Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Locomotives task force/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Images needed

In going through articles to bypass some template redirects, I found a number of locomotive articles that lack images. There are many more, I'm sure, but those that I've found are now tagged with Imageneeded=yes in their {{TrainsWikiProject}} calls, which adds them to Category:Rail transport articles needing images. Scan through your photos and free photo sources for images that will fit the bill for these articles. Slambo (Speak) 20:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Generic article

Hey. It looks participants here are mainly devoted to add articles to single engine types. However, the "main" articles (electric and diesel locomotive) are really poor. Further, there's user:Mangoe, an American user, who has them under his eye and deletes attempt to debias them from a typically US-point of view. Let me know!--Attilios 18:04, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Data on the earliest US locos

This item just popped up in my RSS reader today... http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=81152

I haven't had time to fully digest the info yet, but it looks like data that we need to incorporate here. Anyone want to get a start on it? Slambo (Speak) 13:00, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Reorganization of Whyte notation pages

There's a reorganization of the pages for individual whyte notations under discussion at Talk:Whyte notation. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 16:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Purpose and participation

What is the Locomotives task force, and how does one become involved with it? Erzahler 21:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The Locomotives task force is a group of editors within WikiProject Trains who work on articles about locomotives, their parts and manufacturers worldwide. It was set up as a task force rather than as a separate WikiProject so we wouldn't have to duplicate all of the efforts of WP Trains that are involved in project maintenance. One goal of the task force is to raise as many locomotive articles as possible up to Featured article status; one of the first locomotive articles I worked on, John Bull (locomotive), is one such example. To become involved, edit locomotive articles and participate in discussions here. You can add yourself (in alphabetical order) to the participants list on the task force page if you like. You do not need to join WP Trains as well, but it would be helpful to watchlist the project page for information related to locomotive articles. Slambo (Speak) 14:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I'll keep that in mind, but I don't know if I'm knowledgable enough to join a task force. I've been a Railfan for many years, so I know a thing or two here and there. :o) Erzahler 17:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Just added my name to the list. I have a lifelong interest is the technological history of the steam locomotive from a British standpoint, but that is not exclusive as I am also very interested in French compounds and support the Modern Steam movement. Before finding the task force I made small edits to the pages on Francis Webb (engineer), Compound locomotive, and Anatole Mallet. As all these articles are more or less dormant and inadequate, I would be interested in some feedback before deciding on further action.--John of Paris 10:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Request for general LIRR rolling stock information

I am going to be expanding Long Island Rail Road in the next week, since I just received Steel Rails to the Sunrise through interlibrary loan. I'm generally not a fan of rolling stock, so it would be great if someone else could write a summary of the LIRR's rolling stock, including its history, with citations (or see if I can find citations from the book) to help bring the article to featured status. Thank you. --NE2 18:45, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The "camel" problem

I seem to have been caught in a slow motion edit war with User:Lokisgodhi over the article Camelback type locomotive. I would appreciate a visit to the talk page on this article to view some of the material I have found on the subject. User:Lokisgodhi has a history of this sort of controversy (his edits) and I'm inclined at this point to take this to WP:RFM if the merger is contested again. Mangoe 20:51, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Models

Someone has added a models section to at least one Locomotives article: British_Rail_Class_58#Models. Is this appropriate? This doesn't seem the best place for this information and could turn into a large section in some articles - some locomotives will have has tens of different models made of them in a number of scales. Zabdiel 17:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I think in general this is a bad idea. Some exceptions can be made, e.g. that Little Joe (Baltimore and Ohio locomotive) mentions that it is the prototype for the extremely well-known Lief-Like "Dockside" model. But simply listing available models is crufty. Mangoe 20:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I added this before I registered with Wikipedia - perhaps a little too much enthisiasm a couple of days after Warley, where the Heljan plans were announced (I had forgotten about this totally, as it was pre-registration!) - I also added model details to Class 17 and Class 53 'Falcon' as well. Happy to see it removed if it causes consternation. Muchclag 18:40, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

