Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian Transport/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Melbourne railway lines

Many of the Melbourne railway line articles are a bit of a mess. There should only be one article for each railway line (as agreed in the recent North East railway line merge discussion), and one for each railway service. As it stands the lines of distinction are often blurred. For example, there is no such thing as the Craigieburn railway line. There is the Craigieburn line service much like there is the Albury V/Line rail service. These services primarily operate on the North East railway line as well as briefly on other lines on their way out of central Melbourne. To resolve the text on the physical railway line in the Craigieburn line article should be incorporated into the North East railway line, with the former rewritten to solely focus on the service. Same problem applies with the Cranbourne line, Pakenham line, Sunbury line and Werribee line articles.

A byproduct is that many Melbourne railway station articles have the line field in the infobox incorrectly populated with the service, that is already covered in the servcices field. Wantenline (talk) 21:19, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@NotOrrio and HoHo3143: You might be interested in reply to this, as you have been working on these articles. Steelkamp (talk) 07:53, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @ThylacineHunter: as we have had discussions on this in the past and came to a consensus but I'm not 100% sure where this is. We came to the conclusion that track and line articles should be merged into one another unless the track continues on after the end of the service. For example, it would be useless to have 2 articles for the Sandringham line, so its been done in one article. In comparison, the Craigieburn line ends and continues so there are more than 2 articles. The articles are already written in a way to primarily focus on the service. HoHo3143 (talk) 04:29, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussions can be found User talk:ThylacineHunter/Archive 3#Track diagram table discussion and User:HoHo3143/Rebuilding the pages for metropolitan, regional, tourist, and interstate lines (and it's talk page) --ThylacineHunter (talk) 10:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/STEM § Remove Sydney Metro

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/STEM § Remove Sydney Metro. Steelkamp (talk) 14:59, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Categorisation of historic services

What is the policy for data concerning a service that has since been split off into its own line, but in a historic context was part of a different line at the time being discussed? As a case study/example, this quote regarding Werribee (Melbourne) services "From Sat 9/3, extra Werribee services have been running on Saturday nights. The 6.25 pm (No.64) Werribee-Newport railcar, which formerly stabled at Newport until Sunday morning, now continues to Flinders St, arriving at 7.14pm. An extra Down (No.95) departs Flinders St at 8.00 pm stopping Spencer St, Footscray, Newport and all stations to Werribee, arriving 8.45 pm. It then departs Werribee at 9.05 pm stopping all stations to Newport where it connects with an Up suburban electric and stables until Sunday morning as before." - should this content go on the Warrnambool line page, the Geelong V/Line service page, the Werribee line page etc? Anothersignalman (talk) 11:01, 31 March 2024 (UTC) Anothersignalman (talk) 11:01, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see why it would go on the Geelong V/Line page. This is referring to a suburban electric train right? I would put it on both the Warrnambool line page and the Werribee line page. On another note, I don't think this specific example is all that important to be included anywhere on Wikipedia. Minor timetable alterations are not really within the purview of Wikipedia, especially ones from 50 years ago. Steelkamp (talk) 14:18, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Steelkamp. The quote refers to what is now the electrified line, but about a decade before that happened, back when it was part of the Geelong/Warrnambool/etc service. To give another example, it's similar to how Sunbury services worked pre-electrification - would that go on the Sunbury line page, the Bendigo V/Line rail service page, and/or the Deniliquin railway line page? The same could be applied to the Pakenham corridor and probably a few others. I'd prefer to avoid putting the same content on multiple pages because it means later edits have to be applied to all of them, instead of just one location, so in the Werribee example I'm thinking the Warrnambool railway line page under a header for historic services, but the Werribee line page could have a link to the line page with caption "For services before 1983, see here" or something like that.

Re relevance, agreed the quote doesn't belong in Wiki on its own. I imagine the final use will be something like "...the span of services gradually increased over the decades" with about five Newsrails linked after that statement (where the changes aren't summarised by a single source), so people who want more detail can easily find it. The reference (not the content) might also be useful to demonstrate, say, that the local line had a mix of shuttle and through services, and/or that these were railcars rather than loco-hauled trips. This was just the first example of this sort of thing that I encountered, since NR 04/1974 was at the top of my to-do list. Anothersignalman (talk) 13:34, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

References

Adjacent stations module for Metro Trains Melbourne

I made a WP:BOLD edit to the Adjacent stations module for Metro, simplifying it and bring it in line with the post-2018 plain blue signage by removing the thin white line on the infobox name formatting. See proposed change here.

