Talk:Höllentalbahn (Black Forest)

Untitled

Other editors have probably realised that the original version of this article was created by putting the German Wikipedia article through Google's translation sevice — as good a reason for not doing that as one could hope for. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:20, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

The small chunks of untranslated German were a giveaway. The nature of compound forming in Geramn may allow us to break some of those untranslated words into readable chunks: Doppelstockwagen, for example, probably means "double stack car" or something very similar. I've heard many many funny stories about Korean college students using one or another of these translation bots. When there is that much difference between the source and destination language, a clean translation is nearly impossible for someone who does not know about the topic.--Smallwhitelight 20:27, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I've just changed "grade" back to "gradient"; is "grade" U.S. English, or am I missing something else? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:22, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think that this usage of the term "grade" is exclusive to the US, but I have certainly come across it more since moving to the US than I did back in the UK. I think that either "gradient" or "grade" would be appropriate here. JeremyA 18:32, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, having checked a dictioanry I find that it's a (chiefly U.S. and Canadian) alternative for "gradient". "Gradient" seems to be OK more generally (certainly "grade" would have confused me), perhaps we could keep that? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 20:57, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• You are correct—the OED states that this is a US usage of the term. I think that under the policies detailed in the manual of style it would be more appropriate to use gradient. Therefore I have changed the word back in the article and added an en-GB tag to the start of the article to reaffirm the reason for this. Because it is important to stick to one variety of spelling I have also changed center to centre. JeremyA 21:30, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

5.5% seems to be second half only.

The externally linked article is fairly vague, but the math doesn't lie. 600 or so meters over 25.4 km is only about 3%. If 5.5% is in fact a true slope, it must be over only a portion of the line.--Smallwhitelight 23:36, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• Isn't that what the article says? — "The second half of the route has a 5.5% upward gradient" JeremyA 00:17, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• • Somehow I'd thought that I was responding to a question of whether that was the actual fact (that the 5.5% was over a portion of the line only). Looking over the talk, I don't see any such question. Maybe my thinking that was the result of my own confusion upon reading the linked pages. Still, there is no longer any issue, not that there ever was apparently.--Smallwhitelight 19:24, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Title

Is the fact that the title of this page is given in English form an accidental result of the translation engine referred to above? It seems odd, given general Wikipedia tendency to use local forms of place names unless alternative English forms are strongly established. Obviously we have Munich rather than München, for example, but we don't have an article on "Freecastle" instead of Freiburg. I can't imagine any English-language guidebook referring to the Höllental as "Hell Valley" (and I've certainly never seen it rendered that way), except as an explanation of what the name means. Or is the English form used among railway experts, given the interest of this particular track? If no-one protests, I will go ahead and change the name. seglea 21:43, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"Hölle Valley Railway" is an awful lemma: At least the name of the valley should be either totally original or totally translated. "Höllental" means "Hell Valley" (because it is very narrow). The stream in this valley is not called "Hölle" but either "Rotbach" (Red Stream) or Höllenbach (Hell Stream). The official topograhic map no. C8314 shows "Rotbach (Höllenbach)".--Ulamm (talk) 00:31, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

@Ulamm. Normally with these railways we call them XXX Valley Railway, leaving the name of the river, XXX, untranslated because it is a place name. The title 'Valley Railway' is fine because that is standard practice in much of the English speaking world. In this case, XXX is not the name of a river, but a descriptive term, so it's not clear to me what we do with it.

@Segler. Try www.germany-tourism.de for an example of an English language guidebook calling it "hell valley" and there are others. www.blackforestinfo.com calls it "valley of hell". So we could go for a full translation. But stand by for the argument that we should leave it all in German (confusing most of our readers) by those who don't spot that it's a compound noun! --Bermicourt (talk) 21:03, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no River named Hölle in any of these Höllentälern ("Höllental"s). Wikipedia describing objects in all parts of the world, it may be easier to choose the local name as lemma, giving the translation only in the text. Otherwise Montblanc in the Alps would be White Mountain as well as Bíla Hora in Bohemia.--Ulamm (talk) 21:17, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Electrification

This article defines the Höllentalbahn as connecting Freiburg with Donaueschingen. And it says it is electrified, and is operated by electric locomotives, without any qualification, thus implying throughout. However my copy of the 2009-10 edition of Schweers + Wall's usually authoritative Eisenbahnatlas Deutschland shows the eastern half of the line, from Neustadt (Schwarzwald) to Donaueschingen, as not electrified.

Somebody must be wrong here. Can anybody help resolve this?. -- Starbois (talk) 11:17, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

A further look at the Eisenbahnatlas Deutschland shows that it puts its Höllentalbahn label alongside the line about halfway from Freiburg to Neustadt. And there is no equivalent label between Neustadt and Donaueschingen. So I'm wondering whether the issue isn't so much about whether the Höllentalbahn is electrified or not, and more about whether we have the correct definition of the line's extent. -- Starbois (talk) 16:32, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Still hoping some Black Forest railway expert may be able to give us a steer here. -- Starbois (talk) 16:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The WP:DE article supports the Eisenbahnatlas Deutschland view that electrification ends at Neustadt, but also the WP:EN view that the name applies all the way through to Donaueschingen, so I'm changing the article in line with that. All I need to do then is find some sources. -- Starbois (talk) 13:32, 11 March 2011 (UTC)