New Zealand Locomotives


hi, i have just created an account for myself on wikipedia. i am a railway enthusiast in new zealand, and specialize in the eo locomotives of 1923. i am planning to work on locomotive classes ec and ew next. i thought it might be a good idea to make myself known to you guys, and see if you have any ideas/instructions for me? Eonut 23:43, 29 July 2007 (UTC) Eonut

Welcome Eonut. Go for it! There are a few people working on NZR locos, so we will be helping. --Lee Begg 23:41, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Loco weight

I have put this post in several talk pages, notably the Template talk page last September, but to date have had zero feedback. —"I find in some steam locomotive articles that the definition of "weight" as "The locomotive's total weight" is a source of confusion. In some cases this has been taken to mean the total weight of the locomotive and tender (already covered by the rubric "locotenderweight" - the combined locomotive and tender total weight. If I have understood right, "weight" stands for the weight of the locomotive (power unit) alone, presumably in working order. This is a far more useful criterion if we remember that a locomotive can be attached to several different tenders in the course of its career. For instance giving the loco+tender weight for French locomotives would be particularly meaningless as locomotives and tenders were maintained by separate services and had more or less independent careers." Further confusion is caused by the very fact that "weight" displays as "total weight. It's really time that to get this mess sorted out and if no feedback materialises I shall just correct the error whenever I come across it. You have been warned!--John of Paris 14:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)--

Hamilton-Lima LS-1200 article started

I thought it would be nice to have separate articles for the each of the Lima yard switchers so I started the LS-1200 article, I'll work on the rest soon too, but its in some need of work. I'm not the best when it comes to writing from scratch and there isn't much I can find on the web by way of reference materials (only a bunch of rail fan photos) so if anyone knows more than I do go for it! --DP67 (talk/contribs) 04:05, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

LNER Class V1/V3

Hi,

I am concerned about a possible copy violation regarding LNER Class V1/V3 - the majority of the text has been lifted from the LNER Encyclopedia. Could someone check this out? I have mentioned it on the article's talk page.

–MDCollins (talk) 14:34, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems you're right. This should be deleted and re-created; I may go ahead and do that. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 22:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I performed a selective delete to restore to the last non-copyvio revision, and then removed inaccurate info that was previously placed in it. It needs work. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 22:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Speaking of which, it might be an idea to go through User:Broomhalla's contributions and check out the content; I doubt that this is the only one. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 22:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Houston's 982 "Rabbit"

I was wondering if anyone could help with this. It is a good piece of history with a good story behind it. Originally placed at Hermann Park after retirement, and later moved to Minute Maid Park, I think it deserves a good sized mention on these two articles, but there isn't enough information for its own article. The move from the Hermann Park to Minute Maid was a feature on History Channel episode. While I have some of the links that provide information, I don't have enough knowledge to write an article on this matter. If there is interest, I can provide additional links, but for now, all I have is a teaser. [1] If no one is interested, I'll try to tackle it. Thanks!--Hourick (talk) 17:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


Two Pages on Same Loco

There are currently two pages on the Prussian P 8, both clearly based on the same de.wikipedia source. Prussian P 8 is complete and should, in my view, be retained. P8 (locomotive) is still work in progress and 95% of it is in the other article, I propose that it is deleted. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:31, 24 June 2008 (UTC) bermicourt 20:31 24 Jun 2008.

