Talk:Wilmington Station (Delaware)

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[edit] Disambiguation

There are 3 Wilmington stations which Amtrak passes thru if you include Wilmington MA (on the Downeaster route. KevinCuddeback 03:11, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The station is primarily Amtrak. Why did you change its name to Septa? It should be changed back.

Amtrak also stops in Wilmington, North Carolina. SEPTA only stops at one Wilmington. --SPUI (talk) 04:27, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

According to the Amtrak National Timetable, and supported by the Wilmington, North Carolina article linked to above, the only Amtrak presence in Wilmington, NC is a Thruway motorcoach connection. I support renaming this back to (Amtrak station). Amtrak should be given precedence at its stations (this includes Metropark, Princeton Junction, Newark Airport, and Route 128, and I'll be moving those in the next day or so unless I hear a reason to dispute this.) --CComMack 06:15, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • How about the fact that the bulk of service at Metropark, Princeton Junction, and Newark International Airport are by NJ Transit trains? (I don't know Route 128, but I think its in Connecticut and a Metro-North New Haven line thing). And if you're going to nail down Amtrak as the train line that is given precedence and lorded over all others, I suppose I should let you pre-empt the article-to-come dealing with the New Brunswick Station (NJ) after all, Amtrak stops there 12 times a day and deserves precedence over NJ Transit's almost 100 stops (which is—for your edification—roughly the same number for Metropark and Princeton Junction which were built with NJT funds and USDOT grants, not by Amtrak funds). Last I rode the Clocker between NYC and Philly and back I don't recall stopping at the airport, just at Newark Penn (only most Regional trains stop there, and an occasional Keystone...the Metroliner, Acela, Silver Meteor, Three Rivers, Vermonter, Carolinian, Palmetto, most Keystone, and Silver Star trains don't). —ExplorerCDT 07:25, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I suggest the simple convention that if more than one train service shares tracks (not the station, so PATH and the city subway don't count at Newark Penn Station), and there's no common name that's not just [City] Station, the most local service should be used. Slight problems occur with stuff like Trenton which both SEPTA and NJ Transit serve; those may have to be arbitrary (probably NJ Transit in this case because it's in NJ). This keeps us from having to move pages whenever Amtrak starts or stops using a station, which may start happening fairly frequently if service cuts are made; on the other hand standard commuter services seem harder to get rid of. Obviously City (Amtrak station) would redirect. --SPUI (talk) 07:40, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This seems like a confusing policy. As you point out, multiple commuter agencies create several places where there is no single name that your suggestion resolves to (in addition to Trenton, you have clear problems at Stamford and Bridgeport, and the same situation exists at Washington, 30th St Philadelphia, Penn Station New York, and both New Haven stations.) Giving Amtrak precedence has the decided advantage of being perfectly consistent if it is consistently applied.
Amtrak is the national system, and has the widest recognizability. I think these should be given significant weight, but this is in fact a wider issue with ramifications on a ddozen articles. I suggest moving the discussion to more appropriate ground; perhaps revive Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (stations)? --CComMack 08:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Union Station (Washington), 30th Street Station, New York Penn Station, Union Station (New Haven), etc all stay where they are because they have special names. I'd somewhat but not completely arbitrarily assign the MN/SLE conflicts to Metro-North; they are the more established system and the less likely of the two to go under. Yeah, I'd also recommend moving this to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (stations). As a data point, for the New York City Subway the standard has become Name (Division Line station), for instance 125th Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line station). This however is a somewhat special case, as many stations share names. --SPUI (talk) 08:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I know that none of the existing articles should be touched, and fully agree that Stamford and Bridgeport are MTA/MNR/MNCR more than they are SLE, on grounds of service territory. I'm just saying that your proposed convention doesn't/wouldn't cover them. And there's still Trenton to deal with. I just don't want arbitrariness where it isn't neccessary.
I'm also familiar with the NYC subway convention, but doubt there's a way to apply the convention here. Although it makes dealing with defunct stations/railroads much easier (for instance, Philadelphia Broad Street Station (PRR).) --CComMack 08:41, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
SPUI reason above is specificaly why we Should Not add or have services put to the names of stations. The whole what if situation, what if the local service is dropd and Amtrak contunes to serve, not likely to happen but it could. And what would happen if the said station were to have service droped all together, would we call it XXX Station (no service). And where does this lead us with historic stations that are not useed for rail serivce no more, the (no service) tag their as well?. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 08:03, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agree, Boothy, that system names should be omitted except when truly necessary for disambig purposes. I, however, dislike the "City Rail Station" construction. I would much prefer "City station" to be the default. "Wilmington station" should be enough to uniquely identify the subject of this article. --CComMack 08:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
We'd call it [[[XXX (last operator station)]]. --SPUI (talk) 08:25, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[[User:CComMack|CComMack] I concur with you idea on the "City station" idea, the only reason i add rail to it is as a point of clairty, some cities have a xxx station as a district in them, but i'll sgree that that should be used in situations which warrent it. After looking at many of the British Rail articles, i.e Liverpool Street station (where like in many rail stations in the UK multiple service are present), or Connolly Station in Ireland, the city station thing would be better. The only addation i could see to the "City station" would be the addation of a state in the cases of multipile cities sharing the same name and have a rail station, not rail service as some cities have "service" via throughway bus, in the "City station (State)" format. Or in with cities sharing common station name, i.e. Union Station, we use the "Station name (City)" format. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 08:36, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page Move

