Talk:Rail terminology

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To-do list	Pending tasks for Rail terminology:	(purge cache –  edit this list)
	Integrate terminology in India as noted on [1] (are there others?) please define US freight car 'built date' and 'new date' typically stenciled on the side of the car.
See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Todo

Archive 1

Contents 1 Here comes the creepy railfan linguist 2 Add Through routed defintion 3 Automotive design terminology 4 Generic term for ATO/ATP/AWS/ETCS/... 5 Rating class 6 Wiktionary 7 2007-02-7 Automated pywikipediabot message 8 Heavyweight 9 Steadily Working on Additions 9.1 Table format? 9.2 Links to photos? 9.3 Browser problems 10 Globalize (too biassed towards North America 11 Add Term Block Office 12 Add Term Drag Crew 13 Referencing

[edit] Here comes the creepy railfan linguist

Hi everybody, this page is awesome. But the regional labels are a tad confusing. You say, U.S. = originated in America and UK = originated in UK—but it's not where it's at. These tags seem to denote usage rather than origin—and that would make actually more sense. Only when we are sure that a particular term is Am.- or Brit.-born, that should be appropriately marked as such (e.g. orig. U.S., UK, etc.); for instance, "light engine" was regarded as U.S. but it actually originated in Britain. Other flags are just puzzling, if not totally wrong (e.g. under "Terminal station"). Thoughts? Best, JackLumber 12:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I have rarely heard it called a terminal station. In the UK it has always been a terminus and collectively they are termini. If terminal station is the North American preference then what is the problem? Regards, NoelWalley 12:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Nothing personal :-) that was just an example. Terminal is actually more used than terminus here, but terminus sure is not unknown. Furthermore, both terms originated in Britain (not to mention that site:uk "terminal station" yields 12,500 matches); this aside, the point is that we should distinguish between origin, usage preferences (as in this case), and clear-cut distinctions (e.g. switch vs. points). --JackLumber 12:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, nowt personal intended or received. Can one say? Indeed would one wish to know? did the noun 'terminus' (your example) originate in railway usage in the UK or in the US? Vica versa in the case of 'terminal station'? Could one ever say which was first? All I can say is that (in my extensive experience) terminus and termini are the normal nouns we would use in the UK to describe stations like London Euston and London Waterloo although in the latter case we might add a caveat that there are two through platforms (sometimes, but not always, called Waterloo East) on the line to London Charing Cross, even though both have several through underground station platforms! NoelWalley 20:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, whoa, whoa! I do have written evidence that both terminus and terminal are British-born. But British usage has come to prefer the former over the latter, that's all. (I guess we're kinda going off on a tangent here. Another example? Why is Mainline listed as U.S.? Don't you have something called West Coast Main Line in Britain?) I just wanted to point out that regional-note-inconsistency thing... --JackLumber 21:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I have started to add Australia teminology to this article because mentioning only UK and US terminolog is to UK/US centric. On the English language edition of wikipedia the sequitur variaties of English are:

• North American varieties
• British English and other commonwealth varieties (in Canada or outside North America, this includes both Australian and New Zealand English)
• Other varieties, such as South African English are non-sequitur, is that right?Myrtone (the strict Australian wikipedian)

[edit] Add Through routed defintion

Proposing to add 'Through routed' definition and merge the 'Through routed' article (one sentence long) into the 'T' section of this article. --Zer_T 02:09, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Unless someone else can come up with more to add to that article, it sounds reasonable enough to me. Slambo (Speak) 11:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Seems perfectly reasonable to merge it into this. Pgengler 21:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why not. It really should be there. Tanarri Fujitsu 09:23, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Seeing no objections, I've gone ahead and merged it in. ~ LrdChaos 18:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe "fouling" should be added to the dictionary. It's commonly used and rarely explained.

[edit] Automotive design terminology

Automotive design terminology is up for deletion, if that goes, this should probably be deleted too. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Automotive design terminology. Kappa 17:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that one earlier today. It seems the deletionists are out in force this month. Slambo (Speak) 18:32, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Generic term for ATO/ATP/AWS/ETCS/...

I missed a generic article about this topic, so I created one: Automatic train protection system. However my native language is not english, so please tell me if that title makes sense. --Kabelleger 18:42, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rating class

I had originally put NA because this is a list. Since there's some disagreement, I've now put it at Start class. Please review the quality rating scale and reassess as needed. Slambo (Speak) 11:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wiktionary

I did a quick search around the wiki, and don't see any consensus for bulk moving the glossary pages to Wiktionary, so I've removed the tag. Slambo (Speak) 13:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2007-02-7 Automated pywikipediabot message

This page has been transwikied to Wiktionary.

