Talk:Disused railway stations (Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway)

Merge

I have suggested merging the entire content of this article into the long-established article (which I started) on the line itself. Looking over the discussion below, it does not seem to be sensible to have an article on a closed line just to describe the closed stations. It is a different matter where there are closed stations on an otherwise open line, but even there, if an article exists on the line itself, the closed stations would make a useful additional section to the article on the line rather than a separate article. Sangwine (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Mass deletion of articles

I'm currently editing and helping with what i'm hoping will become a Wiki Project Rail Ireland at the mo. However, i was a bit disappointed, that the pages for Upton, Churn etc. had been deleted, and replaced with just a brief list. I mean, where are the grid references? Where are the categories like Disused railway stations in Oxfordshire? Your going to have to do this across the board for consistency! When Wikipedia first started, half of these pages didn't exist, they only came about when people noticed them. The whole purpose of a stub, is that it's something earmarked for expansion. Now in Ireland, only the currently open stations have pages, i've created a scaffolding of categories for organistation, relevant stubs and templates, and i'm giving these stations individual pages where i have enough information to warrant their existence. Which is 95% of them. I live in Didcot, and i have about 30 publications, some devoted to, some only with chapters on, the DNSR. Accidents at various points, maybe 200 photographs, campaigns to stop the closures, timetables. I couldn't do that on a page with a list of stations. I'm planning to create all of the Exeter to Penzance stations uniquely too. Now at the moment, the page looks fine. You've done a good job :), it captures the attention of people. No POV. It's not clunky like "this is a station. for trains. it was in compton. it was big. It flows. My only criticism is that it is restricting for future growth. As Wikipedia grows, we need to adapt to that. Why do you think i created the pages in the first place? And the main line stations between Swindon and Didcot? Abingdon railway station? As a temporary solution though, it's fine :) Halowithhorns89 (talk) 12:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This has been a topic of heated discussion in the past in the UK Railways wiki project. The eventual consensus was that writing articles for every closed railway station in the UK (of which there are many thousands) was not an effective method. Most of these stations do not in reality meet the conditions of WP:NOTE and it was agreed that the best solution was to group the disused railway stations for each line into an individual article. There risk is that creating articles for individual stations will leave wiki littered with thousands of stubs that it is incredibly unlikely that anyone will expand. As with regards to the information that you might have, it is certainly possible to expand this article for each station from what it currently is. I would suggest that you look at Disused railway stations (Bristol to Exeter Line) for a guide of what can be achieved for these articles and I would suggest that you use any additional sources you might have to achieve something similar. Do note however, that any information you have which is related to the line and not the stations should go in Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway. If I can make two further recommendations. Firstly, you could have a go at creating a template that would allow grid reference information to be placed on an article of this style (the rest of the information included within the disused station template can be easily included within the station subsections). Secondly, before creating individual articles for all stations on the Exeter to Penzance Route, consider creating couple of articles instead using this style or discuss the matter at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways. There are some very experienced users there who will be able to guide you in this fairly big project.Grizzlyqi (talk) 11:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Could you please point me in the direction of the discussion and the consensus that was reached? I seem to remember that the opposite conclusion was reached, namely that no one user has the right to decide what is WP:NOTE and what is not. Given that articles exist on fictional characters which have briefly appeared in American cartoon series, I find it difficult to believe that a railway station which lasted for 100+ years serving a local community which finds itself deprived from public transport, such as Churn, is not notable. Instead of deleting the articles without any discussion, you should have created your page with references to the station pages where they existed and then proposed your solution on the project page. The section on Churn is less detailed than that which had previously existed - with an image and grid references - which another user had spent time researching and putting together. Lamberhurst (talk) 20:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Lamberhurst on this one. May of these places have no transport these days, and there are a lot of information regarding the line, like the Worthy Down and Churn stations, how they were used, famous events that happened. The replacement page was good as aa summary, but it does miss out a lot of information that must have been painstaking to find. It makes editing very limited as well. I am curious as to where this Discussion took place as well, as as far as i am aware, in Scotland, if a station existed, and the place and dates are confirmed, it has a page, people are going to these sites, simply to photograph viaducts, stations, junctions etc. I think in England people are being too bureaucratic, and i dont think we'd be doing our job properly if we just gave a little paragraph Halowithhorns89 (talk) 13:18, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

