Talk:Rio Grande 223

Merged historical significance section into the rest of the article

I merged the section into the rest of the article. The value of some context for how the railroad it was in was important is nonzero, but it broke the flow between the lead and the body and went into way too much detail. Deleting appears to be causing an edit war, so maybe merging it in without deleting the content will work? Having a sentence in the lead (supposed to provide context for this) is probably a better place to have this kind of stuff in any case. Most of the rest of the content in the section was already in other parts of the article, with more reliable-source citing. Mrfoogles (talk) 21:59, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I still have questions on if the claim of "largest order of 3' gauge engines" makes sense, seeing that it was more-so a series of orders (one with Grant and several through-out the years with Baldwin); but I think for now it makes sense to leave it as-is until better sourcing is acquired. I appreciate your help in streamlining the article's introduction. Xboxtravis7992 (talk) 23:46, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I also added a dubious tag to one of the claims that stuck around from prior revisions regarding the economic impact of the railroad. While it was arguably a long term net benefit to my understanding the Utah Territory underwent an economic depression after the arrival of the railroad, since the loss of Utah's prior regional goods monopoly and the Federal Government's crackdown on polygamy among the Mormon Pioneers particularly with the Edmunds Tucker laws caused a lot of economic disturbance in the area around that time. Furthermore the D&RGW.Ry was predated by the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and Utah Northern to the region; so it's impact was really breaking the UP monopoly and allowing CP traffic to re-route on the Rio Grandes to Denver instead. That is something though I would need more research to verify, but again I do wonder if it is really within the scope of the 223 article to begin with. Xboxtravis7992 (talk) 14:59, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

• Note as well, since the evidence 223 never ran on the DRGW.Ry before it split from the DRG as well, I question the relevance to the regional impact and this specific locomotive too. I don't know the scope of it's time in Colorado as well as the Utah history, so maybe the DRG impact in Colorado western slope where the 223 was serving more of an immediate net positive than it was on the Utah Territory side.

Xboxtravis7992 (talk) 15:06, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe try deleting the dubiously sourced bits and replacing them with some other context for what the railroad the train was on was doing at the time? That would do the job in a better sourced way and maybe go over better in the whole edit war. I think the books do seem kind of dubious from what's on the talk page. Also, it is interesting to know what kind of impact the jobs the trains do have on things, even if it's not directly about the engine itself. Good luck with the article. Mrfoogles (talk) 19:04, 26 March 2024 (UTC)