Since the edit was reverted, I'm proposing it here for discussion. Any additional feedback would be valued. – Nick Mitchell 98 ^talk 06:49, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any major difference between the two revisions. The code certainly looks cleaner with your revision. I don't personally mind either way. Pinging Purin128AL for their opinion. Steelkamp (talk) 10:54, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Flinders Street
PTV metropolitan and regional rail station

Flinders Street
PTV metropolitan and regional rail station

On the right is a direct comparison between the two versions. I agree the code does look cleaner in the newer version, however aesthetics wise I would want opinion from more users as without the white line the station name doesn't seem to be aligning centre vertically. If the consensus is to change it, we would also need to bring Module:Adjacent stations/Yarra Trams, Module:Adjacent stations/V/Line, and Module:Adjacent stations/PTV Bus to keep it consistent.

I also did a test on putting in line colours in the infobox, similar to recent platform signs. However it could be messy since some stations have many lines. Here is the page: Template:Melbourne Infobox station line. Purin128AL (talk) 11:46, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I'll also note that the white underline in the current code is only visible in the mobile version of Wikipedia, hence the seeming non-difference between the desktop versions. – Nick Mitchell 98 ^talk 05:50, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

List of NSW TrainLink railway stations

List of NSW TrainLink railway stations is still quite a mess honestly.

1. Following the consistency of List of Transwa railway stations, I think that Sydney Trains stations shared with NSW TrainLink should also be included in this list. I would simply just include all stations mentioned on the official Transport for NSW intercity trains network map [1], however objections in the past by other editors were that there were just simply too many stations to add.

1 continued. I disagree with this decision, however, there is some truth to this as the stations on Sydney's North Shore Line between Hornsby and Central via Gordon are only served by intercity trains occasionally, yet are still on the intercity map. Services on the Central Coast & Newcastle Line usually use the route via Strathfield/Epping. In addition, I do agree that there are a lot of stations to be added on the Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line as well (with very confusing stopping patterns as well to add), but I think that we should just add them all without question.

2. Would anyone object to the removal of station codes from the table? Fork99 (talk) 00:12, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you on all points. All NSW TrainLink stations should be included. Its in the title: "List of NSW TrainLink railway stations". List of V/Line railway stations and List of Transwa railway stations already do so. As for the station codes, I generally think station codes should be removed from all aspects of Wikipedia, including the station lists and the individual pages for each station. Station codes aren't meaningful to most people, and for a while now I have been removing station codes from all the Perth railway station articles.

As an aside, thanks for working on User:Fork99/List of Queensland Rail stations. I would help too if I had more time right now. Steelkamp (talk) 04:04, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Sydney R-Class Tram#Requested move 4 May 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sydney R-Class Tram#Requested move 4 May 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 13:11, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Replacement of Vicsig links

Hi all,

I've noticed some Vicsig links being marked for replacement recently. I thought it was worth mentioning that the site usually (not always) provides its sources for each entry in the location pages these days, so that can probably be substituted? For example, the Vicsig page for Yarraman station references Victorian Railways Weekly Notice No.50 of 1976; the weekly notice contents are generally available either in various magazines/journals which can be found online (e.g. Newsrail behind a paywall, Somersault perpetually up to two or three years prior) or Weekly Notice Extracts 1894 - 1994, 1996, Alan N. Jungwirth, Keith W. Lambert, Weekly Notice Productions, ISBN 0646300105. The main value in linking to Vicsig directly is that each location has a timeline of known events (and some pages have track diagrams for various eras), so providing a link under "External Links" or "Further Reading" might be worth considering. Otherwise, maybe someone could develop a citation template like the one we already have for Newsrail, that works for the Extracts book, and one for Somersault? That's well outside my skill set. Anothersignalman (talk) 17:58, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

East Pakenham extension

I've just updated the adjacent stations module and the "Services by platforms" sections for all of the Pakenham line stations. Hopefully I haven't missed any instances of Pakenham needing to be changed to East Pakenham!