As no reply has been made to the legitimate comments above, I'm going to start reinstating a few of the deleted articles. The idea that we're going to stop writing about disused stations and group them all into a page about stubs to satisfy an editor's whim is nonsense, and any attempts at grouping station articles will be strongly opposed. Disused railway stations (Bristol to Exeter Line) remains the exception simply because the individual articles created were "stubs" in the real sense of the word, i.e. one liners to the effect that there was once a station in x town which closed on x date, and nobody had bothered to develop them. Lamberhurst (talk) 10:50, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

My apologies for not keeping up to date with this conversation, I have recently started exams at university and lost my ability to access Internet for two weeks in May. I remember that the topic was discussed either on one of the mainline articles or on the project's talk page (I shall hunt through the archive this evening).Grizzlyqi (talk) 21:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

There have been two discussions from 2007 in which the grouping of disused stations was mentioned/discussed. They are station articles and closed station articles. I should note that this course of action for these articles were specifically recommended to me by EdJogg who is an experienced member of this project. Also, there are many articles where this convention has been employed, to name but a few: Bodmin to Wadebridge Line, Exeter to Plymouth Line, Newton Abbot to Kingswear Line and Hammersmith & Chiswick railway station. Whilst I can appreciate that there may be some closed stations on the DNSR that will, with major expansion deserve a separate article, this will not be true of every station on the branch. For the time being I would suggest that you expand this current article (it is far from becoming too long yet) and then make a split proposal for a certain section when you have found enough information to warrant a separate article above start class. To give an example of potential expansion I have taken your advice about Churn and added a couple of the details that I missed into the article including the picture.Grizzlyqi (talk) 22:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Can I also note that I flagged the topic of the replacement of the stubs for this line on the project page before I replaced them with redirects. The advice to replace them with redirects was given to me by Geof Sheppard who is another very

experienced member of this project.Grizzlyqi (talk) 22:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry but the discussions to which you refer are not discussions as such, merely conversations on other subjects in which one (and the same) editor expresses an opinion about grouping - far from the "consensus" which you claimed above. This same editor has advised you to go ahead with grouping. When you raised it on the project page, this page was already up and running and you were looking for the means to delete the stubs and redirect to this page. Your actions only came to my attention when Halowithhorns89 wondered why his articles had disappeared, and I remembered that I had also invested time in making the articles more than stubs. The other examples you give of grouping articles are all created by one editor, Geof Sheppard, in one area of the country where he has been very active. All other editors are working to create individual articles for closed stations.

Nevertheless, it's only fair to weigh up the pro's and con's of a grouping page as compared with individual station articles. The pro's: you reduce the number of articles on wikipedia; the page is not a stub; all stations are covered; everything can be found on one page. The con's: it's a page of stubs; the amount that can be written on each station is limited by space constraints; an article on a grouping page will never be as good as one given the chance to grow organically; grouping stubs is easier than developing individual articles; you will never get articles like Isfield or Holsworthy. I think you have to agree that the con's definitely prevail here. Your approach automatically assumes that (a) disused stations are generally not notable, and (b) it is generally sufficient to describe a disused station in a couple of sentences. I would contest these presumptions very strongly - indeed, a disused station is very often much more interesting than an open station but it will take effort and reference materials to write about it, e.g. Warren Halt.

Expanding this article in its current form is a case of too much work for very little final benefit, and I will therefore not be contributing. I will, however, be fighting any future grouping articles in the South-East of England, and it was for this that I have taken the time to explain my reasons. Lamberhurst (talk) 20:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

If the discussions that I have referenced to do not explore the subject sufficiently I would suggest opening a new general discussion on the project page so that all editors can have their input. IMO the pro's that you describe do outweigh the cons. Also, the con's should be taken into consideration with the fact that it is just as easy to expand a page section as it is an individual article (I would refer you to the edits that I made to incorporate the missing information from Churn).Grizzlyqi (talk) 15:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Halowithhorns89 and Lamberhurst. Reducing each station on the DN&S to a single section in a single article achieves the worst of both worlds. The coverage of each station is too stunted and the "portmanteau" article into which they are grouped is too long. Editors such as Bruern Crossing and Redrose64 have created very satisfactory articles for stations on other nearby lines, for example Morris Cowley, Horspath Halt, Thame, Witney, Chipping Norton, Rollright Halt, Hook Norton, Bloxham and so on.

