User talk:Sgreen93/Archive 1

Archiving and questions

Hey. I noticed that you were deleting messages from your page. You have every right to do this. However, there is a process called archiving, which would make looking up old messages that much easier. I'm interested on your opinion about it.

Also, I just wanna say, if you want to ask any questions, I'm available. Also there is the help desk and thenewbie help desk, which can provide a more immediate response. You can put {{helpme}} here, too, and ask your question below it.

Welcome! --I dream of horses @ 00:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Sure, will do this in future. Thanks for the offer, will take you up on it should I need to :) Sgreen93 (talk) 01:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

If you want to learn how to use the {{talkback}} template properly, look atthis page. --I dream of horses @ 01:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that, was a simple typo, fixed it after I noticed it though.Sgreen93 (talk) 01:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, that makes sense. Did you know that there's a whole wikiproject devoted to typos? --I dream of horses @ 06:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Got to admit I didn't. Thanks for showing me it though, I'll sign up! Sgreen93 (talk) 23:08, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Glad to be of service! --I dream of horses If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. @ 05:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Date formats

Regarding this edit - please note that all-numeric date formats where the year comes last are discouraged, see WP:MOSDATE; and for articles on British railway stations we would always use the form4 April 1910. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Widely documented?

Re this edit - if it is widely documented, please provide areliable source; Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source, see WP:CIRCULAR. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I live there.. pretty certain it's true... Sgreen93 (talk) 19:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't doubt where you live... the thing is, statements like "It is widely documented that this is the case" and "pretty certain it's true" aren't enough - you need to show exactly where the alleged fact is so documented. See WP:BURDEN, which begins "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material". If you know of a book, magazine or newspaper article that includes a statement along these lines, you should provide that as a reference.

Now, as to why I described it as WP:OR: since you didn't provide a source (other than Wikipedia itself, see my comment of 17:49, 24 May 2010 above), and the material looked doubtful to me, I considered the possibility that you had personally checked the opening dates for every single station in Bedfordshire, and found that Biggleswade has an opening date earlier than all the others. If you had done this, it counts as original research (see WP:SYN), which is inadmissible. Somebody else needs to have done that research, and had it published elsewhere; if it has been so published, it may be referenced. I doubt that you will find that however: Sandy and Arlesey are also in Bedfordshire, and according toR.V.J. Butt, these two stations were opened the same day as Biggleswade, 7 August 1850, so the best you might find is something like "Arlesey, Biggleswade and Sandy were the first three railway stations opened in Bedfordshire". However, I don't think that you will, since all these are trumped by the first station at Leighton Buzzard, which opened more than twelve years earlier - 9 April 1838. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Leighton Buzzard wasn't a mainline station though, which is what the statement says.. Either way, I'm sure Its in a book I've got about the local area, I'll have a look for it Sgreen93 (talk) 22:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

In what way was LB not a "mainline" station? It was on one of the first trunk lines in the country (the London & Birmingham Railway), and in 1848 had become a junction station with the opening of the Dunstable and London & Birmingham Railway.--Redrose64 (talk) 10:05, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Article talk page FUR warnings

Regarding the Fair use rationale (FUR) warnings that you have removed from article talk pages - such as here - I don't think you should draw any inference from BetacommandBot (talk · contribs) being banned; it was almost certainly a legitimate action.

All non-free content must have a FUR for every page that it is used on, so whether the image was included in the article directly or came in via a template, the image page should have had a FUR for Hatfield railway station (as well as dozens of other similar FURs, one per station). BetacommandBot was merely carrying out standard procedure in such instances: basically, somebody should either add a FUR to the image, or ensure that the image isn't used in this article.

The image in question was indeed never in the article as such, but did occur in one of the templates: you need to dig about to find it. At the time, the article contained {{s-rail|title=FCC}} which pulls in {{S-rail/lines|title=FCC}} which at that time pulled in Image:First logo cropped F.gif, which as you can see is now a redlink, so has been deleted. The template concerned was fixed up with this edit, and further fixedhere.

