Talk:Cedar Hill Yard

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 07:17, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that Cedar Hill Yard in New Haven, Connecticut was the largest U.S. railyard east of the Mississippi River when it was completed? Source: "Its Cedar Hill Yard, opened in 1925 in New Haven, was the largest rail classification yard east of the Mississippi River" (The Hour, Traveling the rise and fall of the New Haven Railroad, October 26, 2003 [1])
  • ALT1:... that Cedar Hill Yard in New Haven, Connecticut could hold over 15,000 railroad cars at once? Source: "The whole complex was massive with standing room for approximately 15,000 cars. The site covered 880 acres and had 154 miles of track." ([2])

Created by Trainsandotherthings (talk). Self-nominated at 00:46, 6 September 2021 (UTC).

• This is my first DYK nom, so I am exempt from QPQ. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:58, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

  Quick drive-by comment, for ALT1, I would remove the acre count and just go with the number of cars. That communicates the size of it, and shorter hooks tend to do better. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:12, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

   Done Good suggestion, I have changed ALT1 accordingly.

• This interesting article is new enough and long enough. The hook facts for ALT1 are cited inline, but I cannot find the ALT0 hook facts in the article, where they must be if this hook were to be used. The article is neutral, and I detected no copyright issues. @Trainsandotherthings: For DYK, every paragraph needs at least one citation, and there are currently a couple of paragraphs without. No QPQ is needed. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:59, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Cwmhiraeth: All paragraphs in the article should be cited now, and I rewrote a sentence which was previously more vague to directly reference the text of ALT0. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 12:31, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you. This is good to go with either hook. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:31, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

ALT1 to T:DYK/P2

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Cedar Hill Yard/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: DanCherek (talk · contribs) 19:02, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this article! I will be reviewing this against the GA criteria and will post my comments below. DanCherek (talk) 19:02, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Lead and main image

• Caption can just be "Cedar Hill Yard, circa 1977" as it is clear it is a photo
• In general, captions only need periods if they are complete sentences
• Suggest wikilinking classification yard for readers unfamiliar with the term

All three done. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 12:58, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Location

• It wasn't immediately clear that P&W was the same as Providence and Worcester Railroad from the lead, suggest either wikilinking it or defining the acronym in the lead or in this section

Changed both uses of P&W to the full name.

• Page 20 of this is the reference supporting the entire Location section, is it the map on page 20 of the PDF? I am looking for the information on the abandoned tracks.

I have a book which has specific information on railroads in southern New England, I will add some citations from it to this section in the near future.

Done. The map is on page 20 of the PDF, although the piece of the New Haven and Northampton entering New Haven is missing on the map. It used to join the New Haven line just north of New Haven State Street station until around 1990.

History

• In general, I would strongly recommend not adhering to a strict rule of having a separate paragraph for each year, because this leads to a few issues including short, choppy paragraphs, and a lot of paragraphs per subsection. For example, having In 1958, the yard handled over 3,000 cars each day. as its own paragraph seems a bit much. Suggest combining some of these short ones for better flow.

I have consolidated a number of the small separate paragraphs into larger ones.

• "train crews would have to stop" → "train crews had to stop"

Changed.

• 1896 quote: block quote formatting is recommended for long quotes per MOS:BQ (suggestion, but not required by GA criteria)

Done, you may want to double check if I did everything correctly, I'm not familiar with the block quote template.

• "tensions with labor reached a breaking point" so is there any information on how this was ultimately resolved?

Unfortunately, there is limited coverage from this far back in time. I know the strike was ultimately resolved, but I'm not certain on the exact details. I will see if I can find more information, otherwise the best I can do is mention that the strike was eventually resolved.

I have not been able to find any further information on the labor dispute in question.

• NYNH&H: another undefined acronym, took me a bit to figure out this was referring to New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad

Included the acronym next to the first mention of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.

• Suggest wikilinking catenary (uncommon word)

Wikilink added.