I suggest that basing an objection on notability is flawed. WP guidelines say that a subject must be notable in order to have its own article; they do not say that every sentence in that article has to be notable in its own right. Every village and hamlet gets away with being notable. I suggest every wayside station that served those villages should also be noted. Hence an article such as Horspath Halt can be expanded to include such historical gems as the Home Guard cutting firing slits in the corrugated iron wall of the shelter at Horspath Halt, making it into a static and highly vulnerable version of Lance-Corporal Jack Jones' butcher's van!

The Disused railway stations (Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway) article might have seemed a good idea at the time (April 2008). However, it now seems an impediment to further development. In particular, there should be at least one photo of each station when it was in use and in the case of any station whose building survives there should be a photo of it in its current use. 16+ photo's on a single, over-long Wikipedia page would be achievable, but hardly attractive. Please can articles for individual former DN&S stations be reinstated as soon as possible? Motacilla (talk) 00:38, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

The best would probably be to contribute to this suggestion to merge this article with the main DN&SR article and then we can set about reinstating articles. Lamberhurst (talk) 10:49, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

It would be a fairly simple matter to reinstate the station articles, since in most (all?) cases they were replaced by redirects to this article. Go to, for example, Upton and Blewbury railway station. This takes you to a section in this article. Go to the very top where it says

(Redirected from Upton and Blewbury railway station)

click that bluelink, then go for "History". Undo the last revision, and you get the article back. In a few cases, such as Churn railway station, you need to undo more than one rev because the redirect was amended. Upton & Blewbury and Churn are, AFAIK, the only Oxon passenger stations not to have their own articles. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:10, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Tempting as it is to click on that 'undo' button, I would like to do the job cleanly and remove a page which could cause problems later down the line. For example, another user could query why station articles are being re-created when there already exists a page for them. Where should users contribute? Here or the individual articles? Should the text here match that found on the individual pages? Too many unnecessary complications. Lamberhurst (talk) 00:10, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Grid refs

Like Halowithhorns89 I have many books and also live in Didcot (but don't know who he/she is). Did somebody mention grid references? Okeydokey, I like grid refs, so here you go: Didcot SU525905; Upton & Blewbury SU511869; Churn SU517825; Compton SU524798; Hampstead Norris SU527765; Pinewood Halt SU510736; Hermitage SU505726; Newbury SU471667; Woodhay SU443634; Highclere SU464606; Burghclere SU470578; Litchfield SU460537; Whitchurch SU459479; Barton Stacey SU452422; Sutton Scotney SU465395; Worthy Down Platform SU480351; King's Worthy SU490321; Winchester Chesil SU487292. The position of Barton Stacey is surmised, because it's not on my map (OS 1" 6th edition sheet 168); the grid ref quoted is that of an overbridge just south of the station. The station wasn't there long: Kevin Robertson's "On Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Lines" describes it as "a short-lived wartime halt ... gone by 1941", whereas C.W. Judge's "An Historical Survey of the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway" says "in 1940, when it was built ... it is presumed it ceased operation at the end of the war". Photos in these books, and various others, which show the Winchester station definitely have spelling "Chesil", not "Cheesehill". --Redrose64 (talk) 16:34, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Would like to:

• add section near top summarising opening and closing dates for the two halves of the line;
• add exceptions to the general opened/closed against the individual stations;
• pop those grid refs above into the station entries.  mostly done, see strikes --Redrose64 (talk) 15:59, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

--Redrose64 (talk) 12:04, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

All good suggestions, but I feel that they should go in individual articles on the stations themselves, the advantage with this being also that the Anome Bot can pick them up and code them to allow sites like Google Maps to put them in as landmarks. Maybe the first step would be (1) to merge this article with the main article as suggested here, (2) implement your suggestions and (3) create over a period of time the station articles based on the material available. Lamberhurst (talk) 13:11, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Barton Stacey

I have it on verbal authority from Kevin Robertson (author or co-author of at least three books on the line) that Barton Stacey was closed September 1941, and the fact is mentioned in something called "Sutton Scotney: Life of a Country Station". Need to get hold of a copy - anybody got one? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:03, 26 October 2009 (UTC)