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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Droxford railway station/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 00:01, 24 March 2018 [1].

Droxford railway station

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Nominator(s):  ‑ Iridescent 15:34, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In 1897 the London and South Western Railway built a new railway line to block the Great Western Railway from expanding to Portsmouth, and as a consequence we now have Brexit; I may have left out some intervening steps, but that's basically the gist.

Droxford was an obscure country station that was built just in time for the combination of the First World War and the internal combustion engine to render it uneconomic. For three days in 1944 it was one of the most important places in the world; it was here that Commonwealth leaders monitored the troops massing for the Normandy landings, it was here that Ernest Bevin and Anthony Eden held their secret discussions about the Conservative and Labour parties cooperating in peacetime; above all, it was here that Winston Churchill annoyed Charles de Gaulle to such an extent that Anglo-French relations broke down, leaving Britain (and Ireland) outside the nascent European Economic Community.

As a general note, although "Noodle Books, Corhampton" sounds like a dubious self-publishing outfit in someone's basement, it's actually a very well-established publisher within this ultra-specialist niche area. To those questioning why I've included this image, which wasn't taken at Droxford, it's because the picture is so widely mis-labelled as showing Droxford, that not including it will lead to an endless stream of good-faith editors trying to add it. Every person shown in the photo is mentioned in the article, so it's not wildly irrelevant. ‑ Iridescent 15:34, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Remark from SN54129

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  • Verging on the trivia, your Gilbert source is missing its location (Heinemann=London, is it?) and "Visit Hampshire", "Measuring worth", "Disused stations", and "erenow" refs are likewise missing archival links (don't know if that's particularly important to FA, just an FYI because the red ink jumps out at me)
  • But about the photo "The former platforms at Droxford, 2016" (which I asked you of last week but totally forgot about, sorry), it's just an idea, but the green lawn in the immediate foreground bugs me slightly—does it slightly detract from the railway aspect slightly? Compare with say, with the foreground cropped, or even the foreground and background cropped? They feel tighter ore focussed at all? Although the later is perhaps off balanced slightly (although that in itself is perhaps counterd by the fact that the eye is not allowed to wander-->to the right, and is forced doewn the perspective of the old tracks towards the signal box and station house).
  • Also on images, at the bottom you have two sitting in the middle (the 1990 remains and the 216 openhouse), while above it there are two (Ashby's Pacerailer and the disused goods wagon); how about utting them all at the bottom? That way, There'd be four-image gallery filling the whole of the bottom rank, and it would tidy the two sections above (which already are quite close to the signal box. This is what it would look like—less cramped?
  • Fixed Gilbert. Measuring Worth should never be archived; it's a dynamic link generated by the {{inflation}} template to whichever dataset it's using for the conversion in question. Regarding the others, I generally feel that archiveurls are more trouble than they're worth, unless there's a particular reason to think the link will go stale. Visit Hampshire is just the first thing that came to hand for the length of the Meon, and even if it does go dead could be replaced without difficulty; Disused Stations is only there because they think they've identified the Commonwealth Leaders photos as taken at Ascot, rather than as a reliable source for anything other than their own opinions; Erenow is a hosted copy of a copyrighted Max Hastings book, and I have absolutely no desire to be the test case for whether archiving copyrighted material constitutes copyright violation (the official policy on the matter is a decidedly weasel-worded "The copyright status of Internet archives in the United States is unclear"). By odd coincidence, archiving has literally just come up at WP:AN, and consensus seems to be headed in the direction of "only include archive links if the existing links are dead". ‑ Iridescent 18:50, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't see the issue. It's illustrating "As of 2018 it remains a private residence"; I can't see that it's causing any issue to readers to show them that the former trackbed has been filled in and is now a lawn.
  • No; just no. We shouldn't be doing galleries anywhere; we certainly don't do galleries at FAC. Aside from anything else, abusing {{multiple image}} to line up four images side-by-side each with a forced image width is going to break the pagination for over half the readers; remember, more people are reading Wikipedia on phones and tablets than on all computers combined. (Even on my computer—which isn't exactly small—the images here are running off the side of the monitor.) Aside from anything else, you can't use a fair-use image in an image gallery. ‑ Iridescent 18:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No worries! But I do think it's rather busy with images, and was looking at a way of approaching that. ...SerialNumber54129...speculates 19:01, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
With the possible exception of the rebuilt signal box, I can't really see any image that could easily be got rid of; nothing is there for general aesthetics, everything genuinely does illustrate a specific point. (That includes the goods wagon; most readers will probably never have actually seen an old boxcar-style goods van.) ‑ Iridescent 23:02, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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I see there is some commentary already, but for the sake of completeness:

