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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 15:10, 27 April 2010 [1].

Central London Railway

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Central London Railway (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Nominator(s): DavidCane (talk) 13:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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It is 110 years this June/July since the opening of the Central London Railway (depending on which opening date is used). Despite early technical difficulties with its trains, the line was the most financially successful of the Edwardian tube lines and, today forms the backbone of the London Underground's Central line. If successful at FAC, I aim to nominate this for main page on one of the two opening date anniversaries. DavidCane (talk) 13:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SupportComments, leaning to support: another of the conscientious and thorough railway histories which are gradually covering the whole of London's Underground system. This looks to me like one of the best; the maps look particularly good this time. I have made a few tweaks while reading through and have the following generally minor points:-

  • Lead: the first sentence of the third paragraph is unreasonably long and needs to be split into at least two parts.
  • Origin 1889-92: "approximately £215 million today"; give a year, since "today" is a moving entity. I am, however, a little confused by the financial information given here. Can you clarify: is it that ECTL would receive £2,544,000 in money, and £700,000 in debenture stock, so that the total cost of construction to the syndicate was £3,244,000? (Also, "plus" does not read well in prose.)
    • "today" is used because the {{Inflation}} template automatically uses the most recent data, so the displayed conversion will change gradually as time passes.
    • Your interpretation is correct, although the £700,000 was the nominal face value of the debenture stock, which could go up or down, and it entitled the holder to dividends, so the true, upfront cost to the syndicate was probably closer to the £2.5 million.--DavidCane (talk) 01:01, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Construction 1896-1900
  • Rolling stock

That about covers the first third of the article. I will read on, make further comments, and look forward to supporting in due course. Brianboulton (talk) 22:46, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments:-

  • Reversing loops: Reading "two alternatives" always causes a slight wince, since the word "alternative" means a choice between two. Better to say: "For the eastern loop the alternatives were..."
  • Loop lines 1902-1905
    • "At the southern end of Hammersmith Grove a station was to be provided on the corner of Brook Green Road (now Shepherd's Bush Road) to provide an interchange with the three stations already located there." This is not entirely clear - "the three stations already located there" - is this actually three stations, or three lines interconnecting at a single station (Hammersmith)?
    • It's a while since we heard what MDR means, so perhaps spell it out again? In this same paragraph and the one following, I wonder if such a detailed description of the new route - basically, mentioning the location of every station - is necessary, given that the information is shown in the adjacent chart. Would it be possible to reduce the text?
      • No problem with the first.
      • The images are really intended to illustrate the text. The problem with relying on the image to provide the information is those who, for whatever reason, cannot see the image, cannot see the information. Wikipedia:Accessibility#Images, seems to indicate that the detail should be in the text. --DavidCane (talk) 15:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • "The MR opposed..." Again, it's a long time since MR was defined.
    • "...seeing further competition to its services on the Inner Circle." This is first mention of "Inner Circle"; readers need to be told that this is a Tube line.
    • "Questions were raised in Parliament about the safety of tunnelling so close to the vaults of many City banks and the risk that subsidence might cause vault doors to jam shut or undermine the foundations of the Dutch Church in Austin Friars." The church issues is separate from those raised in Parliament about the banks, so I would split: "Questions were raised in Parliament about the safety of tunnelling so close to the vaults of many City banks and the risk that subsidence might cause vault doors to jam shut. Another concern was the danger of undermining the foundations of the Dutch Church in Austin Friars."
    • "In late 1902, the PC&NELR plans collapsed after a falling out between the scheme's promoters led a crucial part of the planned route coming under the control of a rival..." Dodgy grammar - should it be "led to..."?
  • Wood Lane
    • "In 1905 plans were announced by the government..." Passive voice, better as "In 1905 the government announced plans..."
    • "...on which a new station close to the exhibition's entrance would be built." Name the station.
    • Clumsy sentence needing reconstruction: "Construction work on the exhibition site had started in January 1907 and the exhibition, which also included that year's Olympics, and the new Wood Lane station opened on 14 May 1908." Too many assorted facts; "Olympics" should read "Olympic Games"; "and ... and" etc.
  • Liverpool Street
    • "the GER" I'd forgotten who they were, maybe spell it out?
    • Confused prose: "Following their successful introduction..." etc. The sentence is too long, too many facts, and its construction is somewhat muddled. "Escalators" should be linked - and do stations "use" escalators? Passengers do, but perhaps in this instance "install" would be better.
  • Ealing Broadway
  • Richmond
    • Ths captions to the maps should explain why the Richmond connection is shown in green.
    • "...although the company made no attempt to carry out any of the work." Which company is this (two mentioned earlier in the sentence)? This section rather leaves things hanging in he air, since a line to Richmond was indeed built, though not by the CLR.
      • Clarified that it was the CLR that didn't do the work. The line to Richmond already existed and was in use by the MDR and the unused spare set of L&SWR tracks to Turnham Green were used later by the Piccadilly line. --DavidCane (talk) 15:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Competition etc: "The co-operation between the CLR and UERL was taken a step further from 1 January 1913 when the UERL took over the CLR, swapping one of its own shares for each of the CLR's." This seems a rather casual way of describing the demise of the CLR as an entity. Also, describing a takeover as "taking co-operation a step further" is, well, odd. Would it not be appropriate to insert a short piece of text explaining that discussions towards a UERL-CLR takeover or merger had been proceeding, and that these were completed in January 1913, rather than the bald fact as stated?
    • I have rephrased. Other than the fact that all of the companies were struggling, there is little on the background of the take-over. Wolmar indicates that the announcement of the take-over was made in November 1912 after a "series of secret talks", and Bruce & Croome simply say "...in late 1912 the Underground Group made offers to both companies." and that "Both groups of shareholders accepted, and both railways were formally taken over from 1st January 1913." I have clarified that the CLR continued as a separate entity although under the UERL umbrella. --DavidCane (talk) 15:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Improvements and integration

