Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Archive: 2006, 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

v • d • e
TWP discussion archives:
Archive
Archives
2004 • 2005 • January-June 2006 • March-September 2006 • June-December 2006 • December 2006-March 2007 • March 2007-August 2007 • August 2007-October 2007 • October 2007-January 2008 • January 2008-May 2008• May 2008-
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The Trains WikiProject
General information
Main project page (WP:TWP)  talk
Portal (P:Trains) talk
Project navigation bar talk
IRC (freenode.net) #Wikipedia-Trains-en
Project participants talk
Project banner (doc) {{TWP}} talk
Project category talk
Manual of style (WP:TWP/MOS) talk
Welcome message talk
Departments
Assessments (WP:TWP/A) talk
Peer review (WP:TWP/PR) talk
To do list talk
New article notes talk
Task forces
Article maintenance talk
Assessment backlog elim. drive talk
By country series talk
Categories talk
Images talk
Locomotives talk
Maps talk
Models talk
Monorails talk
Operations talk
Passenger trains talk
Portal talk
Rail transport modelling talk
Timelines talk
edit · changes

Contents

Template and portal colors

The suggestion has been made on Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Trains that we select a different color than is currently used on Portal:Trains and navigation templates (such as {{EMD GPs}}). For consistency, the portal and the templates (as listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Article templates) should all be changed at the same time; not a tremendous deal, but it would be seen on a wide array of articles. I am not a graphic artist, and I don't play one on TV, so my own color selection might be less than ideal. Are there any suggestions for suitable colors that we can switch to? Slambo (Speak) 16:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I like the current color selection. It's not too ostentatious, and different enough from other schemes to clearly identify the subject matter as rail-related (I've reformatted a few article-specific tables to match). The text is easily readable against the background as well.--Lordkinbote 17:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Let's do a little experiment here to try other backgrounds with black text...

Current background color: c0c090 See {{EMD GPs}}
Standard talk page notice color: f8eaba See {{User Trains WikiProject}}
Todolist items block color: ffefdf See {{Todo, trains}}
color: cc9933
color: ffcc66
color: ffff99
Alternate existing background color: ccccff See {{NERR}}
color: 99ccff
color: 99ffcc
color: 9999ff
color: ccff99
color: cccccc

Perhaps part of the problem may be that the current color, c0c090, is not one of those known to be HTML safe according to [1]? I would tend to doubt that as the problem since the standard talk page notices also use colors that are not known to be browser safe. So, the question is: Is any of these colors better than the current color or do we pick a completely different color? Since the talk page notices are already coded to use the second and third of these, the current color seems the best choice of those that have been presented here. I'm not too keen on ccccff as it looks a little too far toward purple for me. Slambo (Speak) 20:56, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I can't believe that color is even an issue when Portal:Cricket just got promoted to FP status with what has to be one of the most unattractive color schemes going...I still like the current choice.--Lordkinbote 10:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
The Cricket Portal may have been promoted a little early. I thought of a few more criticisms the day after. It's still quite clearly one of the best portals, however. I'll create a review process further down the track. As for colours for the Trains Portal, FWIW, the following look pretty decent to me: ffcc66, ffff99, 99ccff, ccff99.--cj | talk 07:15, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I think at this point, if I were to pick a different color from what's displayed here, I'd use ffcc66. But, these are by no means the only color options available to us. None of these colors really excites me, but I know I want to avoid colors that make the pages hard to read, that cause a strain on the eyes, or that give a "toylike" appearance (remember Lionel's pink train, anyone?). I think a more subtle color is better than a brighter one. I took a look around at the other portals, but none of their colors really seemed right here either. Incidentally, c0c090 is the border color in standard talk page templates such as {{fac}}; looking at other shemes that were proposed as part of the Wikipedia:Template standardisation process, nothing there really jumps out and says "use me" either. Slambo (Speak) 20:03, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
So, if we use ffcc66 for the box title color, what would it look like? It would be something like the box shown below:
edit 

Trains Portal

Two trains of the Great Northern Railway in the U.S. from different eras
Image: Candidates · Archive

In rail transport, a train is a vehicle or (more frequently) a string of vehicles capable of being moved along a continuous line of rails or other guideway for the purpose of conveying freight or passengers between points on a predetermined route. The train may be hauled or propelled by one or more vehicles designed exclusively for that purpose (locomotives) or may be driven by a number of motors incorporated in all or several of the vehicles.
Shortcuts:
P:Trains
WP:Trains
That seems a little bright for my tastes. Slambo (Speak) 20:33, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

A date question?

