Talk:London Country South West

Move proposal

I suggest that this page is moved to London & Country. This name was used for longer, is more recent and has a number of pages already linking to it. Any thoughts? Alzarian16 (talk) 13:44, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure. It would be nice if the whole London Country Bus Services group of articles was made clearer in terms of what happened etc. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 20:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely, we need to create articles for the other three companies for a start. But as this one is generally better known under the newer name, it would make sense to move it - or at the very least make London & Country redirect here, if we don't want to use it as the main title. Alzarian16 (talk) 21:32, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As a temporary measure I made London & Country redirect here, although I still believe that a page move would be the most helpful outcome. Alzarian16 (talk) 17:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, the redirect is good for the moment. Would there be scope for a London & Country article on its own? The trouble is, everything ties in to everything. London Country Bus Serives links to London Country South West. London Country South West ties in with London & Country. London & Country links to Guildford & West Surrey, which links to the current Arriva Guildford & West Surrey. And that's not to mention the bits of London & Country that ended up in other places (i.e Arriva London etc).

I think the best outcome would be...

An article for London Country Bus Services.
An article for each of London Country South West, London Country North West, London Country North East and London Country South East.
An article for London & Country

This London & Country article would then be able to clearly show what went where. The sub-ish-part bit of Guildford & West Surrey can be tied in, and then that seemlessly links to Arriva Guildford & West Surrey. The other bits can be explained as going (eventually) to Arriva London. Then there's all the complicated bits about the coaching division ending up with Countryliner Coaches etc etc...

The trouble is, is there scope for a separate London & Country article? It would certainly help with details though, as talking about, say, Countryliner in the London and Country South West article won't be very clear. And I think if we have LCSW as London & Country then it would cause confusion over the South East, North West and North East articles, if only three out of four have the London Country _compass_direction_ names. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 18:45, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And while we're on the subject, I've just made Guildford & West Surrey a redirect to Arriva Guildford & West Surrey for the moment. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 18:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The whole issue of London Country is a fairly confusing one. Of the new articles proposed (which I fully agree are needed):

London Country North West would be fairly easy to make as it was absorbed by Luton & District and has a simple history up to that point;
London Country South East could get tangled up with its later incarnation Kentish Bus, which currently serves as a redirect to Arriva Southern Counties but could be changed to redirect to LCSE;
London Country North East would be a nightmare to create as it was split into two bits, County Bus & Coach and Sovereign Buses, which then changed owners operations so many times that the original companies are almost impossible to discern in the mix-up that is Arriva Shires & Essex, Arriva Southend and Centrebus;
London & Country would be either very short or very repetetive as it's so fundamentally related to London Country South West.

I'll committ to creating articles for LCNW and LCSE, but I feel we should sort out what to do about LCNE before we try to create it. The book by Tom McLachalan that I cited a lot in my article on London Forest is a pretty helpful source, but it stops at 1995 so we'll need something else as well. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Alzarian16 (talk) 19:17, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Update:London Country North West is now online. Alzarian16 (talk) 11:50, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work. I have made my mind up about London Country South West and London & Country. If one article covers both names, I think it should be at LCSW, simply because it makes it much clearer if it is the sames as the others (LCNW, LCNE and LCSE). London & Country will just have to be explained clearly in the article, with relevant info,

As for London Country North East, I don't know enough about it to be able to comment really. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 15:06, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your point about LCSW sounds reasonable, and I'm glad you liked the LCNW article. The difficulty with LCNE is the split into separate companies very early on - perhaps LCNE should just be a stub pointing to County Bus & Coach and Sovereign Buses? Alzarian16 (talk) 18:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I say, I don't know a lot about the specifics of LCNE, so I think you'll have to decide what's best on that. As long as everything is made very clear as to what event happened anything should be fine. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 18:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nice to know someone trusts me that much! Another possibility I've thought of, which I think I prefer, is to have LCNE, Sovereign and County all in one article as sections along the lines of Connect Buses (although obviously with more references), and have Sovereign Buses and County Bus & Coach redirect to their sections. On a related topic, I've now completed London Country South East. This uses another slightly different layout by dividing the article up chronologically based on who owned it (three sections, one each for Early History, Proudmutual Ownership and British Bus/Cowie) which I felt was most appropriate for a linear but quite long history. A different gap in our coverage is the lack of an article for either Drawlane or British Bus, which should be rectified at some point. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Finally finished London Country North East today, to the design I mentioned in my last post Alzarian16 (talk) 22:29, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! I think that layout works well. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 18:14, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to hear that; incidentally, I've nominated it for DYK at T:TDYK#London Country North East. It's also the only one of the new articles to have received a rating higher than Start-Class on WP:WikiProject London Transport's assessment. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:24, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]