Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Locomotives task force

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[edit] Purpose and participation

What is the Locomotives task force, and how does one become involved with it? Erzahler 21:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The Locomotives task force is a group of editors within WikiProject Trains who work on articles about locomotives, their parts and manufacturers worldwide. It was set up as a task force rather than as a separate WikiProject so we wouldn't have to duplicate all of the efforts of WP Trains that are involved in project maintenance. One goal of the task force is to raise as many locomotive articles as possible up to Featured article status; one of the first locomotive articles I worked on, John Bull (locomotive), is one such example. To become involved, edit locomotive articles and participate in discussions here. You can add yourself (in alphabetical order) to the participants list on the task force page if you like. You do not need to join WP Trains as well, but it would be helpful to watchlist the project page for information related to locomotive articles. Slambo (Speak) 14:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I'll keep that in mind, but I don't know if I'm knowledgable enough to join a task force. I've been a Railfan for many years, so I know a thing or two here and there. :o) Erzahler 17:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Just added my name to the list. I have a lifelong interest is the technological history of the steam locomotive from a British standpoint, but that is not exclusive as I am also very interested in French compounds and support the Modern Steam movement. Before finding the task force I made small edits to the pages on Francis Webb (engineer), Compound locomotive, and Anatole Mallet. As all these articles are more or less dormant and inadequate, I would be interested in some feedback before deciding on further action.--John of Paris 10:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images needed

In going through articles to bypass some template redirects, I found a number of locomotive articles that lack images. There are many more, I'm sure, but those that I've found are now tagged with Imageneeded=yes in their {{TrainsWikiProject}} calls, which adds them to Category:Rail transport articles needing images. Scan through your photos and free photo sources for images that will fit the bill for these articles. Slambo (Speak) 20:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Generic article

Hey. It looks participants here are mainly devoted to add articles to single engine types. However, the "main" articles (electric and diesel locomotive) are really poor. Further, there's user:Mangoe, an American user, who has them under his eye and deletes attempt to debias them from a typically US-point of view. Let me know!--Attilios 18:04, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Data on the earliest US locos

This item just popped up in my RSS reader today... http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=81152

I haven't had time to fully digest the info yet, but it looks like data that we need to incorporate here. Anyone want to get a start on it? Slambo (Speak) 13:00, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganization of Whyte notation pages

There's a reorganization of the pages for individual whyte notations under discussion at Talk:Whyte notation. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for general LIRR rolling stock information

I am going to be expanding Long Island Rail Road in the next week, since I just received Steel Rails to the Sunrise through interlibrary loan. I'm generally not a fan of rolling stock, so it would be great if someone else could write a summary of the LIRR's rolling stock, including its history, with citations (or see if I can find citations from the book) to help bring the article to featured status. Thank you. --NE2 18:45, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Models

Someone has added a models section to at least one Locomotives article: British_Rail_Class_58#Models. Is this appropriate? This doesn't seem the best place for this information and could turn into a large section in some articles - some locomotives will have has tens of different models made of them in a number of scales. Zabdiel 17:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I think in general this is a bad idea. Some exceptions can be made, e.g. that Little Joe (Baltimore and Ohio locomotive) mentions that it is the prototype for the extremely well-known Lief-Like "Dockside" model. But simply listing available models is crufty. Mangoe 20:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I added this before I registered with Wikipedia - perhaps a little too much enthisiasm a couple of days after Warley, where the Heljan plans were announced (I had forgotten about this totally, as it was pre-registration!) - I also added model details to Class 17 and Class 53 'Falcon' as well. Happy to see it removed if it causes consternation. Muchclag 18:40, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mistake

I accidentally changed the information on two preserved British Rail Class 50s, I meant to change the location of the two trains hired by arriva trains wales (location was severn valley railway, when they are currently stored at the sidings of canton railway depot (I go past there every day on another train) and are (currently) rarely used on services to rhymney. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Backifran (talk • contribs) 09:22, February 18, 2007.