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2005_in_rail_transport for December 14.

Jordanian Transport Minister Saoud Nseirat responds to comments made on Monday by Israeli Transport Minister Maer Shitrit.

Which Monday would that be? Should "on Monday" be removed? Thanks!

That would have been Monday, December 12. I've updated the text to reflect this. Slambo (Speak) 20:07, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

{{todo, trains}} on TFD

The trains project todolist template, {{todo, trains}}, has been nominated for deletion. An eager editor has gone through the articles that use it and already substituted it with a different template that does not use Cat:To do, trains and does not link to this project. Please voice your opinions on WP:TFD. Slambo (Speak) 11:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

The template came through the TFD as "no consensus" which means that it was kept without changes. Now it's time to do the cleanup. I've reverted several of the affected articles back to use {{todo, trains}}, but there are many more. If you've got a moment to help out, hop over to Cat:To do, trains and select any of the links that goes to a "/to do" page. On the to do page, remove the category and then on the associated article's talk page, change {{todo priority}} back to {{todo, trains}}. As an example, check the history for Talk:Broadway Limited and Talk:Broadway Limited/to do. Thanks! Slambo (Speak) 21:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Done Slambo (Speak) 03:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Oscillating signal lights

Has anyone written an article on oscillating signal lights, as used by many US railroads between approx 1940s and 1960s? I linked to Mars light on Milwaukee Road class A and it goes nowhere, but there are so many names for these things I wonder if I just didn't find it. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 18:56, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I haven't seen such an article yet, but when one gets written, I could add a couple photos easily. I purchased a set of surplus Mars lights from Southern Pacific (through the hobby shop where I used to work) in the late 1980s. Slambo (Speak) 19:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposed locomotive article infobox

I had some extra time today so I started experimenting with an infobox template for locomotive articles. What I've come up with is something that can be used for any type of locomotive and for both a class of many locomotives and a single locomotive. My experimental template is at User:Slambo/Infobox Locomotive, and I just added it to Wikipedia:Infobox in the proposals section there. Out of all the parameters that are available in the template (which I will list on the template talk page shortly), only the name (the text above the top border) and powertype (the text to the right of the "Power type" heading cell) parameters are required. Any parameter that is not specified will not appear in the output. Thoughts? Slambo (Speak) 02:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

In addition to the two examples shown on Wikipedia:Infobox, I've got an example of its usage on an article about an electric locomotive at my test page. Slambo (Speak) 15:23, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
I've added a few more optional parameters that seemed relevant after looking at many more locomotive articles. Anyone object to moving this infobox live and start using it? Slambo (Speak) 21:37, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Hearing no objections, I'm moving it to {{Infobox Locomotive}} and using it. Slambo (Speak) 01:37, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I like it, and have used it in a few articles. I've added a few more parameters: valvegear, frontcylindersize, rearcylindersize, hpcylindersize, lpcylindersize (the latter two pairs for articulated locomotives with unequal size cylinders, and for compounds). There are a few more steam-locomotive parameters I think could be added: firebox heating surface, flues and tubes heating surface, total heating surface (at least the latter), superheater type, superheater area. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 06:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I noticed the additions and used a few of them in the series I started this week about {{SP cab forward locomotives}}. Slambo (Speak) 16:23, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Being fairly new to Wiki, I'm not going to try changing the template(!) but is it possible to allow control of the image width from the default 300? I have used it at (for example) Lyn locomotive, but the images I have available are smaller than displayed, and look too pixelated. regards, Lynbarn 17:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Done. Use the new imagesize parameter to specify the size in pixels, the default value is 300. To show the image without resizing it, set imagesize to a blank value as in imagesize=|. Now to add it to the template talk page... Slambo (Speak) 18:26, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Trains article creation criteria and style guide

I've been making a few notes on User:Slambo/Trains MOS on article creation criteria and style guidelines based on existing articles that I've been looking at and updating in the last month or so. I'd appreciate if other project members would take a look and edit/comment as appropriate. AdThanksVance. Slambo (Speak) 16:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? I noticed the list on the main page, are there any others? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation scheme for train articles

It seems to me that the wheel numbered articles are overall descriptions which should cover in a general way all the articles in the corresponding category (much work neded to achieve that, but leaving that problem aside for now). So it seems to me also that each wheel numbered article must be included within the appropriate category (e.g. 4-4-0 should be a member of category 4-4-0 locomotives), and it should be listed as the main article for that category.

