Wikipedia:Peer review/Great North of Scotland Railway/archive1

Great North of Scotland Railway

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because...

I found a copy of Vallance (the main source) in a charity shop and thought this would make an interesting article. In a way, the history of this small Scottish railway company is a microcosm of British railway history

I plan a flying visit to the railway to get a feel of the area and some photographs, especially of the architecture. If I'm happy with the article in September I will nominate this for GA or FA ... perhaps it could be TFA in September 2014, 160 years after opening?

Thanks, Edgepedia (talk) 15:45, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley

I should say this article has FA written all over it. I'll need a bit of time to give it the thorough reading it deserves. Meanwhile I have amended some typos, but please check my changes to see if you're happy with them. Two probable typos I didn't like to change, just in case they aren't:

• Subbies and hotels
  • "the Jubiliees": should it have the second "i"?
• Class S and later
  • "Aberbeen": I imagine this should be "Aberdeen", but one never knows.

More anon. Tim riley (talk) 12:35, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, I've corrected those two, and thanks for making correcting the spelling and grammar. Edgepedia (talk) 13:02, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

First lot of comments, down to end of Deeside Railway section:

• Establishment and construction
  • "£650 thousand" – unusual, and slightly strange, way of writing £650,000.

Done

• Opening
  • "1 d a mile" – I don't think this and the other fare prices should have a gap between the figure and the d. Similarly, later in the article, you sometimes leave a space between a whole number and a fraction (2 3⁄4) and sometimes don't (1081⁄2). Better without the space, I think.

There's a few the penny ones, I do them later. (Now done) The space or no space issue is due to difference between the {{convert}}} and {{fract}} templates. Other than raise that somewhere so that one or the other gets changed (a change that would affect a lot of articles) I don't know what else to do. Update There is a discussion already going on at Wikipedia_talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Non-breaking spaces in mixed numbers, so I commented there. Edgepedia (talk) 16:48, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

• • "the transportation of goods" – "transport" is shorter and crisper, I'd say.
  • "short on rolling stock" – short of?
  • "waiting on the platform" – a technical term, possibly, but to my inexpert eye "at the platform" would seem more accurate

Done

• Waterloo, Keith and Inverness

**"that the cost the bridge" – the cost of the bridge?

• Banff, Macduff and Turriff Railways
  • "due to lack of support" – "due" is an adjective and shouldn't be used as a preposition; "owing to" or "because of" is what you want here. (Though I believe the usage you have adopted is permitted in American prose.) ('due to' sounds alright to me, but I've changed it)
• Strathspey Railway
  • "The railway's main source of income was from the local distilleries. and was absorbed" – something has gone awry here Removed full stop
• Morayshire Railway
  • "However, it was the Inverness & Aberdeen Junction Railway (IAJR) who was to build the line" – singular verbs here, but earlier on you write of the GNoSR in the plural" – "they had been promised running rights" etc. [Will check through the article] I think that the singular form works better for a company, so I've changed the theys into its, or rephased to avoid the choice.
• Aberdeen joint station
  • "The wooden station building … was 1⁄2 miles (0.80 km) from the … station" – this reads very strangely. Normal idiom would have this as "…was half a mile (.80 km)…" or at a pinch "a ½ mile". But not "1⁄2 miles". I have used the convert template (which gives the km conversion), but add an 'a' and 'adj=on' parameter.
  • "a 22-mile (35 km) long railway" – but earlier "A 16 miles (26 km) double track railway" – with "miles" plural. The singular form looks more natural to me, but consistency is wanted one way or the other. [Will check] Been through the article. Hopefully I've caught everything.
  • "Circimbendibus" – really Circimbendibus not Circumbendibus? [Will check source] Thanks, Redrose.
• Deeside Railway
  • "The company survived the after railway mania" – needs attention
  • "with the passenger terminus 11⁄2 miles (2.4 km) at Ballater" – is there a word missing here?