No comments on the last couple of sections. I have made several typo corrections and punctuation adjustments; a quick check-through for others might be worthwhile. Brianboulton (talk) 11:55, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, as always. --DavidCane (talk) 15:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fixes look good. It's a strong article, and I have moved to full support, noted above. Brianboulton (talk) 22:29, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, with my usual bunch of minor points:
  • "The Central London Railway (CLR), also known as the Twopenny Tube, was a railway company…" – undoubtedly true, but generally in the article you're using CLR to refer to the route, not the company; as a reductio ad absurdum, consider "The Waterloo & City line is an administrative division of the London Underground, which operates a line…";
    • The form of the opening sentence is exactly the same as for the FA articles on the CCE&HR, the GNP&BR and the BS&WR. It was arrived at during the FA on the first of these I think. The first use of "railway" is necessary as it is part of the name. The second use is strictly redundant but included because "railway company" is a common compound. The third use is necessary as part of "tube railway".
    • I agree the CLR abbreviation has a dual usage, but I actually think I've used it more as a synonym of "the company" rather than to mean the route.--DavidCane (talk) 23:35, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know what you mean by "Among the [1901] committee's recommendations were […] that a line from Hammersmith to the City of London would benefit London's commuters", but I have the same books as you. I can guarantee that the reaction of most readers with a basic knowledge of the tube's history but not a detailed knowledge will be, "surely there were already two lines between Hammersmith and the City", given that one of the few Tube Facts Everyone Knows is "the Hammersmith & City Line is the oldest underground line in the world". (That and "Pimlico is the only tube station containing none of the letters of the word Badger".) Even though it will make the article longer, I think that section warrants an explanation of steam vs electric and relative journey times;
  • The "Wood Lane, 1906–1908" section probably ought to mention the term White City; if people know the 1908 Exhibition at all, they almost certainly know it under that name;
  • Any chance of slipping in a mention of the movable platform at Wood Lane? It's a genuine curiosity, and would liven up a necessarily dull section on the extension to Ealing;
    • The moveable platform was not an original feature; it was added when the Gate stock was replaced with sliding door stock in the 1920s because the new side doors in the last car were beyond the end of the original platform. I've put a bit in the Improvements section where it fits chronologically. --DavidCane (talk) 23:35, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In November 1912, the CLR announced plans for an extension from Shepherd's Bush on a new route, tunnelled south-westwards under Goldhawk Road, Stamford Brook Road and Bath Road to Chiswick Common where a turn to the south would take the tunnels under Turnham Green Terrace for a short distance before heading west again to continue under Chiswick High Road before coming to the surface east of the London and South Western Railway's (L&SWR's) Gunnersbury station." is a horribly long sentence; any chance of breaking it up?
  • Saying the GN&PBR had a "parallel route to Hammersmith" is a bit misleading as they're only parallel for a short stretch west of South Kensington; how about "rival route"?
  • Very minor point, but in 1933 LPTB switched to calling it "Central London Line" and no longer CLR; thanks to a Mr Beck's bright idea that year, it's possible to date the change in branding fairly precisely. Beck diagram #1 of 1933 still uses "Rly" but diagram #2 of later that year uses "Line". I appreciate Verifiability Not Truth and that the Times reference definitely says 1937, but the term was demonstrably already in official use four years earlier. – iridescent 20:48, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. --DavidCane (talk) 23:35, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support on 1a.

  • Prose is quite good. Image sizes: Rolling stock double, both rather too small. Can they not be centred and enlarged, or arranged vertically and enlarged? 1902 map too small for the text size. Some closing elements for year ranges are two digits; can they all be?
    • I've moved the trains to a vertical alignment and made them larger.
    • The 1902 map has been a bit of a trial. There are just too many station names to be able to make the text bigger, but I think it's important to have it at the same scale as all of the others, so I don't really want to make it larger than it is. As the station sites are listed in the text, I think that it's the shape of the loop that is most important in this image rather than the station names themselves.--DavidCane (talk) 22:31, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "lobbied the government for regulation of transport services in the London area"—generally, when there's an "of" to the right put a "the" (or "a" or plural with article-blank) to the left. But this one is OK: "On this date, ownership of the assets of the CLR". Tony (talk) 13:45, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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