Could someone with more knowledge of the railmap templates please update Template:Pakenham Metro Service? Fork99 (talk) 23:53, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh and List of Metro Trains Melbourne railway stations, Railways in Melbourne, and Pakenham line need to be updated as well. Maybe Metro Trains Melbourne too, but I'm not 100% sure on that one. Fork99 (talk) 23:58, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and updated the list of railway stations article just a few things

• I've gone ahead and requested a photo for the new station to add to both the list and seperate stations artcle
• When the station was in the future section of the list of stations article there was a bus icon i removed it for now as there are not yet buses serving the station
• There also needs to be a better source for the East Pakenham opening date as the source I used on the list of railway stations article was published before the station opened not after NotOrrio (talk) 00:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Some updates are required for Pakenham line as well, including the stations tables and infobox. I have used https://pakenham.starcommunity.com.au/news/2024-06-03/level-crossings-gone-new-stations-open/ as another source for the opening date. Steelkamp (talk) 04:15, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

WA TransRegional bus system articles

On the TransGoldfields and Swan Transit articles, it mentions that Swan Transit is the operator of buses in Kalgoorlie, but all information I could find online is that Path Transit is the operator, e.g. Kalgoorlie Timetable on Path website, Path Transit about page, Kalgoorlie ticket guide on Path website. Just from personal experience, I visited Kalgoorlie in 2017 and the buses said that Path Transit was the operator as well.

Has the operator changed in the past 10-20 years or so or is this just a mix-up?

Also, I sort of doubt WP:GNG of the existing TransRegional bus network articles (TransBunbury, TransGeraldton, TransGoldfields), any ideas if a merge into Transperth under a section for TransRegional should happen? Note that TransAlbany (redirect), TransBusselton (redirect), TransCarnavon, TransCollie, TransEsperance, TransHedland and TransKarratha don't have separate articles on them yet. Fork99 (talk) 01:17, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Western Australian bus services are inadequately edited upon, and it is simply a process of editors who are keen to actually find the information and actually edit the articles. The https://www.pta.wa.gov.au/our-services/transregional main source of the overview of the PTA transregional services, and from a quick overview, the problem with regional bus services in any state is most are a mess and not regularly updated as they should.(For instance Burnie in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Tasmania shows indication of bus services not otherwise identified or work on, as far as I can see) It would be very interesting for the larger transport australia project to have a review of such services in each state that has them, and compare quality or general state of articles. JarrahTree 02:28, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I think merging into a new page on TransRegional would be best, where all TransRegional brands can be covered. I have created Draft:TransRegional to work on this. When that gets moved to mainspace, the existing TransRegional articles can be merged into that on a case-by-case basis. Some of the existing articles, namely TransBunbury, might be able stand on their own though without merging.

Regarding the operators, the discrepancy you are seeing is because the bus contracts are retendered every ten years or so. The PTA website says that TransGoldfields is run by Swan Transit. This article on Busnews.com.au from 2023 says that Swan Transit began operating in Kalgoorlie two years before. Steelkamp (talk) 05:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Strong objection to merging - the regional bus history is not necessarily 'case-by-case' at all - all of the regional bus operations, if properly written up are adequately notable each and every one - it is simply not an easy task to offset the urge to merge - the material is there, it is just the time and effort of editor(s) to wean themselves of online materials... JarrahTree 05:21, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Also WA is not an orphan, regional bus services in Australia are poorly written up - and could do with lots of what is apparently not available - active editors in the area. JarrahTree 05:25, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Proposal for major improvements to Hitachi (Australian train) involving image placements in separate sections and removal of the Gallery section

Hi all, I am currently proposing on what to do with the images and the Gallery section on Hitachi (Australian train). My thought is to place some of the images already used in the Gallery section to different sections and sub-sections of that article. The reason is because Gallery is likely not needed in that article and I think the images have a better section to place them on. What are your thoughts about the changes? Keep Gallery or move images to different sections of that article? Thanks! PEPSI697 (talk) 15:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Joondalup line#Requested move 14 July 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Joondalup line#Requested move 14 July 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 • [𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙺] 22:38, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Self published sources

Recently I flagged a couple of cites on East West Bus Company and SmartBus that were from Wongm's Rail Gallery as self published. These were reversed with the editor's rationale being: cannot justify as self published source, as the source is predominantly photos.

WP:SPS states: Anyone can create a personal web page, self-publish a book, or claim to be an expert. That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.

From what I can work out the site's sole contributor, Marcus Wong, is not a published author. The website states he is a train nut amateur photographer. He may be knowledgeable, but cannot find any reference to him work published by reliable, independent publications. Nothing comes up in the National or Victorian State Library catalogues.

Likewise same editor is using a discussion from an internet forum as a cite. I thought this was considered WP:USERGENERATED and thus not permitted.

Was going to take it the reliable sources noticeboard, but thought would see if editors had opinions here first. Fishaharris (talk) 00:00, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Marcus has a wealth of thoroughly labelled imagery but clearly does not meet the standard of an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. His captions really ought not to be used as RS. Triptothecottage (talk) 01:04, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with everything you have just said. "cannot justify as self published source, as the source is predominantly photos" is a nonsensical statement. Forums are definitely not allowed either. Steelkamp (talk) 01:13, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

The project should have had well established the standard in its original scope and aim, that postings in forums do not constitute anything of any substance. Anybody can say anything without any form of clarification from a independent reliable source. Far too many people post things to social media about transport subjects even here in Western Australia that can not be verified in any way, I am sure that the problem is multiplied in Melbourne as well. JarrahTree 01:48, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Just as an FYI, Marcus Wong (@Wongm) appears to have a Wikipedia account too - nothing much further to add from me about this.