[edit] The "camel" problem

I seem to have been caught in a slow motion edit war with User:Lokisgodhi over the article Camelback type locomotive. I would appreciate a visit to the talk page on this article to view some of the material I have found on the subject. User:Lokisgodhi has a history of this sort of controversy (his edits) and I'm inclined at this point to take this to WP:RFM if the merger is contested again. Mangoe 20:51, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Zealand Locomotives


hi, i have just created an account for myself on wikipedia. i am a railway enthusiast in new zealand, and specialize in the eo locomotives of 1923. i am planning to work on locomotive classes ec and ew next. i thought it might be a good idea to make myself known to you guys, and see if you have any ideas/instructions for me? Eonut 23:43, 29 July 2007 (UTC) Eonut

Welcome Eonut. Go for it! There are a few people working on NZR locos, so we will be helping. --Lee Begg 23:41, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Loco weight

I have put this post in several talk pages, notably the Template talk page last September, but to date have had zero feedback. —"I find in some steam locomotive articles that the definition of "weight" as "The locomotive's total weight" is a source of confusion. In some cases this has been taken to mean the total weight of the locomotive and tender (already covered by the rubric "locotenderweight" - the combined locomotive and tender total weight. If I have understood right, "weight" stands for the weight of the locomotive (power unit) alone, presumably in working order. This is a far more useful criterion if we remember that a locomotive can be attached to several different tenders in the course of its career. For instance giving the loco+tender weight for French locomotives would be particularly meaningless as locomotives and tenders were maintained by separate services and had more or less independent careers." Further confusion is caused by the very fact that "weight" displays as "total weight. It's really time that to get this mess sorted out and if no feedback materialises I shall just correct the error whenever I come across it. You have been warned!--John of Paris 14:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)--

[edit] Sanity checking bot

I'm considering writing a bot that would loop through all the articles containing a certain infobox, reading the infobox parameters and making a list of likely errors such as:

  • invalid data for that field (eg. odd numbers in a Whyte wheel arrangement, or a value in kN in a "power" field)
  • incorrect conversion, if given in more than one unit of measure (eg. this tractive effort)
  • implausibly high or low value (eg. this factor of 10 error); this could include checks involving two or more parameters expected to be related, eg. an implausibly high weight per axle could indicate the above problem of loco+tender weight being mislabelled as loco weight

My initial planned target is Template:Infobox Locomotive (in about 700 articles, the two errors above are from maybe 20 I've looked at closely enough that I'd have noticed), hence the post here, but it could be adapted to numerical data infoboxes on almost any subject.

Since checks of this sort only indicate that a value is probably wrong, not what it should be, the bot would not be able to correct them itself, but would make a list of likely errors to be checked against the source material by human editors. According to earlier discussion read-only bots do not need formal approval, but I'd appreciate comments before I take the time to actually write it.--QuantumEngineer 12:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hamilton-Lima LS-1200 article started

I thought it would be nice to have separate articles for the each of the Lima yard switchers so I started the LS-1200 article, I'll work on the rest soon too, but its in some need of work. I'm not the best when it comes to writing from scratch and there isn't much I can find on the web by way of reference materials (only a bunch of rail fan photos) so if anyone knows more than I do go for it! --DP67 (talk/contribs) 04:05, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] LNER Class V1/V3

Hi,

I am concerned about a possible copy violation regarding LNER Class V1/V3 - the majority of the text has been lifted from the LNER Encyclopedia. Could someone check this out? I have mentioned it on the article's talk page.

–MDCollins (talk) 14:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems you're right. This should be deleted and re-created; I may go ahead and do that. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 22:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I performed a selective delete to restore to the last non-copyvio revision, and then removed inaccurate info that was previously placed in it. It needs work. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 22:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Speaking of which, it might be an idea to go through User:Broomhalla's contributions and check out the content; I doubt that this is the only one. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 22:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)