Talk:Portsmouth line

Inclusion of service information

I seem to be in disagreement with other editors over the kind of information appropriate to an article about an historic railway route. This page is intended to describe the development of the line and it's technical features, all long-term persistent information most of which will not change in decades, or ever. A description of historic and current service patterns is of some interest in that it informs the motivation for creating and subsequently modifying the route. But service information is unavoidably ephemeral, and unless it is updated with each change in the timetable it is of no other value. Who would seek active train service details in an online encyclopaedia when the TOCs themselves offer definitive timetables online, and there are multiple mobile apps providing realtime information, including one from National Rail, the actual controller and scheduler of the trains?

I included a rough summary of service routes as of the time of writing. As a regular user of those services, now and throughout the recent disruptions, I can confirm that my summary and the description inserted in the head matter are both out of date. The summary is at least an accurate overview of the general pattern, parts of which are used or dropped by the TOCs from time to time according to fluctuating circumstances. I am always prepared to discuss this, but unless I see some persuasive arguments to the contrary I would like to remove the service details from the head matter again. It contributes nothing to defining the subject of the article, and it (inaccurately) duplicates information in the "Services" section further down. Perhaps we could add some of those details to the Services section, with the caveat that it is "as at" whatever date. Swiveler (talk) 10:17, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

@Swiveler: Where is this disagreement? There has been only one edit this year, and it was three months ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:46, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

A year or so ago I removed what I saw as redundant service information from the head matter, and it has now been reinstated in a slightly different form. So I assume someone did not agree with that removal. Swiveler (talk) 11:19, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

@Swiveler: If a particular edit is the trigger for your post, you must indicate which. "A year or so ago" is vague; do you mean this edit of yours? You didn't remove it: you commented it out. By "now been reinstated", do you mean this one by Amakuru (talk · contribs)? Please do not waste our time by making us hunt around and guess. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:53, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. Perhaps this is a disagreement, in the form of the slowest-burning edit war ever, with one revert per year or something! FWIW I disagree with the sentiment above that this is an article about a "historic railway route". The line is still very much in use, albeit not with one service for the whole route, and as such it merits inclusion of current service patterns, as indeed you find at every other article about a railway line. The service from London Bridge to Croydon has been shoehorned for years into the dreadful mess that is Sutton and Mole Valley lines (not a concept you find in any modern sourcing as far as I know, other than train timetables from 15 years ago) and now it sits more logically, straddling this line and the Brighton main line. BTW, as an aside, I've been mulling for some time over proposing to ditch the name "Portsmouth line" and renaming this to something else. Other than the Quail Track Diagrams I haven't seen any other sourcing with that name, and I've also scoured old newspapers - going back to when the line was opened - and not even found discussion on it being a through route from London Bridge to Portsmouth. Most sources talk about it going to Sutton or even sometimes to Wimbledon. Swiveler may have some sourcing that I'm not seeing though, in which case all is well.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:31, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

My main sources have been published syntheses of railway history, for which you can check the citations. A couple are out-of-print books that I was only able to find at the Lambeth Libraries Reference collection.

I also spoke to active Southern employees, long before I wrote any of this. At the south end of Streatham Platform 2 is a theatre route indicator that shows "S" and "P" for the down routes. I guessed S was Selhurst, and when I asked what P was, they said "Portsmouth". That is how this line is known in the industry.

Railway terminology is very conservative. Consider the mainline out of St Pancras - still known as "The Midland Mainline" 100 years after the Midland Railway ceased to exist. Swiveler (talk) 09:36, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I was referring to my edit of 13 July 2021, with the description "removed information duplicated in a later section", and to Amakuru's edit of 7 May 2022, "restore information about modern operation on the line to the lead, this is quite important; but replacing bullet points with prose".

It is still true that the information added by Amakuru (which is already inaccurate) is a partial duplicate of information in the section "Services", which is also now out of date. And that is my point - having the same information in two places leads to internal contradictions; and trying to provide current information in what is essentially a Transport History article becomes a maintenance headache, because it is impossible to be as accurate or as timely as live online resources dedicated to that purpose. Swiveler (talk) 09:06, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

London Bridge

Should London Bridge form part of this route article as it no longer has services to Portsmouth? Crookesmoor (talk) 11:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

The article is not about a service, it is about a physical railway line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:17, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

You are correct, and this is an important distinction, often misunderstood in other articles. Afterbrunel (talk) 10:45, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Scope of this article

I am extremely uncomfortable with the name and scope of this article (as others have suggested they are). The important thing is whether the title gives interested but uninformed Wikipedia users an idea of whether this is an article they want. Not many people would expect "Portsmouth line" to lead to an article about a line from South Bermondsey Junction to Leatherhead (or whatever other limits we may have in mind). The lengthy section on Engineers' Line References does not add to the notion that this is a coherent route; ELR's are a post war classification for internal use by the industry and may or may not illuminate any historical dimension. Finally there are very few citations in the historical development part of the article.

I therefore suggest

1) a rename, to (for example) "The London Bridge to Horsham line of the London Brighton and South Coast Railway". Yes, I know no-one is going to put that in a search field, but it is descriptive. And yes, I know, South Bermondsey Junction not London Bridge, but hey, let's keep it simple. And

2) quite a lot of added academic work to improve the encylopaedic tone of the article. Afterbrunel (talk) 11:37, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

I have now discovered that there is an article Sutton and Mole Valley lines which seems to duplicate much of this article.