@Marcnut1996: FYI as the editor discussed above. Fork99 (talk) 02:23, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

The citations I have put are for the photos and not the captions. It is also noted that the Wongm's Rail Gallery (which I used) is a different website to his blog (which for obvious reasons is not an acceptable source in Wikipedia). WP:SPS does not mention photos to be unacceptable as sources. Marcnut1996 (talk) 03:26, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

That WP:SPS does not mention photos is irrelevant, the issue is that the website is self published, i.e. it has no editorial control, its no more reliable than a blog or social media post. If the only way that West Bus Company operated a SmartBus route can only be backed up by a photograph and not by a published work, it should be edited out. Fishaharris (talk) 22:51, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I am pretty sure the way you have tagged the SPS is wrong. I think it should be within the ref tags and not outside. It will be best if someone else with more wikipedia experience could help verify if the SPS tag was done correctly or not. Marcnut1996 (talk) 01:30, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

@Fishaharris: I just checked the guidelines. Could you change all tags from {{sps}} to {{Self-published source}} instead, and put it within the ref tags. The Template:Self-published source tag is more appropriate, read the associated guide. Marcnut1996 (talk) 01:38, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

I changed the tags myself anyways. I also removed the {{unreliable sources}} hatnote from Melbourne bus route 901 as only one source is flagged as SPS and the sentence has now been backed up with another source. However, I kept the hatnote for East West Bus Company. Marcnut1996 (talk) 10:18, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

The Wongm cites were only being used to either back up relatively trivial text or text already back up by a more reliable source. Neither is necessary, so have removed from both articles. Wantenline (talk) 10:40, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Victorian infobox station fields

Many of the Victorian railway station infoboxes have the 'Line' field incorrectly populated. This field should be the physical railway line, not the service. The latter goes further down in the 'Services' field. Hence Craigieburn railway station should have the line field populated with North East railway line and not Craigieburn line and Seymour V/Line rail service. Likewise Pakenham railway station should have the line field populated with Gippsland railway line and not Pakenham line and Gippsland V/Line rail service Wantenline (talk) 10:53, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Park Road/Boggo Road station articles

Proposed merger of Park Road railway station, Boggo Road busway station and Boggo Road railway station content and all three redirected to a new article Boggo Road station. Please discuss in Talk:Boggo Road railway station. DigitalPanda (talk) 08:28, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Citation template (and other templates)

Responding to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian Transport/Archive 2#Replacement of Vicsig links...
@Anothersignalman (and anyone else that wants templates),
I can happily create a citation template for whatever is needed. I have created both simple (eg Stopping All Stations, VR Diagram books) and some more complex (eg Newsrail and Brief History Books) templates.

• Newsrail - automatically swaps publisher between "ARHS Victoria Division" and "Victorian Rail Publishing Inc" depending on year as well as auto getting the volume and number from the month and year.
• Brief History Books - automatically changing title, date, isbn, and even the addition of Daryl Gregory as author from book 4 onwards depending on what volume is selected.

I'd just need the details for what to add to each template.
This isn't limited to just citation templates, I have also made Table Age Calculator (or TAC2 for short) – a useful little thing to add sortable start date, sortable end date, and then give the age to a table without the need to re type the date multiple times (removing the chance of simple little errors). -- ThylacineHunter (talk) 06:57, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Number of years to include station infobox patronage figures

With the recent publication of patronage statistics for Victorian railway stations the relevant infobox sections of many railway station articles in Victoria has expanded dramatically. For example, see Laburnum railway station with figures going back to 2005. While this is important information it does make the infobox very large. To remediate this I would like to propose that only the past three years of patronage figures are included directly in the infobox - any previous statistics can be included in the main article (perhaps as a graph). Happy to discuss. Takerlamar (talk) 02:12, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

All the way back to 2005 is clearly excessive. UK stations have statistics for the most recent five years. That would have been a good thing during COVID, so people can easily see the pre-pandemic numbers, but now that we have reached a new normal, I don't think five years is as good anymore. Three years would be good, so that a trend can be shown, without there being too many years to show. Steelkamp (talk) 03:53, 11 October 2024 (UTC)