We have a naming convention problem trying to start here. The German Wikipedia as "Prussian XX" and "Bavarian XX" article titles. Personally I would prefer "XX (locomotive)" titles, or "XX (Prussian locomotive)" if it came to that. The "(locomotive)" qualifier could be dropped, of course. Mangoe (talk) 22:10, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Canadian Pacific Railway Locomotive Images

I've upload a series of pictures of Canadian Pacific Railway steam locomotive #5361 that's stored in Depew, New York near where I work. I hope they might be of some interest. Below are the file names

  • Image:Canadian Pacific Railroad Locomotive -5361 pic 1.jpg
  • Image:Canadian Pacific Railroad Locomotive -5361 pic 2.jpg
  • Image:Canadian Pacific Railroad Locomotive -5361 pic 3.jpg
  • Image:Canadian Pacific Railroad Locomotive -5361 pic 4.jpg Shinerunner (talk) 01:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

John Bull (locomotive) FAR

John Bull (locomotive) has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Halgin (talk) 00:41, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Some assistance requested on Vauclain compound

I've been working on putting in Vauclain compound, and there are a couple of details I would like some help with.

First, on the matter of surviving examples: I know that all of the surviving Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway steam locomotives were Vauclains, and we have a couple of good pictures. However, I'm not exactly sure exactly which ones survive. If someone could come up with a definite source for this, it would help.

Second, if there are other surviving examples, I'd like to know about that too.

Third, I've been unable to find a good photograph that shows the valve chamber sitting next to the high pressure cylinder on an actual locomotive. The M&PP examples had the low pressure on the top, and the valve chamber is barely visible even if you know where to look. I've found some very good textbook and other material of the time, but PDFs of scans of halftones aren't my idea of a good illustration.

THanks in advance for any assitance in these matters. Mangoe (talk) 11:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Userbox

Is there a userbox which I can nail onto my user page? I have {{User UKRail}} but whilst that overlaps, it doesn't encompass --Redrose64 (talk) 12:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

European locomotives

Whilst researching a couple of loco classes in Europe (SNCF BB 27300 and SBB-CFF-FFS Re 4/4) I noticed a number of articles in need of work, or creation. I have done some work on the BB27300 article, and have created a couple of stubs on Swiss steam locos. I have however noticed a number of different naming conventions - see for instance SBB-CFF-FFS Ae 4/7 and SBB RBe 4/4. Is there a reason for the different namings (historical, perhaps?), or should all articles follow one or the other? DB 103245 16:20, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

The main category is Category:SBB-CFF-FFS locomotives - the three things being "swiss federal railways" abbreviations in german/french/italian - swizterland being multilingual. Recommend to use all three to avoid bias.83.100.251.196 (talk) 23:06, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Should references to any available locomotive drawings be added to relevant pages?

ie book/page-ref or magazine/issue for reprints of technical drawings or modellers scale drawings? Or is it too close to being a plug for the publisher? Jonathanj1972 (talk) 12:25, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Add them if available. Not sure about modellors scale drawings - should be primary sources.83.100.251.196 (talk) 23:07, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Gas-electric

Are there redirect targets for gas-electric locomotive and self-propelled gas-electric motor car, or do these articles need to be written? --NE2 20:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

SD40-2 Merge

Can you take a look at my merge of the articles, EMD SD40-2(main article), EMD SD40-2W, EMD SD40-2S. The merged article is in here. Thanks--intelati(Call) 17:24, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Sanity checking bot

I'm considering writing a bot that would loop through all the articles containing a certain infobox, reading the infobox parameters and making a list of likely errors such as:

  • invalid data for that field (eg. odd numbers in a Whyte wheel arrangement, or a value in kN in a "power" field)
  • incorrect conversion, if given in more than one unit of measure (eg. this tractive effort)
  • implausibly high or low value (eg. this factor of 10 error); this could include checks involving two or more parameters expected to be related, eg. an implausibly high weight per axle could indicate the above problem of loco+tender weight being mislabelled as loco weight

My initial planned target is Template:Infobox Locomotive (in about 700 articles, the two errors above are from maybe 20 I've looked at closely enough that I'd have noticed), hence the post here, but it could be adapted to numerical data infoboxes on almost any subject.