(There are so many of these, I'll annoy the delegates and reply inline for the sake of practicality) It's an abbreviation for "near"; it will be whatever name the original uploader chose to use. Commons generally won't rename images unless there's a specific reason to do so (e.g., the name is either meaningless or is actively misleading). ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ya, that is not an overly strong case for a file rename. Apropos of nothing, I've seen plenty of people reply to my image reviews inline. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:14, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
They look correct to me; they're coming back to Sheffield Park in Sussex, which is the storage yard for the Bluebell Railway, which would make sense given that this locomotive is currently owned by the Bluebell Railway. ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No particular significance to this section. There needs to be at least one image showing the front (e.g. street-facing) side of the building, and this is the earliest spot for it that doesn't cause potential sandwiching owing to the large route diagram template further up. (Every image prior to this illustrates the paragraph to which it's attached and thus can't easily be moved.) ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It actually illustrates the next section down, but the image of the Commonwealth leaders and the royal train mean there would be clutter issues if it were any further down. Droxford was (probably) chosen because this steep and narrow cutting at the entrance to the station meant that if the Germans got wind of the Allied leaders' presence and shelled the station, the train could be shunted into this cutting in a matter of minutes. ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Churchill, Eisenhower and Commonwealth leaders, 1944.jpg: Use seems OK to me (I suspect we don't have a source for "It is commonly believed that the meeting photographed here took place at Droxford" so we can't write about that misconception in the text of the article) but I wonder about the source - the link is broken and such photos usually are PD due to copyright expiry, not licensed under CC licenses which were invented much later.
The misattribution is both mentioned and cited, but in an extended image caption rather than body text. I'd be reluctant to duplicate it in the text, given that the WWII section is already very long; I'm mindful of the fact that this article is Droxford railway station, not Droxford railway station in June 1944. Whatever it's tagged as on Commons, the image is undoubtedly expired Crown Copyright since there's no possibility it was taken by anyone other than a government employee in the course of their duties—short of Stalin joining them for tea, there is literally no way this group could have been a more sensitive target, and they weren't about to allow anyone who wasn't thoroughly vetted either to join them or to do anything that would disclose their whereabouts. ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've added another license tag to the Commons file for that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:14, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
What more are you looking for? To me the context seems clear—I've just spent the last five paragraphs talking about the relative position of the goods siding and the platforms, and the paragraph to which this is attached specifically discusses the demolition of the illustrated building—but if you think something needs clarification I can do so. ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Depending on how nitpicky we are about "significantly" in Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the article topic the rationale might need a bit of expansion about what role the image has. I am personally not overly fond of a broad reading of "significantly" so I won't explicitly ask for more (hence the "maybe"). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:14, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto; it's an experimental one-off prototype that was destroyed in 1970, there aren't going to be any free-use images. ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
They're off by about 30m—the spot from which this was taken is actually on the other side of the road—but certainly close enough that I wouldn't worry about it. (If you zoom in you can see the station building clearly a little to the north; follow the overgrown platform south to its end to reach the spot illustrated here. ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

ALT text seems good to me. Outta curiosity about how other people develop their articles, I wonder by which process the sources for this article were found. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:46, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The sources for this one were fairly straightforward, since I knew Buttrey was going to be the prime source for the building and Stone the prime source for the line—this isn't exactly a topic where there's a myriad of conflicting views that need to be taken into account, nor one where there's an abundance of sources to choose from. The other sources are primarily just filling in gaps where these two fall short, such as the impact of de Gaulle and Churchill falling out, or the royal family choosing to sell Osborne House and consequently frustrating the LSWR's plan to boost publicity by running royal trains. (If you're after more general advice about how to source articles, by far the best tip I can give is to throw a bunch of keywords into Amazon Marketplace, note down the titles of the books it suggests, and then finding libraries that have them in stock. Because Amazon's bottom line depends on matching you up with things they can try to sell you, their algorithm is superb at suggesting relevant material of which you weren't aware.) ‑ Iridescent 22:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Huh. Didn't know about this. Otherwise, image wise this seems ready. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:14, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sources review