I believe that the title of the article is misleading, I propose that the name of this article be moved to the the above listed name or to a similar name for the following reasons:

  1. As stated it infers that the station is a SEPTA only station, while SEPTA serves Wilmington, Delaware via it's R2 regional rail service, it is by no means the only rail service to the city, the station is a important stop on the Amtrak northeastern services. Also not all R2 services, the only services of SEPTA that calls on the station, call on Wilmington. Plus SEPTA is not the larger of the of the two services that call on Wilmington, in terms of passengers and number of trains that would have to go to Amtrak.
  2. Questions of ownership of station, as inferred from the title one gets the impression that SEPTA owns this station, which is false. Not only is it false it's impossible, as SEPTA is a Pennsylvania quasi-government chartered company. The station is owned by Amtrak, who along with the station have a network operations and support staff facility on the grounds as well.
  3. it would infer that that their is another station in Wilmington in which Amtrak service is provided at. Now reading the article on would not that is not the case, but searching for it on might not get an article synopsis thus leading to confusing, especially to those who are not privy to Septa or the rail system in the United States.

The reason why i don't think that Amtrak station should be added to the title, is for similar reasons as stated above. For more clarification feel free to contact me. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 06:30, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request. violet/riga (t) 17:45, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Trenton Station

The example about Trenton is not valid becaue Trenton Station is owned by NJT. Trenton Station is in NJ. Wilmington Station is not in PA. And Delaware doesn't even have its own state rail company.

Above unsigned is from 68.80.129.105. Please remember to sign your talk page contributions with four tildes, like so: ~~~~ . Even better, create a login name, as you are clearly interested in joining the community and helping out. Welcome!
This entire issue of nomenclature is a larger and thornier one than I think any of us imagined, and we should talk more to work it out. I've detailed a preliminary proposal at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (stations), which I'd like to receive input on (the preexisting standard being preliminary and, IMHO, quite unworkable.) If the main conversation could be moved there (and reignited; it seems to have died down here,) it would probably be for the best, at least until we can come to a preliminary consensus.
Many thanks, CComMack 06:05, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Speaking as probably the only person here who has actually been to this train station, I should say that it's served both my Amtrack and Septa, but primarily it's there for Amtrack traffic. PS - it's in a *horrible* part of town and I wouldn't want to ever be caught there after dark. →Raul654 05:58, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC) Also - they recently changed their name to 'Transit Depot' because it acts as both a bus and railroad station (at least that's what all the signs say). →Raul654 06:06, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)