Talk:5 ft 3 in gauge railways

rolling stocks

1600 Irish gauge sleeper coaches are not available. 220.210.143.190 (talk) 09:53, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Because there is no demand; there are few long-distance rail journeys in Ireland.

However, it's not technically difficult. For instance, there's no shortage of Mark 3 sleepers, and Mark 3 rolling stock is easily converted to Irish gauge. CAF, who provide the Mark 4, have made sleepers for other markets.

There's more to railways than just gauge. You should also consider costs, demand, &c. bobrayner (talk) 12:56, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Brazil

In Brazil, 1600 network should convert to 1435 due to sleeper coaches are not available on 1600. 220.210.143.190 (talk) 02:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Are there any trips in Ireland, lengthwise and timewise that would require sleeping cars? Tabletop (talk) 09:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Grades and elevations.

What are the steepest main line gradients in Ireland, and the maximum climb? Tabletop (talk) 09:49, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Downpatrick

I'd like to question the line "2012: December 5 - The Downpatrick & Ardglass Railway began public operation, the first Irish gauge heritage railway in Ireland." Firstly, this line is in Northern Ireland, and secondly, it's been running for decades! Can anyone explain? Tom walker (talk) 20:38, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Why 3' 0" narrow gauge,

Carl Pihl popularised cheap narrow gauge using the imperial 1067 rather than the metric 1000 which is only 6% different.

This was widely copied in:

• Norway
• Queensland 1865
• South Australia 1870 - horse drawn, 18__ locomotive drawn.
• Canada

• So why did Ireland choose 914 and forego the advantages of off-the-shelf supplies ? Tabletop (talk) 07:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Spelling

I have just added "3 foot 6 inch", so not writing "three foot six inch". Looks nicer to me. Shall we do this for all? -DePiep (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Renaming proposal for "Irish" gauge, a cultural / national name not corresponding with the current nomenclature

1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) gauge railways weren't first constructed in Ireland.

• The Grand Duchy of Baden State Railway was constructed in 1840 and Metrication in Germany took place in 1872 during unification, but the Rheinbund adopted the metre in 1806-15. Given the round number 0f 1,600 mm, it was probably defined in metric units.
• According to google] 1,600 mm isn't exactly 5 ft 3 in, to be more precise 5 feet 2 63⁄64 inches.
• Did Ireland adopt the German 1,600 mm and rounded the imperial conversion to 5 ft 3 in? Both German and Irish railways were constructed during the same time.
• 5ft 3in was introduced in some British colonies and Brazil, after subsequent metrication it was defined at 1,600mm.

Just like Cape gauge and Russian gauge, "Irish gauge" is a national / cultural name. (see the alternative names in the article).

With my intention to eliminate the cultural and local gauge names for track gauge article titles, this article should be renamed to a title having the defining unit. As the German (and swiss) 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) railways were only short-lived, the current surviving 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) systems have their roots in the imperial system, my proposal is a technical move to the existing Five foot three inch gauge railways redirect page.--Aaron-Tripel (talk) 08:33, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree with this line. Some notes:

Do I understand correctly that in some places at some time it was defined in metric (1600 mm), not imperial? (Ireland, Germany, Switserland, Australia maybe).

This from WP:UNIT: when units are written in full name (not symbol), the adjective form uses hyphen: example a five-cubic-foot box. That would mean page title Five-foot-three-inch gauge railways right? (abbreviations "ft" and "in" change this, but I won't prefer them in titles).

Later on I'll imply the effects into {{RailGauge}}.

-DePiep (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Both Germany and Switzerland were metric during construction of the 1,600mm railways. Subsequently Ireland introduced this gauge, defined in imperial units, and this imperial definition spread to Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.--Aaron-Tripel (talk) 20:02, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

What about page name? Options:

five-foot-three-inch gauge railways

5-foot-3-inch gauge railways

five ft three inch gauge railways

5 ft 3 in gauge railways

five foot three inch gauge railways -- incorrect

More gauge pages should be checked for this. Uppercase first rules for title and wiki format only. Not within inline text sentence. -DePiep (talk) 13:36, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I prefer 5 ft 3 in gauge railways. And yes, we should apply a similar style for track gauge pages.--Aaron-Tripel (talk) 19:18, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

OK -- but I totally forgot: article titles are basically singular. So that would be 5 ft 3 in gauge railway then. (or: List of 5 ft 3 in gauge railways).

Also, please take a look at Ten and a quarter inch gauge, Swedish three foot gauge railways. -DePiep (talk) 11:50, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

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Pseudohead

@Hairy Dude:, we seem to have a different understanding of what MOS:PSEUDOHEAD says

Do not make pseudo-headings by abusing semicolon markup (reserved for description lists) and try to avoid using bold markup. Screen readers and other assistive technology can only use headings that have heading markup for navigation. If you want to reduce the size of the table of contents (TOC), use {{TOC limit}} instead. In cases where {{TOC limit}} cannot be used because of lower-level headings elsewhere in the article, then using bold for the sub-sub-sub headings causes the least annoyance for screen reader users. Using a pseudo heading at all means you have exhausted all other options. It is meant as a rarity.

So why do you believe that we have exhausted all other options? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Where there are lines that begin with a semicolon or colon alternately, as with

;600 BC
:The [[Diolkos]] (Δίολκος) across the [[Isthmus of Corinth]] in Greece – a grooved paved trackway – was constructed with an average gauge of {{Track gauge|5 ft 3 in}}.<ref>...</ref>
;1840
: The [[Grand Duchy of Baden State Railway]] was constructed in 1840-1851 to {{Track gauge|5 ft 3 in}} gauge before being [[Track gauge conversion|converted]] to {{Track gauge|4 ft 8.5 in}} in 1854–1855.
;1843
: The [[Board of Trade]] of the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland]], after investigating a dispute caused by diverse gauges, recommended the use of {{Track gauge|5 ft 3 in}} in Ireland.

this is the structure of a definition list, even if its spirit is not being observed (600 BC is not a term that is defined by the sentence "The Diolkos (Δίολκος) across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece ..."), compare Glossary of United Kingdom railway terms#A or Lateral earth pressure#Symbols definitions, both of which are true definition lists. MOS:PSEUDOHEAD is talking about using only the semicolon markup, without the associated colon markup. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:11, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I see. Thank you. Well I think I see, but at least now I understand Hairy Dude's reversion. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:23, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Being pedantic, the term for this type of list is "description list" or "association list"; "definition list" is old terminology from previous versions of HTML, although I tend to call them deflists for short. The HTML5 spec, linked at MOS:DEFLIST, says "Name-value groups may be terms and definitions, metadata topics and values, questions and answers, or any other groups of name-value data." Personally I feel it's within scope to use them for timelines. If not, we should probably use an ordinary bulleted list instead, as on the articles for individual years. As for your question, I left in the pseudo-headings because I assumed a previous editor had made a decision to use them instead of a real heading, and I thought that decision was reasonable since the resulting sections would have been very short. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:37, 30 August 2023 (UTC)