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  • All seems in good order, consistently formatted and of the appropriate quality and reliability. I have one small nitpick. The online publisher for ref 52 is correctly given as "Erenow". But I think the citation should acknowledge that the text comes from Max Hastings's book Winston's War: Churchill, 1940-1945. Or, better still, why not cite the book itself? Brianboulton (talk) 22:16, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

On a small non-sources matter, I have a slight objection to "General Pug Ismay". Not very encyclopaedic, and I don't think we should be using silly public-school nicknames in this context. Brianboulton (talk) 22:16, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the book, it's because I don't have a hard copy of the book so can't give a page number. If I'm using something online as a source, I'll always cite it as such, just in case there were any changes made between the print and online versions. (The only thing it's used as a cite for is that Eden was annoyed that Churchill and Ismay hogged the bath and telephone, and for a footnote about Alanbrooke vetoing Churchill sailing on the D-Day flotilla, neither of which are controversial.)
I flip-flopped myself about Ismay. We can't call him "Lord Ismay", the title by which most works refer to him, as he didn't yet have the title, but during the war he was pretty universally known as "Pug", and popping the name into Google Books shows that quite a few serious works omit the "Hastings" altogether. (Even his official portrait called him "Hastings Lionel ('Pug') Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay".) Our Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay article sidesteps the issue but giving both "Hastings" and "Pug" in the first sentence and never using either again, but that's not workable here since I can't really say "General Ismay" without clarification. (Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay is itself a current FA, but its author has subsequently been hardblocked so isn't available for comment on the matter.) Wikipedia certainly has numerous precedents for referring to someone by their nickname when it's the name by which they were genuinely commonly known, from Johnny Vegas to Ringo Starr to Jim Van Horne to Charlamagne tha God. It's not something over which I'd lose sleep either way if someone wants to change it to "Hastings". ‑ Iridescent 16:32, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've put quotes around "Pug" which at least indicates that he wasn't actually named that. Don't lose sleep. Brianboulton (talk) 17:09, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Jim

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Maybe it's the euphoria from Spurs winning yet again, but I've read through this twice now without finding anything significant to nitpick, so I'm happy to support as is, Good work. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 08:06, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is that the shortest FAC comment ever? Thanks… ‑ Iridescent 11:18, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from John

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Lovely article, on a subject which I was not familiar with despite being interested in both railways and WW2.

  • We have two "automobile"s and two "car"s. Could we standardise on car, linked on first use?
  • "Consequently, by the end of the 19th century the area was one of the few populated places in the country without easy access to a railway line." Which country is meant here? Many rural parts of Scotland never had access to rail, even at its peak. Maybe if England is intended this would hold water.
  • No problem with including File:Churchill, Eisenhower and Commonwealth leaders, 1944.jpg but does it need to be so big? Does the caption need to be so long? I would favour moving the discussion about the true location of the photo to a footnote. It won't be of interest to most readers.
  • No link to the Beeching cuts?
  • Is footnote N really necessary?