That begs the question of whether the numbered articles should also appear separately in category, 'locomotives by wheel arrangement', where they are now. My instinctive reaction is that it is not doing any harm, and has the benefit of providing a category link at the bottom of the number article page which enables people to navigate to this main category. However, some people are very adverse to articles appearing in both category and sub-category entries, and might wish to not permit this. If I had to choose, I would say it was more important that the numbered articles be listed in the sub-category entry, because they provide an important overview, but I think it is beneficial that they appear in both. Suggestions? Sandpiper 13:10, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

In general, I take the view that articles should be listed in the most precise categories applicable. Putting an article in one category as well as that category's immediate parent category seems redundant to me. Slambo (Speak) 14:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Purpose of class articles and wheel numbered articles

I think it is a general principle of organisation that information should not be included twice over. I am quite happy that an article about a particular train class should contain whatever is known. But if the wheel numbered articles are intended as a summary of that configuration, what information belongs in that summary article?

I am also worried that, say, the 4-4-0 article might end up saying many similar general sorts of things to the 4-6-0 article. It might be that it would be more useful to compare a 4-4-0 to a 4-6-0 by the same designer or company, than to be comparing a US 4-4-0 to a UK 4-4-0 when the designs had absolutely nothing to do with each other. Should 4-4-0, etc. articles be written more from the POV of identifying and distinguishing different types, rather than discussing design?

If somoeone goes into category locomtives, then chooses steam, how do they find articles about actual classes? I think they might get lost at that point. It looks as though there should also be many more articles about different manufacturers, designers, etc. so that people could get into the trains that way. Sandpiper 13:41, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I've started on a few manufacturers articles, and even gone so far as to get Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works up to featured level. I haven't seen good references describing locomotive classes by manufacturer yet, but I do have a couple on classes by railroad (such as those listed on {{SP cab forward locomotives}}). Slambo (Speak) 14:42, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Transclusion note

I changed the transclusion for Wikipedia:Good articles, so that it is possible for a bot to generate a list of tagged good articles not included on the main list there. Hopefully this won't have changed anything else. TheGrappler 04:03, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't forsee any problems here. Thanks for the heads up. Slambo (Speak) 14:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

German Rail

I've been thinking about proposing a WikiProject of its own, but then found out this project covers pretty much of the subject matter already, so I thought it'd be best to ask here:

  • There is a number of German Rail-related articles (locomotive stubs, technology articles and the like) here, most of them are quick and dirty translations from de:, and they're in no way sorted other than the rail-stub tag (if tagged), and stacked away in the general categories.
  • There is a number of Wikipedia editors (including me, maybe five or six) who regularly contribute to articles on that subject matter.

Whilst it probably does not justify a WikiProject of it's own, I think the amount of articles (especially considering stuff that is mediocre at best in en, (like LZB versus its German counterpart, de:Linienförmige Zugbeeinflussung) and the sheer amount of German rail material (being the largest operator in continental Europe) justifies some categorising effort of its own. How can this be integrated into the Trains wikiproject? Thoughts, comments anyone? --Doco 18:46, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Upcoming Franchise changes (UK)

We are approching the 1st of April and will have to switch a lot of infoboxes over to the New Franchisee (First) so ideas for colours to use for First Great Western and First Capital Connect.

Secondly, with First Great Western, should Express (HST), Link and Local (ex-Wessex) be listed as such?

  Preceding station     National Rail     Following station  
Tiverton Parkway   First Great Western (Express)
(Great Western Main Line)		   Newton Abbot
Exeter Central   First Great Western (Local)
(Exeter-Exmouth)		   Terminus
Terminus   First Great Western (Link)*
(Exeter-Paignton)		   Exeter St Thomas

(*)I know this service isn't link but the station were all three meet doesn't have an article yet

Enotayokel 01:40, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

In the short term, I think we should keep them seperate for simplicity, in the longer term we'll have to see how FGW style them. If they make the distinction (e.g. Express, Local and Link) then we can do it easily and objectively. If they all run under one brand then I suggest we do as well - perhaps creating "Express services" and "Stopping services" sections on the line pages and linking to those sections. Thryduulf 14:45, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Rapid transit system article bounty

In a little browsing around today, I noticed that there's an open bounty for featured articles about rapid transit systems. For every rapid transit system article that reaches featured status before June 1, 2006, User:OpenToppedBus is offering a £5 donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.