Normally, article talk page postings are not removed, other than by being archived. I think that you're OK with removing these FUR warnings though. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, I was a bit cautious about removing it, so did a bit of background checking into both Betacommandbot and the pages themselves. Must admit I didn't notice that bit of code, although I suppose unless you were specifically looking for it it's not that easy to see whilst checking for an image, if we're both in agreement I'll remove it from anymore stations I find it on that it's not there on, or even better, archive it! Sgreen93 (talk) 22:21, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Grid references

Hi, me again... re the gridref parameter in the {{Infobox GB station}} for Hatfield railway station. As it says at the bottom of Template:Infobox GB station/doc, "When giving coordinates, please don't be overly precise." It's normal to give grid refs of stations to 100 m accuracy, that is, to six figures: this should be sufficient, considering that a railway station is usually more than ten metres wide and more than 100 m long (though there are exceptions: South Greenford is 50 m long). A 10-figure grid reference, as you used on Hatfield, is accurate to one metre - I don't think that we need to pinpoint a particular feature. Accordingly, I've amended the grid reference that you provided. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Re this edit - the value of the grid ref doesn't determine the page that is linked, so if it's dead for TL241750 it must also be dead for TL239750. The fact of the matter is that clicking a gridrefsometimes throws the error "Error 400 Bad Request"; but click the "back" button of your browser, and try again, it usually works. An examination of Ordnance Survey "Landranger" (1:50 000) sheet 166 shows that the red circle for Brookmans Park railway station is 2 mm (ie 100 m) to the right of the 24 grid line, so the easting is 241. If the grid ref really were TL239750, it would be 2 mm (100 m) to the left of the 24 grid line - which it isn't. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:59, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi, sorry about that then. I did try it a few times and it was refusing to work, while the other one was, just assumed it was the link. Sgreen93 (talk) 22:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I left a bad {{diff}} on my last post. Have fixed. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:51, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Date format

Re this edit - please note that per WP:DATESNO, dates should be formed using cardinal numbers. In prose, we would also omit the definite article; so "7 August 1850" not "the 7th August 1850".--Redrose64 (talk) 12:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Also, re this edit - to mention the opening date twice in the same paragraph is redundant. The station has a near-160 year history, so there are two possibilities each for "mid seventies" and "late 80s". I have amended to "1970s", 1980s" etc. as applicable; see also WP:DECADE. Personally, I wouldn't mention station rebuilds in the infobox (where the years/events are for key events - opening, renaming, closure), unless the rebuilt station was on a different site (as with Stevenage), or significantly different in size. There's no reason not to mention rebuilding in the text however, provided there are citations to reliable sources. When a rebuild is mentioned in the infobox, the reason (in this case arson) would be omitted from the infobox, but mentioned in the text. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Off topic, but did services run from Huntingdon to St Ives via Huntingdon East and Godmanchester?Lamberhurst (talk) 11:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

See the map which I just added: unlikely, since the train would need to reverse at the junction 14 chains south of the GNR station. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:51, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, and going by the information in the book referenced on this page it would appear the services started at Huntingdon East, then went to St Ives via Godmanchester Sgreen93 (talk) 19:01, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Citation style

Re the templates

{{cite book |last=Mitchell Mott |first=Vic Allan |title=Hitchin to Peterborough |year=2003 |origyear=2003 |publisher=Middleton Press|location=Midhurst |isbn=1 904474 07 1 |at=volume I, pic. 65 |ref=harv }}

{{cite book |last=Mitchell Mott |first=Vic Allan |title=Hitchin to Peterborough |year=2003 |origyear=2003 |publisher=Middleton Press|location=Midhurst |isbn=1 904474 07 1 |at=volume I, pic. 64 |ref=harv }}

• If a book has two or more authors, separate parameter pairs should be used for each one. For example, |last1=Mitchell|first1=Vic |last2=Mott |first2=Allan
• If the book is a first edition, the year and origyear will be the same, so there is no need for the origyear
• The parameter |ref=harv isn't really necessary here, since all the citations are full (none are short notes). I will return to that topic later.
• These two citations differ only in the picture number. There are several methods which may be used to save duplication of information. The two that I have used successfully are (a) two-stage referencing (see later); (b) replace the second one with a{{harvnb}}. the parameters to that are (i) the surnames of the first four authors; (ii) the year; (iii) the page (or equivalent). However, this method does need the |ref=harv on the {{cite book}}.

This gives

{{cite book |last1=Mitchell |first1=Vic |last2=Mott |first2=Allan |title=Hitchin to Peterborough |year=2003 |publisher=Middleton Press|location=Midhurst |isbn=1 904474 07 1 |at=volume I, pic. 65 |ref=harv }}

{{harvnb|Mitchell|Mott|2003|loc=volume I, pic. 64}}

which might display as:

Statement 1. Statement 2.

Regarding two-stage referencing and the |ref=harv parameter on {{cite book}} - see Offord and Buckden railway station. The |ref=harv links the short note, which is placed in the text using {{harv}}, {{harvnb}} or{{sfn}}, to the full citation - the {{cite book}}, which is placed near the bottom. If you go to that article, and click a reference mark (such as ^[1]), this will take you to the short note, which is a blue link. If you then click that blue link, it takes you to the full citation. If you have Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome (not Internet Explorer) this shows up better because the link targets are highlighted with a blue background. The above example can be used to try this out.--Redrose64 (talk) 12:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Potters Bar railway station: apostrophe or not?