Thanks for writing such an interesting and enjoyable article. --John (talk) 21:36, 5 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks– to reply to each in turn:
  • "Automobile" and "car" aren't synonyms in BrEng; "automobile" covers all road vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (and consequently is correct for automobiles were beginning to come into widespread use, providing direct competition with the railway for both goods and passenger traffic etc), whereas a car is A road vehicle powered by a motor (usually an internal combustion engine), designed to carry a driver and a small number of passengers, and usually having two front and two rear wheels (OED) and consequently correct for those passengers who did not have access to cars etc. ‑ Iridescent 09:00, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I said "one of the few populated places", not "the only place". There are a few other populated places like the High Weald and Ullapool which were never served by the railway, but by 1900 they were few and far between, and almost invariably cut off by mountains or marshes.
  • I disagree with It won't be of interest to most readers. The overwhelming majority of people reading this page will be doing so because they've heard mention of Droxford in a WW2-related book or website (most likely this Times feature), and I'd say there's a better than 50% chance that said book or website will include that photograph mislabelled as showing Droxford. I feel the extended caption makes more sense than having a detailed description in the body text or a footnote; the caption has to explain that it doesn't show Droxford (most people don't read footnotes, and we can't perpetuate an inaccuracy), and it also has to explain who the people are otherwise it's just a bunch of men in suits.
  • No link to the Beeching cuts because they have nothing to do with Droxford. Although Beeching took the decision to end freight services, "Beeching cuts" refers specifically to those closures made in response to The Reshaping of British Railways, which wasn't even published until a year after Droxford's closure. The Meon Valley Railway's card was marked long before Beeching was appointed, with the abandonment of passenger services in 1955.
  • Assuming you mean By this, the BTC meant that 7 February 1955 would be the first day of no service—that is, the first day on which previously timetabled trains would not run., definitely. When it comes to British railway closures, there was no consistency between whether the formal closure notice used "first day of no service" or "last day of service"—which were often days, and sometimes weeks or even months apart—so it always needs to be explained which is being used. ‑ Iridescent 09:00, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Definitions vary. If it's important to make the distinction, maybe "Cars and buses were beginning ..."
  • Fair enough. What does the source say about "the country"? I'd rather make it explicit whether we are talking about England or the UK.
  • I appreciate this but I disagree. If this is an important part of the story (and you've convinced me that it is), why not have it in the main text? A picture caption isn't the best place for it. And I'd rather see the thumbnail at normal size.
  • You're right, I hadn't appreciated the chronology.
  • As 6 February 1955, officially the last day of service, was a Sunday on which no passenger trains were due to run, the last scheduled passenger services to Droxford were those of 5 February 1955. already clarifies this unambiguously in the next paragraph. I agree it's important but I don't think we need to say it effectively three times. --John (talk) 19:19, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've reworded to lose "automobiles" altogether.
  • The source doesn't actually specify. (I could engage in some fairly simply albeit WP:SYNTH-violating OR to demonstrate that over 95% of the UK population lived closer to a railway station than Droxford, but it doesn't seem worth the effort.) I've reworded to an intentionally vague but undoubtedly accurate unlike most other communities in the country, which is undisputable regardless of whether one includes Scotland and Ireland or not, and doesn't detract from the point being made; that at a time when the national economy depended on rail transport, a big swathe of east Hampshire was still dependent on horses.
  • See my comments above. This article is Droxford railway station, not Winston Churchill's visit to Droxford railway station; while the WW2 stuff obviously needs to be there as it's the main thing the place is known for nowadays, I don't want to give undue weight to WW2 in the text, and a discussion about the provenance of a photo which wasn't even taken there would certainly constitute undue weight. I don't think reducing the size of the photo would be appropriate even if the caption could be trimmed, as it needs to be large enough for the faces to be visible.
(adding) How does that look? I don't feel the image can be reduced any further, as on standard thumbnail settings (which is what 99.9% of readers will see) the faces become indistinguishable. ‑ Iridescent 21:12, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's great, thank you, I now regard all these issues as resolved. One more though; I find the text of the first paragraph of the Station site subsection very confusing, perhaps because I don't know that part of England. Perhaps a map would help? Would a screenshot of an old OS map be better, and a streamlined description of the location? --John (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(If you look at the site of the station even on a modern map with a century of subsequent development it should be apparent.) Basically, Droxford is on the west bank of the river, but on the other side of the river was the point at which five roads converged. The planners decided to build the station near this junction, even though it meant putting the station in an unpopulated area that wasn't particularly convenient for anyone, on the basis that it was more accessible to the surrounding villages even though it was inconvenient for Droxford itself. I've lost the route diagram—anyone who needs to know the exact route can go to Meon Valley Railway—and replaced it with an extract from the 1902 Bartholomew map, published while the railway was under construction; hopefully seeing the way all the roads converged on this point makes it clearer why the site was chosen. ‑ Iridescent 08:53, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's exactly the solution I had in mind, nicely done. You even picked the same map I was looking at (well, one of them). I may still have a shot at clarifying the language slightly but the map really helps. I now support. --John (talk) 17:16, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Wehwalt

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A most intriguing article on a sidelight to history. A few minor comments, most of which are fairly repetitive.