Since checks of this sort only indicate that a value is probably wrong, not what it should be, the bot would not be able to correct them itself, but would make a list of likely errors to be checked against the source material by human editors. According to earlier discussion read-only bots do not need formal approval, but I'd appreciate comments before I take the time to actually write it.--QuantumEngineer 12:32, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Can I just point out that in a few cases, 0-3-0 is a valid Whyte notation. Mjroots (talk) 17:49, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 27

Hi folks. I've just created this article. Only my second here on Wiki, so please feel free to offer any suggestions or criticisms. I've got several books on the V&T and I'll be expanding this one as I can, but have at it yourselves as well of course. Rails (talk) 23:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, first up, the infobox you've used, {{Infobox nrhp}} is for a historic place - a building or similar; steam locomotives (historic or otherwise) should use {{Infobox locomotive}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC
Ok. I was just following the format from the article on V&T #18/#22 which uses the same box. Does it matter if the locomotive is NRHP-listed as these are? That infobox seems rather useful in that it lists all the NRHP pertinent data. Thanks for the tip! Rails (talk) 00:32, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
To my mind, the museum that the locomotive is in is the place; steam locomotives can (and do) move around, even if not in working order. Here in the UK we have several hundred preserved steam locomotives, some of which form part of the National Collection, items in which are frequently transferred between museums.
However, I think that the NRHP people should be allowed to comment, so I've placed a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places#Steam locomotive. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Where the main response is:
My personal preference would be to use the locomotive infobox as the primary, and embed the nrhp infobox within it using the "embed" parameter (see The General (locomotive) as an example). That's because I think both aspects are important, but what the thing is--in this case a locomotive--takes precedence over a designation. Note that the nrhp infobox is still appropriate, despite the fact that a locomotive is not a "place"--there are multiple locomotives and ships listed on the NRHP despite the fact both are movable objects rather than static "places." Andrew Jameson (talk) 13:43, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
I think that is a good representative of WikiProject NRHP editors' views. NRHP infobox information is secondary to a lighthouse infobox or a locomotive infobox, for an article about a lighthouse or a locomotive, but it deserves to be shown at least in a reduced format. Duplicative fields, besides the name, can be blanked out. In some cases the NRHP name showing in the NRHP infobox is the same as an article name and in others it is a name variation. One function that the NRHP infobox serves is that it verifies for arriving readers that this is the article which covers the NRHP listing of that NRHP name, which they may have searched for based on many copies of summary NRHP information being out on the internet, e.g. at private/commercial sites like www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com and www.archiplanet.org or at the National Register itself. The example is good, but more info about the NRHP infobox and embedding it at template:infobox nrhp. Hope this helps. --Doncram (talk) 14:08, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
OK, based on the above, I've edited Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 27 and enclosed the {{Infobox NRHP}} in a {{infobox locomotive}}. Most of the parameters are blank, they could usefully be filled in where the information is known. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:37, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, you beat me to it! And thanks for all the leg work as well! Rails (talk) 00:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Other candidates

A fairly complete (up to March 2009) list of NRHPs with "locomotive" in NRHP name are: (sorted roughly by state)

For all of these, a prepared NRHP infobox can be found, and a good, extensive NRHP nomination document is always available (sometimes online, sometimes by request for free postal mail copy to be sent, per instructions at wp:NRHPhelp). Help linking by redirect from any NRHP name redlinks here to any already existing locomotive articles would be most appreciated! --Doncram (talk) 14:44, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Weight or Mass?

Should infoboxes use the term Weight or Mass? Separate, slightly different, but related, threads started at Template talk:Infobox locomotive#Recent changes: weight to mass and at Template talk:Infobox train#Recent change: weight to mass. Comments there are invited. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:59, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Categorisation of BR steam locomotives

Do the BR ex-WD Austerity 2-8-0 belong in Category:British Railways standard classes? Please comment at Talk:BR ex-WD Austerity 2-8-0#Category:British Railways standard classes. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:51, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Infobox-detecting bot?