Re this series of edits: 1, 2, 3: you state "the source is wrong. See all reliable sources" - I have provided a reliable source, in the form of the refs to Butt 1995, for the apostrophe existing in all forms of the station name covered by that book (correct to 31 December 1994), so the apostrophe isverifiable. You then state "such as National Rail, FCC"; it's not up to me to do that; you have that responsibility (as did the anon editor 138.40.207.93), see WP:BURDEN. You also state "or even pay the station a visit."; this is not permissible, see WP:NOR.

Since Butt is correct to 31 December 1994, fifteen years have since passed, and lots of things can happen in that time. If the apostrophe has been removed on or since 1 January 1995, that is another matter: such a change may be mentioned as a separate item (something like "The station was renamed from Potter's Bar to Potters Bar on xxxx"), provided that it is referenced (a comment in the edit summary does not constitute a reference). --Redrose64 (talk) 22:42, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, 15 years ago that may have been correct, however it isn't now. The source may well have been correct then, but it is 15 years out of date.. If you really want me to place a link from one of those websites already linked to numerous times throughout the page stating the name does not contain an apostrophe then I shall, and considering the page's title itself does NOT contain one, there is no reason for it to have an apostrophe in that small section. Butt may well have been mistaken in his book, an apostrophe is hardly one of the biggest details in there world.

The town itself also does not contain an apostrophe, meaning it is more than likely that Butt was wrong. See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potters_Bar

Perhaps Butt has got confused with said station in California.. However, if you want some more proof other than the above and the obvious, then also please see this photograph, containing a NSE sign that would have been put up in the late 1980's, pre-dating Butts book:

http://www.hertsmere.gov.uk/ASSETS/images/environment/EP%20potters%20bar%20rail%20crash_354.jpg

Feel free to go out sometime if you ever feel like not commenting on every single thing I do.. :) Sgreen93(talk) 16:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not asking for proof of what the current name is. I'm not asking for every instance of the current name to be referenced (indeed, it doesn't need referencing at all, because the "station information from National Rail" link in the "Operations" section of the infobox does that quite adequately); and certainly the name of the town does not need referencing: a link to the town within the lead section serves for that. I'm certainly not asking for every instance of the current name to be given an apostrophe.

All I want is something that describes when the change in name occurred, in verifiable fashion. I mentioned one possibility above; another could be something along the lines of

"The station signs were altered on xxxx to Potters Bar, eliminating the apostrophe which had been part of the station name since opening, but which had never been in the name of the town."

but whereever such a date comes from, it must be referenced, and cannot be original research.

Your photo is easily dated, the presence of the wrecked carriage assists with that; but it does not demonstrate that the sign shown was put up "in the late 1980's" - all we can say for sure is that the sign was put up on or before 10 May 2002. The blue lettering suggests a date no earlier than about 1985, which is when the change from black lettering began to occur, but between those dates, we can't be certain. It's possible that at some point, a blue-letter sign was replaced by another blue-letter sign. However, all this is deeply in WP:OR territory.

Butt's book is indeed 15 years old, but that does not mean that his information on events prior to 1995 are "out of date". He does not seek to describe the current situation, but provides a historic record; and history is not bunk (unless you are Henry Ford). I hardly think Butt's confused the station with one in California: in the first place, his book covers Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, nothing in the USA; in the second place, the opening date that he gives is consistent with many other stations between Peterborough and Hornsey. Here's how he describes events (the boldface is his):

POTTER'S BAR GN 119A TL 20

OP 7 August 1850; RN Potter's Bar and South Mimms 1 May 1923 L≠ RF Potter's Bar and South Mimms 3 May 1971 BRB

POTTER'S BAR AND SOUTH MIMMS L&NE 119A TL 20

RF Potter's Bar 1 May 1923; RN Potter's Bar 3 May 1971 BRB

where OP means "Opened"; RN = "renamed to"; RF = "renamed from"; GN = "Great Northern Railway"; L&NE = "London & North Eastern Railway"; BRB = "British Railways Board"; and "119A TL 20" is a map reference in Jowett 1989.

The instances of the apostrophe within the historic names should stay, precisely because they are historic items: we should not apply a change retrospectively.

Station names which are at variance with the name of the place served are commoner than might be supposed (for instance,Clapham Junction is in Battersea). I live in a town with a curious history. When the station was opened, it was given a name which was similar to, but not exactly the same as, that of the town (two letters differed). After a few decades, the spelling of the town was altered to match the station; more recently (1985 to be exact), the station has been renamed, and once again differs from the town. I don't personally like the present name of the station, but I don't describe post-1985 events using the pre-1985 name (with the aim of making it match the town); conversely, if I liked the new name, I wouldn't apply it to pre-1985 historical events, because it wasn't the station's name back then.