The article has content that is useful at Wiktionary. Therefore the article can be found at either here or here (logs 1 logs 2.) Note: This means that the article has been copied to the Wiktionary Transwiki namespace for evaluation and formatting. It does not mean that the article is in the Wiktionary main namespace, or that it has been removed from Wikipedia's. Furthermore, the Wiktionarians might delete the article from Wiktionary if they do not find it to be appropriate for the Wiktionary. Removing this tag will usually trigger CopyToWiktionaryBot to re-transwiki the entry. This article should have been removed from Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there.

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 12:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Like my last look around in October 2006 (see above), I don't see any consensus to move/delete/merge/whatever this article. Slambo (Speak) 14:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heavyweight

I propose adding the following when I obtain copyright approval:

During the period between about 1910 and the mid nineteen thirties, most passenger cars were built with three axle trucks, concrete floors, and riveted, double walled sides and often weighed 90 - 100 tons or more. This period was known as the standard era of passenger railroad car construction. Beginning in the 1930's, passenger car bodies were constructed entirely of metal, welded, had two axle trucks, and weighed about 45 - 50 tons. Today, these cars are referred to as "lightweight" cars because of their relative light weight as compared to the standard era cars, which are now often often called heavyweights. Heavyweight cars are known for their smooth ride and solid construction. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.82.208.152 (talk • contribs) 09:02, 16 July 2007.

Please specify which countries/which railways this applies to. There were only ever a handful of 6-wheel bogie carriages in the UK, mostly restaurant cars, and all of the above information is completely erroneous from a UK viewpoint. (The terms lightweight/heavyweight have never been applied to British railway coaches, AFAIK, and there must be hundreds of other railways around the world that have never used concrete-floored 6-wheel bogie coaches.

Also, please remember to provide references for this information, especially for the last sentence which is distinctly POV-ish.

EdJogg 09:29, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Steadily Working on Additions

I've been trying to add as many terms, links, reference images, etc. to the page. I've also been trying to find as many Wiki pages related to railroad terms that are not mentioned on the list. If anyone notices any errors in my work please keep me in line! Or if my persistent editing gets annoying let me know! I'm not trying to dominate the entire terminology project I'm just trying to help out when I can and learn as I go.. --Dp67 | QSO 09:01, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Please keep an eye out for any mixed terminology - ie UK terms that include US terminology and vice versa - better still, watch out for opportunities to use neutral wording.

A thought - would it be appropriate to use italics to identify terms which are defined elsewhere on the page? I have done this to the UK Jargon page, and I think it helps clarify the definitions.

EdJogg 23:35, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

The Italics idea is a good one.. I may go through and change all of the internal references on my sandbox copy. I finally decided to use a sandbox instead of making changes to a live copy.. lol

There are also a couple of VERY Generic terms I'm thinking of getting rid of. One that comes to mind is Crummy it's just a generic word, anything can be crummy, crummy day, crummy job, etc...etc... Doesn't really fit in with any railroad specific terminology. Anyone else have any problems with removing it? --Dp67 | QSO 03:14, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Agree with 'crummy'. I think you've got a lot of work ahead of you. I just looked at a couple of letters and found 8-10 entries that had imprecise wording, missed UK equivalents of terms, or other problems. I'm going to have to steer clear of this page for now or I'll never get anything done! EdJogg 07:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll keep pecking away at it. Not sure how long it will take to sift through everything. For the most part what I am trying to do is find articles that may be linked to the term. I've found several already that do have a proper wiki article, but no link from the term or it's definition. So, if I find ones with no link I add one to the proper article if I can find one for it.

Are there any other formatting or content preference suggestions? Anyone is welcome to throw in their ideas.

--Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 15:29, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Table format?

I've been working on a table defined version of the terms page. Each section is defined by a table -- I've noticed this helps keep the text and images lined up nice and tight. I'm still working on content and grammar but here's a sample of my idea so far.

Definitions

Points of Interest

Air brake: railroad brakes which operate using compressed air. Alco: American Locomotive Company - the second largest builder of steam locomotives in the U.S. Alerter: similar to the Dead man's switch other than it does not require the operator's constant interaction. Instead an alarm is sounded at a preset interval in which the operator must respond by pressing a button to reset the alarm and the timer. If the operator does not respond within a preset time the brakes are applied. May also be called a 'Watchdog'. American: locomotive with a 4-4-0 wheel arrangement. Angel Seat or Angel's Perch: (US) A term often used when referring to the second level seats on a Cupola style caboose. Annett's key (UK), Annett key (Aus.): a large key which locks levers or other items of signalling apparatus, serving as a portable form of interlocking. With the key removed from the lock, the lever or apparatus is locked in its position. When the key is turned in the lock, it cannot be removed.

An American class steam locomotive A Cupola-style caboose. Note the Angel Seat above.