So, what topics are near that level already? A few editors tried to get Bay Area Rapid Transit through FAC a few months ago but it failed on a few objections. There are quite a few other worthy candidates listed in Category:Rapid transit as well. Slambo (Speak) 20:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Japanese railways

Hi. There are a remarkable number of articles on Japanese railways (see Category:Rail transport in Japan) on Wikipedia, and I've been adding some of my own. I know it's sort of a niche market (although Railway culture is big in Japan), but I'm thinking of creating a WikiProject to standardize the articles somewhat. Should they simply be incorporated into WP Trains, or do they merit the creation of a descendant project, something like WikiProject Trains in Japan? - Tangotango 05:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I've boldly proposed the creation of the WikiProject [2]. Please see User:Tangotango/WikiProject Trains in Japan for the proposal. Thank you. - Tangotango 06:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

AfD for California-Nevada Interstate Maglev

There is an AfD proposed for the California-Nevada Interstate Maglev. If anyone is interested, they can review the article and AfD and vote on the proposal. Yes the article needs work. Vegaswikian 19:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

KCR is the current Hong Kong COTW

The current Hong Kong Collaboration of the Week is KCR (Kowloon-Canton Railway). If you've got any additional information (and references), now's the time to head over there and add them. Slambo (Speak) 15:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Help needed for an ailing featured article: Wigwag

This article has been listed twice at WP:FARC, but no one bothered to detail what the problems were until now. Please go to Talk:Wigwag and see if you can't help address any of the listed concerns to save this old FA. This really needs some people familiar with the subject. Thank you. - Taxman Talk 14:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

A Trains portal template on TFD today

Please see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Trains portal/DYK date and leave your comments. Thanks. Slambo (Speak) 10:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

IT trains

I am working on italian rolling stocks on it.wiki. Check out the complete list of done and to-do at http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Jollyroger/Lista_dei_rotabili_italiani.

it:Utente:Jollyroger

Annotations and details

I have come across a lot of articles on particular railroads where the introduction doesn't specify whether the railroad carries freight, passengers, or both. (It looks like there are many freight-only.) This would be very informative in establishing context, and reduce some amount of confusion.

There are also many lists of railroads in the United States, where the name of the railroad doesn't clearly indicate what part of the country the company operates in. It would be exceedingly useful if these lists were annotated with the states of operation where needed. Otherwise, the sheer number of listings just gets overwhelming, and if you are looking for information with a view to a particular region or area, it can be hard to sort through everything. Something similar may be necessary for other countries. -- Beland 01:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

{{Train topics}}

The template {{Train topics}} is a bit overpopulated now and, I think, should be reduced to the core topics that were originally listed on the project page. I've started discussion on the template talk page. Slambo (Speak) 19:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Tagging and categorization

I've been going through all of the railroad articles I come across and tagging their discussion pages with the TrainsWikiProject template. I've seen some other projects (I can't remember which one, offhand--perhaps I'm dreaming this up) that have a deal in their templates that automatically adds that article into the related category. Presumably this is so it's easier to track those articles for future reference (and hopefully improvement) from within the WikiProject. Can we make the Trains template do the same thing? A lot of these articles I'm finding are rather obscure, and I may never stumble across them again. If they were automatically categorized in a Trains category (or a Trains Unsorted or similar) one, it would make going back to inspect them a far easier chore. Something we can do? Is there an easy way to keep track of all WP:Trains articles so we can go through and work on them? cluth 21:05, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Grade crossings in Ireland

The Level crossing article has considerable info on Crossings around the world -- nothing on level crossings in Ireland, which is not a particular problem for me. But I have a very complete set of detailed photographs of an Irish grade crossing, including the resident 'flagman' and flagman's booth (exterior and interior), taken in 2003. If anyone is interested in having such pics for your WikiProject Trains work, let me know on my talk page. I'll be glad to share them with anyone who wants them for a Wiki project. N2e 00:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Bordering on original research...

In looking through Category:Rail stubs today, I came across Skybus Metro. The system sounds like any of a number of suspended railways such as Schwebebahn Wuppertal or H-Bahn.