  • "On 4 June 1944, less than two days before the landings were due to take place," Less than one day, actually, since the postponement of D-Day from the 5th June to the 6th did not take place until the evening of the 4th.
    Reworded to "shortly before". I don't really want to make it "less than a day", as that will lead to endless good-faith editors 'correcting' the date. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Droxford station and a section of its railway track was used for demonstrating an experimental railbus " should "was" be "were"?
  • I'm honestly not sure; I suppose it depends on whether one considers "the station" and "the track at the station" as two discrete items, or whether "the station and its track" is a single entity. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Over the following weeks compensation was paid to those people whose homes or land would be affected by the building of the station or the rerouting of roads and to Thomas Christian, tenant farmer of the field in which the station was to be built,[G] and the LSWR was ready to proceed with construction.[15]" I'm not convinced that the sentence is well-structured. The last clause seems to hang off the back rather due to the lengthy piece of text regarding the arrangements for Mr Christian.
  • It's the result of my trying to condense five long and dull pages about exactly what compensation was paid to whom and when, and the fact that construction couldn't go ahead until both the landowner (e.g. the Church) and their tenants had been paid off to their satisfaction, into a single sentence. I think the compensation to the farmers needs to be mentioned to make it clear that the station was built on the site by consent and agreement and not (as is usually the case with these infrastructure megaprojects) by eminent domain, compulsory purchase and eviction orders. I've moved Christian down into the footnotes to make the sentence less unwieldy; I wanted to include his payoff to give readers an idea of the sort of sums involved, but realistically it doesn't matter. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The two sentence parenthetical in "Construction" might do better as a note.
  • In my original draft I had it as a note, but I thought it worked better in the body text, otherwise readers are left with no idea of whether this was a major archaeological site or just a handful of old bones. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The parenthetical regarding the potential of the line to be made two-track throughout might just as well have the parentheses removed. Ditto the parenthetical in the first paragraph of "Opening". You will note several comments relating to parentheticals. I won't object if you choose to disregard these, since it's likely a writing-style issue, but I thought I would at least point them out.
  • The one in "Opening" about the free fares only being valid in a single direction I think ought to remain in parentheses; it's very much a side point, but I found it an interesting illustration of the Edwardian business mentality that they were giving a free gift that obliged people to buy from them for it to be of any use. The one about double-track I've removed the parentheses and reworded slightly. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In addition to the stationmaster's accommodation in the main building, four cottages for railway staff were built to the immediate west of the station,[27] and a coal yard was built near the station.[28]" I might change "near the station" to "nearby".
  • "Although the station building was complete, work was proceeding more slowly than anticipated on the construction of the railway line, and the proposed opening date of 25 March 1903 was missed.[29] " I might tighten by omitting "the construction of".
  • I thought it made sense to make it clear that it's the actual building of the line that was causing problems, not that there were issues with it once it was built that caused delays, but I've no strong opinions either way. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The parenthetical regarding strawberry farming might do better as a note.
  • It originally was, but I think it's interesting enough to the reader to warrant keeping in the body text. By this point, they've waded through lots of rather dull material about the processes by which railways were designed, built and operated; the notion of dedicated strawberry trains is so unlikely that it hopefully hooks the reader to some extent. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Consecutive sentences begin "As major military facilities within easy reach of German aircraft, ... As a potential strategic route" I'd mix it up a bit. Is there a reason you used a comma for the first and none for the second?