I've included <!--- hidden comments ---> to help people put things in order to keep the proper form. Check out a full working example with both the old and the proposed new format. Drop me a note here or there and let me know what you think. I'm open for comments from everyone so if you think tables idea isn't going to work or if you have a better idea speak up! :) --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 07:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Gets my vote! I wouldn't have thought of doing it this way, but it does look rather good.

Some thoughts:

• Not sure whether the (vertically) centre-aligned images are right; where there's a lot of text and few pictures, it looks like the right-hand column is empty (as you scroll-down the page, that is).
• It is important to ensure that all your tables are the same width, and have the same column widths. Therefore you either need to ensure there's at least one pic in each section, or find a way of forcing this manually.
• Image captions would benefit from the term illustrated being highlighted bold (as I've adjusted above)
• I've also changed the images above from 'right' to 'center' (sic) to tighten-up the image column. It may be possible to increase the whitespace either side by specifying a fixed column width.
• Don't forget the italics!

EdJogg 08:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on filling up some of that dead space now. One of the advantages Ive found using tables is you can cram in allot more reference images easily and still maintain a uniform text format. I'm now using the same table template with static cell widths for the text cell and the image cell for all the sections so they should fit well on most sections. The sections that are blank or have little content will also line up properly with the rest of the page more-so than with dynamic widths.

Next on the To Do list is do some grammar overhauling, Italics and Highlighting the term illustrated and content research. I really don't think the page header needs work. It gets the job done so unless something comes up with that I'll leave it as is. --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 12:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links to photos?

Crazy Idea, hopelessly making more work for myself; but.... I had an idea, There are loads of pictures pertaining to many of the terms but only so many can fit on the page. So.. I was thinking of adding a small camera pic to the definition beside the bullet to let the reader know there is a picture available, just maybe not on the same page. Does anyone know of any such images here in Wiki that I can just tag to?? I'd probably spend ages looking for it with a generic search so I thought I'd ask.. --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 02:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. Not entirely convinced by this one. Were you intending to link to an article containing a picture, or directly to the image? If the former, there is the problem of maintaining synchronisation: what happens if your destination photo is removed for any reason?

To manage the number of photos present, perhaps you need to concentrate on terms which do not have associated articles? Or else concentrate on terms which are more common, but less obvious in their meaning (provided you have a decent picture to illustrate the term adequately). For example, in your example above, I would suggest that Annett's Key and (perhaps) Angel Seat should be illustrated, but 'American' need not be.

As for the picture, try searching for 'camera icon' in the Image namespace and you'll find Image:Littlecamera.jpg, which looks like this: . I haven't tried looking at Commons, but there may well be more there.

EdJogg 08:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

From Commons (all at '20px'):        

EdJogg 08:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Ta for looking, I found a few myself but after thinking about it.. Major PITA to maintain, as you said images change constantly, and it would be allot of excess code to write. Originally what I planned to do is just link to the picture, but I don't know how to use wiki-code to link to an image yet. All I know now is that when you display an image it's assumed the link is to that image.

Oh well, twas an idea but I'm not going to pursue it now that I've thought about it. --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 09:00, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Browser problems

The new table breaks my browsers: Firefox (fatally) and Safari (not so serious). I suppose it's my problem, and not the community's! --Old Moonraker 08:26, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not having problems on my Windoze box, I've tried Exploder, Firefox and K-meleon without event. The closest thing I've got to Mac OS is Fedora I'll have to check it with that when I get the chance. If it is causing problems I'll revert it back because you may not be the only one with problems! It may be causing problems for *nix users as well..

Thanks for the heads up! --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 08:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I've tried it on Linux/Firefox and didn't have any problems. But just to make sure nobody else is having problems I've reverted to the old format.. There is still a copy in my Sandbox so if there is someone else running OS X please check if it crashes your browser too. I dunno what's going on with it hopefully I didn't waste my time.. lol

--Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 10:17, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You haven't wasted your time, as the result is very good. It's just there is now a need to resolve why it won't work on some browsers (it's fine on IE6 on Win2K). I suggest you raise a question at the appropriate area of the Village Pump -- there's bound to be someone who can help you there.

NB - there's always the chance that some users have non-default settings, and this can cause occasional browser issues (as with the Routemap icons, from time-to-time).