The whole thing reads like advertising copy, but Googling for key phrases didn't come up with anything similar to delete it as a copy of someone else's work. I was tempted to nominate it on WP:AFD as original research because the name in the attached link is suspiciously close to the article author's name. Thoughts? Slambo (Speak) 18:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The article really looks like advertisement text copied into Wikipedia. I am not shure if the whole article should be deleted. I think better solution would be to gain some knowledge about Skybus metro and re-write the article in proper style. CCMichalZ 18:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I just found Image:Skybus Metro.pdf which has complete technical detail and artist conception diagrams of the service. I also found a couple articles in the news media about it: [3], [4], [5], and there's a description at the Indian Railways Fan Club site (although the photos page currently returns an error). According to the news, Konkan Railway has begun construction on a test section of such a system in Bangalore, so even though we've got what looks like advertising and original research now, it looks like something that we should keep; let's get it cleaned up and referenced and up to snuff. I'm copying this discussion to the article talk page. Further comments should be left there. Slambo (Speak) 14:41, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Translation

Hi guys. I translated an article I wrote for it.wiki. Can you check it and give it a fix? I am not an english native speaker, sorry. A polish friend is going to complete the voice with infos on the use of these loco in Poland, then the article could be moved to principal namespace. User:Jollyroger/FS_Locomotive_E412 thanks and C ya --Jollyroger 17:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Cool, I'll take a look... Slambo (Speak) 17:47, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Nice work. There's a copyedit over the text and an infobox and some categories. When you're ready to move this live, I would suggest FS class E412 for the article name. One other question, do you have references to cite for the article? Slambo (Speak) 18:44, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I've done some further copy-editing, hopefully improving the readability without disrupting the meaning. There's a little more polish required, but I have to say the article is looking very good. All down to Jollyroger's work, not mine. I agree with Slambo: move the article to FS class E412. The remaining copy-editing work can be done there. Very nice work, Jollyroger. Best, Gwernol 19:49, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
What kind of references do you need? It is all based on the paper manual of these locos, on the links given and on what I know... sorry, I am not used to en.wiki templates and standards--Jollyroger 12:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
My own rule of thumb is to list every document I used as research material in the references section. A scan through the articles listed on Wikipedia:Good articles/Trains will give you an idea on formatting them. Slambo (Speak) 14:11, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles to be demoted from FA status soon

There's some discussion on the Featured article review project talk page about defeaturing current featured articles for a lack of inline citations. Several of the articles that deal with railroad subjects fall into this category and will likely be defeatured. I'm taking another look through the four articles that I've taken through the FA process to get them up to current standards. Anyone else care to review/update others? Slambo (Speak) 16:12, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Images of railroad tie replacement equipment

At my user page there are some low-quality images of railroad tie replacement equipment that I took within the last few months. The location is Rosemont, Pennsylvania, part of the Pennsylvania Main Line (the replacement of ties along the old Pennsylvania Railroad route between Philly and Harrisburg used by Amtrak.Spikebrennan 17:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks like the lighting was a bit troublesome. Backlit objects are notoriously difficult to shoot well. There's video of a tie replacement train like this one in action in the video "Workin' On The Railroad" from (I think) Pentrex. Slambo (Speak) 10:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I was using a cell phone camera and didn't know how well (or how poorly) they would turn out. I figured that there might be some small chance, though, that one of them might be illustrative.Spikebrennan 10:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, and I've added one to Maintenance of way, as we didn't have an image of such equipment yet. Slambo (Speak) 11:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Recent changes list

Following the lead of a few other WikiProjects, I've started the Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Recent changes page so we can click on a link to see all the changes to rail transport related articles via the related changes functionality. The list is most assuredly not complete, so please take a look at the list and add articles, templates, images, categories, etc., as you work on them. Thanks! Slambo (Speak) 14:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Heritage railway stations

See Talk:UK railway stations - S

Also, does anyone have a small steam train symbol? Simply south 14:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Making unit formats consistent

I am interested in making units consistent and have previously edited train articles with this in mind. I have created a simple tool that makes the task quicker. If you want to use it, feel free. Simply copy the entire contents of User:Bobblewik/monobook.js to your own monobook. Then follow the instructions in your monobook to clear the cache (i.e. press Ctrl-Shift-R in Firefox, or Ctrl-F5 in IE) before it will work. This will give you a 'units' tab to press in edit mode. Hope that helps. bobblewik 19:29, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

snopes

Snopes talked about a 1938 incident supposedly in san antonio. They said it was in salt lake. Any authentic record of a train hitting a bus then in salt lake? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Southidaho (talk • contribs)

Locomotive/Railroad Class

I haven't found articles specifically for class (ICC/STB) or locomotive class (e.g. "big boy", FEF-3, J, etc.). The class disambiguation page says nothing about either.