I've got an idea: what if someone wrote a bot that trawled through the train articles, detected those without an infobox, and put them in a category named something like "Train articles without an infobox"? It would make life a lot easier! Lukeno94 (talk) 20:18, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

GE Diesel Locomotive gallery

There are four last loose images in the GE diesel locomotives commons category, and I suspect they might be GE C40-9W locomotives. Am I right or not? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:25, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Loco I/D needed

Could somebody please help to identify a steam locomotive over at The Humanities Reference Desk? Thanks in advance. Alansplodge (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks RedRose, job's a good'un. Alansplodge (talk) 18:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

FM H-24-66

Just added this locomotive page to the task list -- Fairbanks-Morse FM H-24-66. Probably could use a little work. Erzahler (talk) 19:45, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

I guess that you mean this edit - stub templates don't link articles to task forces, they mark stub articles, which this isn't. Linking articles to task forces is done by means of parameters in the WikiProject banner templates borne on the article's talk page, and in this case was done almost six years ago. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:16, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Diesel Locomotive trucks

There is an excellent article on the Bloomberg locomotive truck used by EMD, but little or nothing on the AAR designed trucks used by other locomotive builders. The Type A has a stub, but the Type B is only mentioned as being used in several discriptions of particular models. Considering many models have been commercially offered featureing this truck, there must be materials that can be used to write an article. Thank you. 64.184.241.143 (talk) 16:52, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

JGR Class 3380

This needs help from someone who either reads Japanese or who knows sources on Japanese locos. Mangoe (talk) 22:51, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

German Locomotives

For information, I have created pages on the Royal Bavarian State Railways and Prussian state railways together with separate lists of their locomotives. I have also begun to add individual pages on their locomotives. These are initially all based on translations from de.wikipedia. One of the problems is that they, of course, use a different template for their tables. It's more comprehensive that Infobox: Locomotive and is designed for all railway vehicles, not just locos. It also has a colour scheme for German and foreign railways as a bonus. To greatly simplify translation and transcription, I have created an English copy of their template, known as Infobox: German Railway Vehicle. It's not fully finished, but is workable. Ideally we would have one template, but we would need to cooperate with our German-speaking counterparts on de.wiki to do that, which would not be straightforward. bermicourt (talk) 19:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Spanish Renfe Locomotives template

I've recently created a template that may be added (and improved) for all renfe locomotives articles Maurice27 (talk) 14:40, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Fireless locomotive gallery problem

I'm not sure I messed it up when I created the gallery, but it's goofed up now. I could use assistance from someone with experience sorting these out, thanks. Mangoe (talk) 19:44, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

@Mangoe: This is pretty much the same problem as Template talk:Gallery#Large galleries not displaying properly and happens when later images have shorter captions than earlier images. Possible solutions: (i) arrange the images so that they are arranged in order of caption length, shortest first; (ii) cut down the longer captions so that they're all the same length; (iii) don't use {{gallery}} but instead use <gallery>...</gallery>. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I think I have it sorted out now. Mangoe (talk) 13:44, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Last Passenger Service

FYI, Talk:British Rail Class 45#Last Passenger Service. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:20, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

SR Bulleid pacifics: Unrebuilt vs Unmodified

FYI, Talk:SR West Country and Battle of Britain classes#Unrebuilt vs Unmodified. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:24, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Boiler diameters misdescribed

See Template talk:Infobox locomotive#Diameterinside. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Train number question

There is a discussion regarding an engine number at this location. Please join in the conversation to help improve the accuracy of this article. Primefac (talk) 14:27, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Merger discussion for LMS Patriot Class 5551 The Unknown Warrior

An article which may be of interest to members of this project—LMS Patriot Class 5551 The Unknown Warrior—has been proposed for merging with LMS-Patriot Project. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:05, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Royal Scot identity swap

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Royal Scot identity swap. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:01, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Locomotives by gauge categorisation

The Category:Locomotives by gauge category is currently a mess so I have proposed an organisation structure to sort it out at Category talk:Locomotives by gauge but there are still open questions that need answering so please share your thoughts, suggestions and improvements there. Thryduulf (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

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