Our job as Wikipedians is to prepare an encyclopedia, describing events based on verifiable facts, without offering opinions on what's "right" or "wrong". --Redrose64(talk) 19:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

St. Neots platform numbers

Re your reverts such as this, I believe that the IP editor is correct; since according to this:

• Yonge, John (2006) [1994]. Jacobs, Gerald (ed.). 2: Eastern. Railway Track Diagrams (3rd ed.). Bradford on Avon: Trackmaps. p. 15. ISBN 0 9549866 2 8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

most of the stations between Kings Cross and Peterborough have platform 1 as the easternmost; but St. Neots is an exception, since it shows platform 1 as the westernmost. Now, I'm pretty certain that if you stand on the footbridge at St. Neots and face the building shown in that photo, you're also looking in a north-westerly direction. Going by the map mentioned above, that would mean that you're also looking at platforms 1 & 2, so I believe that the IP is correct. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:58, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, how very strange. As far as my memory stretches pretty much all other stations have 1(and 2) as the southbound platforms with 3 and 4 being northbound. Having just taken a quick look on the live departure boards for the station they would seem to confirm this too, my utmost apologies. Was there myself only a couple of weeks ago, shows how much attention I pay to all the signing FCC put up these days..!! Sgreen93 (talk) 18:59, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

British Rail Class 390‎

Re your recent edits to British Rail Class 390‎, how do 52 extra cars allow them to extend 31 sets from 9-car to 11-car? Wouldn't it need 62 extra cars? Do you have a source for the info? All the sources which I've seen refer to 62 extra, not 52 extra. For example, this from Virgin. David Biddulph (talk) 09:52, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

My apologies, it is indeed 62 cars, was a typo. My fault entirely, I shall correct the article now Sgreen93(talk) 12:28, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Reversion of edits to Northern line articles

Hi, I note that you reverted wholesale a series of edits I made to Northern line articles. Thanks for your interest in these articles; I note that you are a member of WP:UKRAIL and WP:STA, perhaps you might be interested in joining[[Wikipedia:WikiProject London Transport (WP:LT). The edits I made were to bring the articles into line with WP:LTstandards and general Wikipedia manual of style formatting. Changes were made for the following reasons:

• The number of years worth of data in the infobox is generally limited to the last three years, to avoid overwhelming the article with a long infobox
• The layout sections were removed where they existed as this type of diagram has been deprecated by the Project as taking up a lot of space and not providing anything particularly useful
• Succession boxes should go at the bottom of the article, not in a route section - other sections were put into the normal wikipedia order
• Bus lists should be kept short. It is not necessary to list all of the destinations
• A number of parameters in the infoboxes were incorrectly formatted so that opening years were not shown
• The northern line route map template was removed because it messes up the formatting by adding large areas of white space and because it is not necessary - the text and the succession box both show the neighbouring stations and the navbox at the bottom gives a list of all of the stations. An example of the problem this causes can be seen in the Embankment tube station article, where the two images on the left are pushed down the page, out of the sections in which they belong. These templates are best used on articles related to the lines.

If you'll excuse me, I will restore my edits.--DavidCane (talk) (FAC) 21:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, my apologies, was unaware of the differences between the UKRAIL and LT standards, will subsequently edit in accordance to those. Many thanks for bringing it to my attention. Sgreen93 (talk) 21:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to amplify DavidCane's last two points.

{{Infobox London station}} has many parameters in common with {{Infobox GB station}}, but |years= and|events= are not among them. This does cause confusion; you're not the first to make this error.

Some people don't spot the white space issue because it manifests itself differently in different browsers. I only have three, but these are enough to demonstrate such inconsistency. If you consider the article Balham railway station, and version that you left, ie before DavidCane's last revert, it's the same in IE7, Firefox and Chrome down to the heading "London Underground", but then different things happen.

In Firefox and Chrome the text "Balham is located on the Northern Line between Clapham South and Tooting Bec stations", etc. begins just under the heading "London Underground". In IE7 there is no text to the left of the infobox, but the text just mentioned starts level with the "Northern line Route Map" RDT template.

In IE7 the image captioned "The memorial plaque in the entrance hall" occurs in its correct position, just below the heading "World War II", whilst in Firefox and Chrome it's pushed down, and occurs level with the "Northern line Route Map" RDT template.

The common factor is the {{Northern Line map}} template. I've noticed before that RDT templates like this can cause whitespace issues, particularly if the RDT is itself displaced downwards by an infobox. Thus, when they're used, it's generally best to place them late rather than early.