EdJogg 10:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you expand on non-default settings? I wouldn't want to cause problems for other contributors because of an isolated bug feature that's not common. --Old Moonraker 10:58, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

'fraid not, but if you look at Wikipedia talk:Route diagram template and its archive pages, you'll see reference to such matters. They usually involve CSS style sheets, which I don't know anything about. Again, asking a question at the Village Pump (either WP:VPT or WP:VPA) should allow you to determine the scale of the problem. (At least one of the routemap issues was only present on that user's PC because he had changed the default font size, or something similar). Hope that's of some help to you. EdJogg 11:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Just noted that Dp67 has already raised the question at WP:VPA. No answers yet... EdJogg 11:17, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

No word from the pump, but now that I think of it, Firefox on Mac OS X was a bit riské as I remember.. If the font was too large it really hosed things up if you tried to read anything with a defined format. Of course my Mac was an old hand me down junker with limited memory so that could have been the problem too. Of course I never had it bomb out on me though, it would just slow down to a sloths crawl. That was also 10.3(something) nothing new like 10.4(Good Buddy.. LOL) I don't even know how high the numbers go now. Are they at OS XI yet?

--Dp67 | QSO | Sandbox | UBX's 06:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Checks "About this Mac" as couldn't remember: It's up to 10.4.10 now. I've also checked the Firefox prefs and these are absolutely standard, but as Old Moonraker I do need 14pt font these days.

I appreciate your reversion of the table, but it was generally well received and you shouldn't be doing this because an isolated user can't get it to work properly. --Old Moonraker 07:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

• I don't know what's happened, but everything's OK now. As before, Dp67's helpful attitude (after all the work put in) is much appreciated. --Old Moonraker 09:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Globalize (too biassed towards North America

I have added this tag as the articel is far too biassed towards North America. The majority of the photographs of US examples, and most of the terms are too. This article needs to be made less USA specific.Canterberry 08:34, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Over 90% of the content remains the same All that was done was a format cleanup; so why start griping now? --Dp67 | QSO | Sandbox | UBX's 09:13, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Not quite the reaction I was expecting! "Griping"!! If thats what you call a well intended action to try and improve this page, then I shall work on other articles, and keep clear of "your turf"!! Goodness me, one day someone might want to submit this page for a "good article" status, and IHMO one of the obvious "faults" (is that a good word?) of the article is that it is too biassed towards the US of A. The majority of the pictures are of the US of A, and a lot of the terms are too. I guess you folks over the water cannot see the wood for the trees. Canterberry 09:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

For goodness sake, both of you, calm down! Canterberry, your original comment was correct, and I think Dp67 over-reacted slightly to this criticism. I can understand this, since the conversion to tabular form will have involved a great deal of work on his part. Your comment was a normal response to a page edit: spotting something that needed improving. However, I think you may have over-reacted to his over-reaction!

For an 'independent' opinion: the article is much better in table form but the content is still seriously lacking in certain quarters, primarilly because the main editorial input has (presumably) been from US contributors. It is a big article and will require a great deal of effort proof-reading ('fraid it's rather a long way down my ToDo list...), but Dp67 has certainly moved it forward. Now we need UK-based editors to address the balance.

EdJogg 09:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Somewhere around here I have a link to a similar list of terms for Indian Railways. I'll see if I can find it again this weekend. Slambo (Speak) 10:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

My Apologies, I guess my sense of humor was take too harshly. I understood the nature of the intent I was just being a wise ass. (After all; I am a Welsh Pratt! :) But anyway, can we reach a compromise then and create a UK Terminology page? This list is already quite large (crashing browsers) and getting harder to manage so why not create another one that is more English than American? If we can do that I'll gladly start working on it and use the same template if possible. At least then we wouldn't have to keep tabs on the national origin of the term. Input from people in the UK would really be nice. As for the localized images my idea is to rotate them every so often anyway. Those posted now are mainly fillers to get the project presentable. My task of looking for photos around the world to represent some of the terms never stopped.

The same offer applies for the Indian terms, I've got the URL If it's agreed I'll work on that too and start an Indian page too. What say you?

--Dp67 | QSO | Sandbox | UBX's 11:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add Term Block Office

I recently came across a term: Block Office used in an article as what a railroad company built along with their tracks in 1890 in a small Pennsylvania town. They constructed a "passenger station" a "block office" and a "trainmaster's office". DNCamper 15:27, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add Term Drag Crew

Also cam across the term Drag Crew in the same article referring to those who maintained the operation of the station (perhaps) DNCamper 15:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Referencing

I've started a quick pass through to add references here like I did with List of U.S. railfan jargon last week (and for which I am still researching). Since most of the terms in this list have articles of their own, unlike the majority of the railfan jargon list, some of the references here will end up being copies of references from the relevant articles. However, any additional references would be welcome. Slambo (Speak) 21:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

If the term has its own article, is there really a need for a reference here? New references should be added to the pages in question. What is most important is finding references for the terms that do not have WP articles... EdJogg (talk) 22:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

While the priority should be for terms that do not yet have articles, I fear that if we don't reference them all, someone will tag or remove terms as unreferenced without looking at the associated articles. Slambo (Speak) 11:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)