Talk:Nottingham railway station

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Contents 1 Services info box 2 Proposed page move 3 Revisited 4 Requested move 4.1 Survey 4.1.1 Survey - Support votes 4.1.2 Survey - Oppose votes 4.2 Discussion

[edit] Services info box

Updating the "services info box" for Nottingham railway station to reflect recent timetable and service-pattern changes raised a number of questions which I thought it would be worthwhile asking others to comment on here before I post the proposed revision (shown below) to the article.

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Beeston		Central Trains (Cardiff – Nottingham)		—
Long Eaton		Central Trains (Hereford – Nottingham)		—
Loughborough		Central Trains (Leicester – Lincoln)		Carlton*
Langley Mill*		Central Trains (Liverpool – Norwich)		Grantham*
—		Central Trains (Nottingham – Skegness)		Radcliffe*
—		Central Trains (Nottingham – Worksop)		Bulwell*
Beeston*		Midland Mainline (London – Nottingham)		—
* Most, but not all, trains on this service call here

• While I agree that the listing of all railway routes in GB that appears to be underway in Wikipedia is, in general terms, "a good thing" (as they say), there does seem to be a certain amount of unresolved conflict in a number of articles at present between lines and services.
  • In one station article discussion (I cannot remember exactly where now), I noticed that someone suggested that we ought to list the lines, not the services, since the former are more permanent while the latter may alter with each timetable change. True, but it would be impossible in many cases to summarize the service patterns from a station at all neatly in terms of physical lines alone, because so many lines are shared by different operators (and different services offered by the same operator) with distinctive stopping patterns.
  • For commercial marketing purposes, a number of operators brand some services as e.g. "The XYZ Line", even when other operators and other services use the same "line" (in the physical sense). I would say that it is potentially confusing to use these commercial names when listing the Bahnstrecken as opposed to the Bahnverbindungen (German makes the distinction more clearly!). In this "twilight zone" at present we have the Cotswold Line (a third of the route of which is also served by other operators and services) and the now defunct Ivanhoe Line, sharing the Midland Main Line between Leicester and Nottingham. Is there, BTW, one list in one place somewhere in Wikipedia of the GB rail routes so far "named" for the purposes of Wp articles? (I haven't found a consolidated list yet.)

Yes the full-list is at List of railway lines in Great Britain Our Phellap 22:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• • My proposed update to the Nottingham services names services (A to B) rather than route names (although I am trying out the idea -- see the last two entries -- of "piping" these services to railway route articles where they the service lies entirely within the compass of the route concerned).

• The preceding and following stations information is another "very good thing" but we must take care to see that it is accurate and reflects the real service. The article as it stands, for instance, shows what looks like a Beeston - Langley Mill service. In fact, there were only three direct trains per week between these stations in the old timetable to mid-December 2005 -- and there are none at all in the current one!
  • I have taken a standard operating week (in a period without any weekend engineering work "foldirols") as my basis. Within that, I think it is useful to indicate for each service the preceding and following station called at by all trains (or by most, but not all, when that arises).
  • I would propose not using the word "terminus" in the preceding- and following-stations columns, as the current layout, where the word appears under the headings "preceding station" and "following station" has the potential to puzzle and/or mislead ("So the preceding station is the terminus? Where is that? Do you mean St Pancras?").

I await your comments! --Picapica 22:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I have thought about this for a few days now, and have not come to any firm conclusions. I can see the benefit of both options, but having both is OTT. Ideally every station we have an article on should be linked to its adjacent stations by one of these boxes - even if most services don't actually stop there - so probably your solution would be best. I'm reluctant to lose the named lines though.

A thought has just come to me regarding this - perhaps we should group the services by line with a header, so all services along the Midland Main Line are grouped together, then services on a different line, etc. Thryduulf 14:23, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

One thing I do absolutely agree with is the replacement of "terminus" or "terminates" with "—", and as far as I'm concerned you can go around replacing them now. Thryduulf 14:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Thryduulf. I appreciate the careful consideration given to the points I raised. I tend to favour classifying TOCs' services by itinerary rather than "line" (itineraries frequently use several lines, and lines are frequently traversed by several different services). Nevertheless your grouping-by-line idea might well work, but first of all:

A main concern of mine remains the validity of the currently existing Wp classification and naming of GB lines (and thanks, Our Phellap, for pointing me to the complete list). Now that I have that list I really need to map the lines as currently defined in Wp articles on to the GB network map before commenting more fully on this, but just reading the Midland Main Line article throws up a number of questions about methodology and consistency (working in the field of railway timetabling and cartography myself, I tend to get even more pedantic than is my general wont where matters of railway geography are concerned!). It'll be more appropriate for me, though, to put my detailed comments on the discussion pages of the list itself and individual line articles. --Picapica 20:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed page move

Please comment at Talk:Birmingham New Street station

Well actually the move of this page did not go against naming convention as it should include station street tram stop. Simply south 13:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revisited