  • Normal BrEng usage would be to omit the comma, but As major military facilities within easy reach of German aircraft Portsmouth and Gosport to me reads as if the Luftwaffe owned bombers called "Portsmouth" and "Gosport". I've reworded the first sentence to sidestep the issue altogether. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Because railway managers had proven skills in administration and of managing logistics they were in demand from the government for strategic management, and many of the managers of Britain's four railway companies were seconded to government.[45]" some form of the word "manage" appears four times in this sentence.
  • I know, but I really can't think of a better way to word it. There isn't really a suitable synonym either for "railway manager", "managing logistics" or "strategic management" in this context; the government, with the best of intentions, figured out that there were a lot of similarities between freight logistics and wartime logistics, and inadvertently wrecked the British haulage industry by poaching everyone who showed any aptitude. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The parenthetical in the third paragraph of "Winston Churchill" in my view could be part of the main text without parentheses.
  • "A string of visits from other members of Churchill's closest confidantes followed, " it's the "other members of Churchill's closest confidantes" that gets me, it is like saying "other members of my closest friends". Possibly "other members of Churchill's inner circle followed".
  • "dejuner" Unless I am missing something, the typical spelling of the midday meal by the French is "dejeuner". If Churchill wrote what you said, consider adding a sic.
  • "and Churchill informed de Gaulle the invasion was scheduled to take place in two days time." but at this time Eisenhower had not yet postponed the invasion, so it would have been the following day?
  • I'm not exactly sure if the decision had been made yet; it was made some time on the evening of the 4th. I've replaced it with the intentionally ambiguous Churchill informed de Gaulle of the imminent invasion. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Although railways were still invaluable for the transport of bulk goods, following the war the use of railways in the area fell sharply." To avoid a repetition, I might cut "railways were".
  • Perhaps a bit more detail on The Hampshireman. What sort of people were aboard this final train? Dignitaries? Railfans? Could the public book a ticket?
  • It was an excursion train chartered by the Railway Correspondence & Travel Society rather than British Rail, but the public could book tickets—there were 530 sold. A press report on the day said that "the majority of travellers were those whose practice it is to attend the last rites of dying railways". While it obviously warrants a mention I'm wary of going into much detail on The Hampshireman; it didn't even stop at Droxford, and detailed coverage ought to be at Meon Valley Railway, not here. (There was enough published about it to turn The Hampshireman blue, but I very much doubt anyone would thank me for it.) ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The final parenthetical in closure need not be in parentheses, in my opinion.
  • The two parentheticals in the final paragraph of the article, again seem to me to be unnecessarily in parentheses.
  • The first one, I've combined two sentences to avoid the need altogether. The mention of the Pacer I think needs to be either in parentheses or as a footnote—it needs to be mentioned, if only to stop well-intentioned people re-adding it, but it's very tangential (this was a decade later).
  • While I understand that WP:DIGITS allows the use of four-digit numbers without a comma after the thousands place, it requires consistency, and there are several figures in sterling that are four digits where you don't follow this practice.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:20, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The inconsistency with comma-separation is because people keep "improving" the {{inflation}} template, which is what's generating the offending "£7,900" and "£3,900" here; it's supposed to only insert the thousand separators if you include |fmt=c in its parameters, but someone has obviously fiddled where they should have faddled somewhere along the line and made it insert them regardless. I'm not going to even pretend I have the slighest idea of how I'd even go about repairing this gibberish. I'm very reluctant to strip out the autogenerated inflation figures and just manually type "as of 2017" figures—there's a not insignificant chance that the value of the pound is going to go absolutely haywire in 13 months so it makes far more sense to automate the conversion. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for going over in such detail; I've (hopefully) addressed everything. ‑ Iridescent 17:36, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]