More to come. Tim riley (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for tardiness. More soonest. Preoccupied with the FAC for Benjamin Britten of which I'm one of the editors (and should you be the slightest bit interested, do please look in, but quite understand if not, natch.) Anyhow, I'll be back here over the weekend with further comments and I hope useful suggestions. Tim riley (talk) 18:56, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Second batch

to the end of "Legacy"

• Renewal and extension
  • "all needed replacing in project" – missing indefinite article?
  • "and it collapsed" – I think you need to say "the bridge" here, rather than "it"
• Aberdeen to Inverness
  • "re-instate" – the OED does not admit the hyphen and prescribes "reinstate"
• Subbies and hotels
  • "taking 1 1⁄2 hours to travel from Aberdeen to Ballater; by 1886 this had been reduced to 75 minutes – seems to me a touch unbalanced: if 1½ hours then surely 1¼ hours, or 90 mins and 75 mins.
• Maturity, 1900–1914
  • Third para – make up your mind whether "locomotive works" should be capitalised or not. Not would be my advice. Removed the 2nd locomotive as well
  • Singular -v- plural – despite your remarks above about standardising on singular there's a lot of plural here and elsewhere in the article: "Finding their locomotive works at Kittybrewster", "The Great North opened their new station", "The Keith and Dufftown Railway run seasonal services" etc
• War and grouping, 1914–1922
  • "Britain declared war at 11 pm on 11 August 1914" – too much and too little detail here, I think. I’d rather know whom Britain declared war on rather than the time of day.
    • I've correct the date, but I'm going to check Pratt in the library to see why I got it wrong.
    • OK, I got the date wrong. Pratt doesn't mention who we were at war with, so I'll leave this ref'd to the BBC.  Done
• London and North Eastern Railway
  • "the trade unions were advised in 1928" – by whom? Perhaps "the company warned the unions…" or some such? Rewrote sentence
  • "used as an Admiralty administrative centre" – just a passing thought: you steadfastly lower case "parliament", but then to see "Admiralty" capitalised looks – well, one notices the contrast. I am a Guardian reader and so am used to quite loony decapitalisation ("lord chancellor" anyone?) but I think perhaps if "Admiralty", then possibly "Parliament" as well? Merely a suggestion.
• Legacy
  • "a number of days a year" – that's simply asking to be asked what the number is. If you can't give the number I'd say "on a few/several/numerous days"
• General: I am hopeless with hyphens, but I felt throughout that there were places where there wasn't a hyphen where one seemed wanted. May I suggest you ask User:Chris the speller to look in once I have withdrawn my oar? He is one of Wikipedia's unsung heroes, and has rescued me from all sorts of howlers over the years.

Last lot of comments will follow a.s.a.p. I am finding this article very interesting indeed, I am glad to say. More soonest. Tim riley (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Last lot of comments

• Early locomotives
  • "for two 0-4-0 tank engines" – blue link probably wanted
    • You mean tank engine ?
  • "absorbed their locomotives onto stock" – into? I wasn't happy with into, but found the sentence worked with the into/onto stock bit.
  • "most of the Manson's later locomotive" – unwanted "the" here?
• Class S and later
  • "In 1890 Manson was replaced by James Johnson as locomotive superintendent, the son of Samuel W. Johnson, then locomotive superintendent at the Midland Railway." – Would read more easily, I think, if reordered as "In 1890 Manson was replaced as locomotive superintendent by James Johnson, the son of Samuel W. Johnson, then locomotive superintendent at the Midland Railway."
• Carriages
  • "Bogie corridor carriages – I was about to suggest you blue think this, but perhaps it would be better to link "bogie" at first mention, which I think is at London and North Eastern Railway
  • "with a clerestory roof" – merely a tentative suggestion, but I think you need either the blue link or the explanatory footnote, but possibly not both.
    • The clerestory roof footnote comes from a discussion I had on another article about the unhelpfulness of blue links; not everyone has popups and they don't help when you print the article out. I've moved the blue link into the footnote and I think I'll add footnotes for bogie carriage and tank engine.
• Constituent railways
  • "operated services from opening was and guarantor" – something, not quite sure what, has gone awry here

That's the lot. This is a fine article, and I look forward to seeing it at FAC. Please let me know when you take it there. – Tim riley (talk) 10:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. Edgepedia (talk) 20:05, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to be busy this week and then away for a while, so I'm closing this peer review. Edgepedia (talk) 16:29, 29 July 2013 (UTC)