I'm going to update class specifically to mention class of railroads (w/ links to the four articles). I'm not sure exactly what to do about locomotive classes. If nothing else it would be nice to have something for "Class" in the locomotive template to link to; I also think some sort of categorization would be good, but I'm not sure how to proceed. For instance, there is a page for Locomotives of New Zealand which lists all the classes, and also a "Category:New Zealand railway locomotives". I think this degree of exhaustiveness is impractical for North American railroads/locomotives, but I think something like "Category:Famous locomotive classes" would be good.

Suggestions? Help? Mangoe 12:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I was planning to build a page for SP steam locomotive classes, just haven't had a chance to get started on it yet. In the US for diesel and electric locomotives, the information is more logically split out by manufacturer/model names, which is how we've got a lot of them already. Slambo (Speak) 17:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree about diesels and more modern electrics (e.g. AEM7), but IIRC older electrics tend to be identified by class (e.g. GG1, which is a class and not a model number). However, the electric bridge can be crossed when we come to it.
How about this scheme:
  • an overall "Class (locomotive)" page, with links to existing "list of classes" pages. The "Class" label in the locomotive template would point to this page.
  • Class list pages for individual railroads/systems should describe the overall system (e.g. the PRR list page would explain that "G" means "ten wheeler") and might or might not link to pages on individual classes (or example, a UP page would surely link to "Big Boy" but might not have pages for every other UP class). The link might be to a famous example rather than a separate page for the whole class (e.g. I wouldn't have both a N&W class J and a N&W 611 page; the latter should suffice).
  • Pages for individual pages would use the locomotive template.
  • The category "Category:Famous locomotive classes" would be implemented, but not a category page for each system/railroad. Do we need an overall "Category:Locomotive classes"?
I'm going to go ahead and create the overall page and a B&O classes page, and we can see how it progresses from there. Mangoe 01:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Next issue in this: two railroads had "Little Joe" classes (Milwaukee and B&O). I've put up a RfM Little Joe (locomotive) to disambiguate by railroad. (Do we want to spell the RR name out? Please visit talk on above.) We can disambiguate between the two classes on the "Little Joe" disambig class. Mangoe 05:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Commented there, both MILW and CSSSB used the electric locos. BTW, nice start on the class (locomotive) article. Slambo (Speak) 10:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! I've done Baltimore and Ohio Railroad locomotives, if you want to look at my approach. I think the approach taken under PRR locomotive classification is probably overkill for most railroads; certainly for the B&O most classes could never get an article more than a couple of lines long (typical length of entry in Sagle's book, the only available source for most). To my mind it makes more sense to talk about the scheme in overall terms and then break out articles for particularly notable classes only. I've also kept the article in "category:X Railroad locomotives" and have assumed that articles on famous classes would go in the same category. The overall Famous locomotives category would continue however to list only specific examples, and not classes. Got all that?
I'm going to do Norfolk and Western Railway locomotives next. Mangoe 11:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Did you see the current issue of Classic Trains? It's got a cover story on the B&O's "Big Sixes" this month. I picked up a copy over the weekend but haven't had a chance to read it yet. Slambo (Speak) 14:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up. I'm contemplating a "Big Six" article. I also picked up Harwood's "Royal Blue" book and will work on related articles. Mangoe 18:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for {{TrainsWikiProject}} template

I've posted a proposal to shorten the {{TrainsWikiProject}} template to make it a little less obtrusive on the various talk pages where it's used. Comments are welcome on the template talk page. Slambo (Speak) 14:00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Update: After looking at a couple other similar project banners, discussion has moved a little to include the possibility of showing an article's rating on a standardized scale, much like is done with the {{Chemistry}} or {{WPMILHIST}} templates. Since there has been (brief) talk here some time ago about integrating article assessments for the WP:1.0 efforts, this seems worthwhile to add. Please hop over to Template talk:TrainsWikiProject for further discussion. Slambo (Speak) 15:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)