, but I've just about exhausted my knowledge for Road roller - sorry!)

The Road Roller article can cover all internal-combustion-powered plant, which will, of course, incorporate all modern examples. Steam roller covers rollers powered by steam. While both types perform the basic function of flattening using a self-propelled vehicle fitted with smooth wheels, that is the only similarity. Steam rollers were used for a wider variety of tasks than diesel rollers are, while there is now a greater variety of diesel rollers to perform more specific tasks. Their construction and operation is completely different, and is why I think they should be kept separate.

(Also steamroller should NOT be merged with traction engine, if for no other reason than my research has uncovered steam-powered rollers that are essentially unrelated to traction engines! But that is a discussion for elsewhere.)

This discussion has continued for eight months now, and I think we should be able to remove the 'merge' banner as no longer appropriate. What is needed is the addition here of more content about modern road rollers! (I'm doing my best with traction engines and steam rollers...)

EdJogg 18:31, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

In the absence of any further discussion since my last posting here, I reckon that the merge banner can now be removed, as per my reasoning above. In addition, I have discovered that the road-building techniques employed when steam rollers were the only choice are rather different from the techniques used for modern road paving, and these should be given more than a passing mention in the respective articles. It will be clearer for the reader if these are kept separate.

Merge banner now removed. -- EdJogg 23:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is a roller-compactor then?

The term roller-compactor appears to be a well-understood term within the construction industry, but it is also used within the pharmaceutical industry for some kind of manufacturing plant. The need to differentiate between these is the reason for this article being called road roller, rather than roller-compactor (which is what it started life as - see first section on this talk page).

This site, chosen at random from Google, is a sales site for construction equipment, and contained a wide selection of items that I would call 'diesel rollers' (or 'road rollers', or just 'rollers') - all labelled as 'roller-compactors'.

Hence the terms appear to be interchangeable. -- EdJogg 18:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)