SupportComments by Tim riley

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A very interesting article. I have a few very minor points you may like to consider:

  • "Signalbox" or "signal box"? We have both at present.
  • "Tarmaced" is logical but looks odd: the OED allows it, but gives "tarmacked" in most of its citations. Wiktionary doesn't include "tarmaced" at all, and nor does Collins. I haven't got Chambers to hand.
  • Clunky false title for Irish architect T. P. Figgis. And for Proprietor Charles Sadler Ashby later.
  • "for free" – commercialese or American? Unsuitable for an encyclopedia article on a British topic either way.
  • I wouldn't call it either—whatever its American origins I'd consider "for free" standard English usage in all varieties now—but reworded to "free of charge" to avoid the issue. ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "While express services between London and Gosport were hauled" – it unclear whether the "while" means during the period that or although. If the latter, a plain "although" is clearer.
  • "reductions to services" – unexpected preposition; reductions of services?
  • I'm not sure about this, and will leave it to see if anyone else has any thoughts. I'd consider the railway services as something that were provided to the line (and by extension its users) by the railway company. I've changed it to "reduction in services" for the moment. ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "few goods available in the shops while labour shortages meant" – another ambiguous "while". A simple and would be clearer.
  • "Fares were increased by 50%" – if memory serves, the manual of style points us toward "per cent" rather than the symbol in prose text.
Later: having checked I see the MoS does indeed point us to words rather the symbol, but doesn't insist. So if you prefer the symbol nobody can throw the MoS at you. Tim riley talk 09:42, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "only 7%" – ditto.
  • God help us; when future historians come to write learned papers on why Wikipedia collapsed under the weight of its own petty rules, they'll point to the fact that WP:PERCENT is a blue link. Both changed. ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "On 3 September 1939 Britain declared war on Germany, and the Second World War began". – The Wikipedia article on the war gives the starting date for the war (not the UK's declaration, of course) as 1 September. We ought to be consistent, I think.
  • Every country has their own date for this. As far as I'm concerned, when Germany and Poland were the only countries involved it couldn't by any definition be considered a "world war", and it became such when Britain and France, along with their colonial empires, declared war on 3 September 1939. ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "...statement to which de Gaulle took great offence" – I don't think one takes offence to something, but at it, though one takes exception to something – strange.
  • Do you know I have absolutely no idea what is grammatically correct here? To me "…statement at which de Gaulle took great offence" looks wrong. Being unable to think of an alternative wording to avoid the issue, I've changed it, but it still looks wrong to me. ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "On 26 July 1945 the Labour Party won a landslide victory on a promise to bring strategic industries into public control" – that was of course part of the party's manifesto, but the present wording makes it appear the sole reason for the landslide. It would be best to make it clear that the nationalisation was part of the Labour programme.
  • Spacing of initials: T. P. Figgis has a space between his first and second initial; J.E. Smith does not.
  • "four passenger trains per day ... one freight train per day" – I echo Fowler on "per": "It is affected to use Latin when English will serve as well; so much a year is better than per annum and much better than per year".
  • In the context of public transport, "per day" has a subtly different meaning to "a day". Replacing four passenger trains per day with six buses means that each day, four trains ran, and all four services were cancelled and replaced by buses; replacing four passenger trains a day with six buses means that the number of trains that ran each day was reduced by four with those particular services replaced by buses. As "trains per hour", "trains per day" etc is the language that's used on English railway companies' timetables, announcements and posters, it's also the terminology that readers in England—who will presumably make up the majority of readers on an article about Hampshire—will expect to see. ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Those are my few small comments. Hope they're of use. Tim riley talk 09:37, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks as always. ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to support. A truly fascinating article, and clearly meets FA criteria. Tim riley talk 11:51, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil

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  • Support, I have no interest in railways, so imagine my surprise when this fully engaged my interest during a read through this afternoon. The article weaves in matters of local, national and international importance, and gives a nuanced reading of the personality and motivations of those involved. A very clear, and importantly, non dry sense of geography is established, and the writing is especially clear and concise, though if I have one criticism, it that that the prose fell off a bit towards then end (have edited a bit). The usual excellent stuff from this editor. Ceoil (talk) 20:53, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Coord notes

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  • Can we cite the last sentence in the third para of Background?
  • Be nice to see the images in the closing gallery the same dimensions; I think the bottom of the second photo could be removed without seriously damaging its integrity, but will leave to you.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:24, 16 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Cited; while doing so I've also noted a (very) minor error in that sentence which I've corrected.
  • I can't see the issue, but as you're the second person to raise it I've cropped the grass from the bottom of the image and set them to standard-height-variable-width instead of standard-width-variable height. ‑ Iridescent 18:31, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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