• "it was becoming apparent" → either "it was apparent" or "it became apparent"

Changed to "it was apparent".

• "As of the year 1926" → "In 1926"

Done.

• "days could see over 4,000 cars" → "days saw over 4,000 cars"

Done.

• "just 30 feet away": remove the word "just" as slight editorializing

Removed.

• "in just 14 minutes": remove the word "just"

Removed.

• PC: previously undefined acronym (probably not necessary as it is not used again? saying Penn Central again would be fine)

Done.

• "CTDOT": define the acronym when you first mention it in the previous paragraph

Done.

• "for the months of November and December" → "for November and December"

Done.

• Toxic mercury: what was the result of the investigation?

I will investigate and see if I can find any information. I think two people were criminally charged in association, there was a large related criminal case involving undocumented immigrants at a company next to the yard.

Done. I found a news story which said that two men were convicted on environmental charges and sentenced to prison time. That has been added to the article.

• "CSX inherited the yard from Conrail when the latter was jointly purchased" — the latter what?

Conrail was split between CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway at the end of the 1990s, as neither wanted the other to gain a massive advantage in the northeast by purchasing all of Conrail. I can reword this to make it more clear.

I rewrote this sentence to be more clear.

• "This line is currently operated" per MOS:CURRENTLY, better to have a statement like "As of ____, this line is operated"

Changed accordingly.

• "Today, CSX remains the owner" "to this day" "still stands today" — again, an "as of" statement would be preferable. The idea here is to keep the article valid even if, say, the yard changes owners two years from now but no one updates the article, if that makes sense

Partially done. Two mentions changed to "as of" statements. The coaling tower is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future, it is made of reinforced concrete and Amtrak and CSX don't want to spend the money to demolish it unless it's at risk of collapse.

• I don't know what a TRANSFLO is, so either provide a wikilink or explain here

TRANSFLO [3] [4] is a company which does Transloading. I can add a brief explanation of what the TRANSFLO terminal does in this section.

I added a mention that the facility is for transloading, with the word transloading wikilinked.

• "New Jersey" appears twice and the second one is linked; either move the wikilink to the first one or de-link both

Fixed. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 13:42, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Additional comments/observations

• No text copyright violations detected; all quotes are properly cited
• Article is stable
• Source link is dead for File:New Haven Alcos at Cedar Hill 1949 postcard.jpg

No luck finding another source link, I will remove this photo if needed prior to GA status.

Photo has been removed.

(talk page stalker) While the source link is dead (there have been proposals to auto-archive source links on Commons, but that hasn't gone anywhere yet), that doesn't necessitate removal of the image. The previous version in the image history shows the reverse of the card with the postmark and lack of copyright notice, which is sufficient for the stated license. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:30, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Alright, that seems fair enough to me. I'll add back the image. Thank you for the clarification. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:39, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I've added the archived source URL to the Commons image. Will review the rest soon... DanCherek (talk) 22:09, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• License for File:New Haven EF4 locomotives at Cedar Hill Yard 1964 postcard.jpg says it is PD because it was published before 1926, but the description says it's a 1970 postcard?

Appears to be a case of the wrong license applied to the photo. I raised the issue with the uploader on Commons, who is an admin there. Hopefully it will be resolved shortly. If not, I will remove it from the article.

Uploader has fixed the license, so the photo should be good to go now.

• Suggest adding alt text for accessibility (optional, not required by GA criteria)

While as you said this is optional, I will add alt text to the photos that I know are going to stay (no issues with licensing or anything else).

Alt text has been added to all photos.

This is close! Putting this nomination on hold so that edits can be made. Some are merely suggestions; free to reply to any particular point if you feel that it isn't an improvement and we can discuss further. DanCherek (talk) 03:17, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

My concerns have been addressed, so passing this now. Well done! DanCherek (talk) 00:29, 13 October 2021 (UTC)