We seem to be agreed that this kind of article should major on the historical devlopment of a physical route or group of routes.

The main LBSCR article is very well structured (imho one of the best of the big-company articles), but is already at maximum length and could not support detail of, eventually, all LBSCR routes everywhere; but conversely it is unhelpful to splinter article scopes down to short sections, with separate articles for South Brmondsey Jn to Peckham Rye, Peckham Rye to Streatham Junctions, Streatham to Sutton etc etc. We need broadly recognisable groupings of LBSCR route sections that have some affinity.

Contiguous LSWR routes muddy the waters; and the joint Epsom and Leatherhead Railway already has an article.

WIth great respect to the editor who put a lof of work into creating this article I therefore propose cutting this down to South Bermondsey Junction to Epsom, with some limited associated branches, although many already have their own articles. The excess from this article -- Leatherhead to Horsham, can happily be expanded in the Sutton and Mole Valley article.

If there is some consensus on this I will have a shot at making a start.

A new title is needed. Avoiding verbosity "The Streatham and Sutton lines of the LBSC Railway" might do. I feel that "railway" ought to be in there somewhere. Afterbrunel (talk) 09:32, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

• @Afterbrunel: I too have had my eye on this article for quite some time, and have also been uncomfortable with the title "Portsmouth line", as I can't find any reference to such a name in historic literature at all. The sole use of that name is from the Quail's track guide, but I'm not sure where they got the name from. As far as I can tell, the LBSCR regarded the Peckham to Sutton section as a single line, while the remainder was considered part of other lines (e.g. Croydon to Epsom for the section just south of Sutton). I'd suggest that we focus this article purely on that inner London section, and title it South London, Peckham and Sutton line (or possibly just Peckham–Sutton line), per sources such as [1][2][3] and map sources [4]. BTW, you mention Sutton and Mole Valley lines, but one thing we do have consensus for (if you look at the talk page of that article) is that that should eventually be axed, once useful information is written elsewhere. "Sutton and Mole Valley lines" was a convenience label used by Connex South Central (I think) to group various South London metro services together back in the mid 2000s, and doesn't correspond to anythign tangible historically or in the present day. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 10:57, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you, @Amakuru. There are two issues, then: scope, and name.

  Scope: It seems to me that the Epsom - Leatherhead joint line, bringing the LSWR into consideration, is a natural break point. That's why I thought this article should go as far as Epsom, otherwise Sutton - Epsom (four miles) has to have its own article. The Mole article could then be Leatherhead onward. If you agree, the scope of the physical railway under consideration would then be South Bermondsey Junction to Epsom plus Peckham Rye to Battersea Park, with passing references to several branches. [Have you noticed that Streatham Jn - Wimbledon - St Helier - Sutton is in an article "The Sutton Loop"! Why?]

  Name of article: My discomfort about Peckham is that isn't a well known "node" to non-enthusiasts; that "South London" may be taken to be a simple geographical reference, not the name of the line; and it's on the Catford Loop as well. I also feel that the word "railway" needs to be in there somewhere. I wonder if lumping the SLL into this is too complex? Depending on your view on that, the article could be named The London Bridge - Streatham - Epsom railway line or The South London railway and the line to Streatham and Epsom.

  What do you think? Afterbrunel (talk) 18:45, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Afterbrunel: well, I think we're almost on the same page, but I am still wary of replacing one set of WP:OR in calling it the "Portsmouth line" with another set, which applies a boundary chosen by Wikipedians rather than reflecting what sources say. The sources I'm seeing seem fairly united in separating out the "Peckham and Sutton line" from the "Croydon and Epsom line", so effectively you can still argue for a clear break at Epsom but instead of the Peckham line being the one that ends there, the "major" line is seen by the LBSCR as being the one from Croydon. And indeed the service pattern still matches that as trains coming up to Sutton from Epsom continue either towards Hackbridge or towards West Croydon. Croydon and Epsom Railway describes a short-lived company that operated that particular route. Finally, re using "railway" in the title, my experience is that we reserve that term for companies rather than lines, and would only use the term on a line if the two were combined into one article. Re Peckham not being a well known "node", aside from the fact that I'm not sure it's true - Peckham is a junction with four different directions available and also a well-known area of London - that isn't usually a consideration anyway. Weedon–Marton Junction line hardly describes well-known nodes. So, in short, unless you have sourcing supporting the name you're suggesting, I definitely think we should go with either the LBSCR's "South London, Peckham and Sutton line" or with the descriptive Peckham–Sutton line, which matches the format used everywhere else on the project. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

  And for another example of a short "line" article, see Holborn Viaduct–Herne Hill line. There is lots of precedent for this sort of thing, although arguably that one should have a slightly different name and should extend through the extension to Tulse Hill, as sources show that LCDR extension as part of the Ludgate Hill line too...  — Amakuru (talk) 19:47, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Amakuru I can't follow your logic here, so I suggest you proceed as you see fit. You are planning to actually implement this, I presume? Afterbrunel (talk) 05:49, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Afterbrunel: yes, I am planning to implement it. It might take me a few months, but I think I have some sourcing already from old newspapers and will also seek some book material from the British library when I get a chance. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 18:55, 26 November 2022 (UTC)