Talk:S-Train

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[edit] Station links

As it is, the station links are links to the areas around the stations rather than the stations themselves. Is that what we really want?Ghent 15:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separation of lines?

The current line overview is not easy to read, and other metropolitan trains like the London Underground and the Copenhagen Metro have separate articles for lines. Therefore, I think that the lines deserve their own pages in order to clean the main page up. What do you think? Ghent 16:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the overview looks confusing, but I am unsure that the information is encyclopedically relevant at all. In London each underground line has its own infrastructure and a particular history; in contrast the Copenhagen S-train "lines" are just current service patterns, as they all share an integrated infrastructure and rolling-stock pool. Articles on each of the six radials would be more meaningful if somebody cared to write them. Henning Makholm 07:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

If they were to be written, I'd at least give them a good stub with history (because that is individual; start of service and such) and stuff like it. The Plus and x lines would of course go in the "mother line" article (F+ in F). Ghent 16:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Hm, something like User:Henning Makholm/Frederikssundbanen? Henning Makholm 23:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

That is a very fine stub, I say. I like it all with a few exceptions:

• I think that we should split the lines into the actual line names rather than their fancy names, for instance A (Copenhagen), B (Copenhagen), C (Copenhagen), E (Copenhagen), F (Copenhagen), and H (Copenhagen). That way you save a column for "services", and the articles will be more to the point. Also, with "previous/next station" templates on the stations it would be easier to have them split.
• Station links should link to something like Frederikssund station rather Frederikssund.
• "Opened" should have the year the station started to serve the S-Train rather than when it opened for any trains.

I made some line maps for the Metro, tracing from GPS data. I think that it would be more trouble than it's worth to make geographically precise maps for the lines for now. I was imagining that I could make some maps like the ones in the London Underground trains [1]. What do you think? Ghent 15:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

My point is that the service letters in themself are not encyclopedic topics. They have no individual historic continuity and are basically just an index mechanism for whatever timetable is currently in effect. If we structured the article around service letters, and the next timetable change suddenly found service A as the name of a Farum service instead of a Hillerød one[2], we would have to do a lot of needless partial moving, losing easy access to contribution histories at best and inviting mistakes at worst. I can't see how that would benefit anyone. The service letters are ephemeral; the actual pieces of railway out there are what matters. In London it so happens that each service name is so tied to individual bits of physical tracks and tunnel that the service name can usefully serve as the name of an article about those bits, but this is not the case in Copenhagen. Henning Makholm 20:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, I don't see how the date where a station first opened is necessarily less important than the date S-trains began servicing the station, but I would not be deeply opposed to listing both. Henning Makholm 20:48, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I hope that we can agree that the changes in services in that are minimal. H is shortened, and A+, which originally went half the way to Farum, will now take over the service from Kbh H to Farum in the form of A. Since the time interval is lowered, there is no need for the many trains to go to the same stations, and therefore the + lines disappear. Those are the only changes. I see your point, but the current "A" isn't going to be replaced by "H" with "A" replacing "B" and so on, and in that way the line "letters" are constant with a minimum of changes (the magnitude of the 2007 changes are quite rare). Besides, the lines are actually called H and C rather than Frederikssund-banen, Farum-banen, and Klampenborg-banen. Same rolling stock is used because it's more flexible and easy if the timetable should change, and because the lines share the same tracks and have the same loading gauge. This is not possible in London, mainly because the network is built by private companies, and wasn't thought of as an actual network until the 1930s, 70 years after the first lines were opened. Therefore I think we should call the articles by line names/letters.

I think that the date for the opening of a station should go in the station's article, and the date the line started (and stopped) serving the station should go in the line article; it would confuse to say that a line was opened in 1934, but that some of the stations opened in 1889, e.g. I'm not opposed to having both dates either, though. Instead of a table, we might consider a list since it seems to be the standard in most railway articles. Ghent 11:40, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

You are completely wrong. The lines are called Frederikssundbanen etc. The things that are named by letters are not lines but services. Services are ephemeral patterns that hold no or very little encyclopedic interest by themeselves. Trying to make articles about the service letters would be silly and useless - there is not anything interesting to say about them on their own. The sentence starting with "therefore" would have made more sense if it had actually been preceded by arguments why you think the services are interesting, but it is not. The sentences that actually do precede your "therefore" explain why the services in Copenhagen are uninteresting compared to those in London, but the fact that they have a reason to be uninteresting does not stop them from being uninteresting. The line to Frederikssund did open in 1879; and the fact that S-trains started running on it later does not change this. Henning Makholm 12:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Let me just ask directly: Which possible benefit would it bring us to have articles about the service letters rather than about the actual lines? Henning Makholm 12:51, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Fair points. In the H article you would include what you would write in Frederikssund-banen and in C what would go in Frederikssund-banen and Klampenborg-banen. The only real benefit I see by doing it that way is line templates on the stations (e.g. "line H, previous station: example, next station: example" and "line C, previous station ..." etc.), and avoiding the confusion arising from the lines being called H and C on the service map, but Frederikssund-banen etc. in the articles. Ghent 13:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure from the above whether I have convinced you, but if not, it doesn't seem likely that the two of us can reach consensus by continuing this. How about we each create the kind of articles we'd like to have and then see what works best? I'm going to be bold and start writing some stubs on the physical lines. If somebody then creates articles about individual stations (which I think would be overkill for most of them), I can't see why one couldn't have service-based succession boxes on them even so. Henning Makholm 13:41, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

And then the service lines can link to the more "specific" articles. Sounds fine to me. Individual stations are kind of overkill, but look at all the articles about UK railway stations, and there's the justification you need for creating articles about all the stations on the S-Train lines. ;) Ghent 14:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Please call them Frederikssund-banen, Klampenborg-banen, etc. Putting them together does my spelling head in and is like writing danmarkskort with an upper-case D. The article you linked to above supports my claim. Let's create the articles independantly, and we'll integrate them with each other afterwards. Okay? Ghent 14:17, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles created. Didn't see your comments about naming until afterwards -- be bold and move things around if you feel like it. I have used the names that I think are most common in railfan literature, but they may not be widely used by laypersons. In particular Vestbanen is probably not well known outside railfan (and professional) circles, but on the other hand I don't think there is any common name apart from constructions like "the S-train towards Tåstrup". Henning Makholm 00:24, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

You are right. I looked around bane.dk, and found that they are actually called e.g. "Frederikssundbanen" without a hyphen. It twists my stickler mind to look at it; I must endure the suffering alone. Good work on the articles; I'll get around to doing services. Ghent 08:28, 28 May 2006 (UTC)