Talk:Athens Suburban Railway

Requested move 26 October 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: page moved.  Arbitrarily0  ( talk ) 02:28, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Proastiakos Athens → Athens Suburban Railway – Official name according to Hellenic Train. Source: -- Minoa  (talk) 01:53, 26 October 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 00:32, 3 November 2022 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support. Ebbedlila (talk) 17:22, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Verification enquiries
and do not appear to suggest that the Kiato-Aigio route is part of the Suburban Railway, despite using Proastiakos-branded trains. In addition, I do not know where I can find the source for the line numbers. Hellenic Train does not mention anything about there being numbered lines on the Suburban Railway. -- Minoa (talk) 22:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I am notifying about this enquiry, because how this will play out may result in a major rewrite of articles relating to the Athens Suburban Railway. -- Minoa  (talk) 15:28, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: an investigation into the origin of the line numbers have revealed that the now-blocked user Pumpie the line numbers without references, and basically the entire community went along with the flow so to speak. I will shortly be making fixes to the affected articles. -- Minoa (talk) 00:53, 24 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you Minoa, it seems Pumpie has left a lot of bad faith edits within the code! and may take years to fix underlining issues! SO thank you for you tieless work in this endear, making the Greek Rail pages that much better! ✠ Emperor of Byzantium ✠   (talk)  19:01, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I propose merging the contents of Line 1 (Athens Suburban Railway) to Athens Suburban Railway, and that Athens Suburban Railway be rewritten to cater for the current routes (i.e. Piraeus/Ano Liosa–Airport, Athens–Chalcis and Piraeus–Kiato). This is because the line numbers were to be added by a blocked sockpuppet of Pumpie in August 2013, and there are also no consistent or reliable sources for the line numbers. Pinging for attention. -- Minoa (talk) 23:19, 28 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Instead of merging the contents of Line 1 (Athens Suburban Railway) to Athens Suburban Railway, i instead propose to move Line 1 (Athens Suburban Railway) to Line A1 (Athens Suburban and Regional Railway), as this is the offical numbering given by Hellenic Train in its map. GoatGamer1 (talk) 17:57, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, I think the routes can be sufficiently covered in the main article because, unlike the Athens Metro or London Underground lines, there is not much route-specific history to warrant their own articles. I think the depth of history of the routes is quite similar to the routes of the Athens Tram and the Manchester Metrolink. -- Minoa (talk) 20:51, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I would disagree, only as the routes can follow multiple lines, and can lead to the right hand text box for each station getting cluttered. When thinking of the demarcation, I think of of services across Europe such as Merseyrail in and round Liverpool UK. Once part of BR, but now a separate organization, Merseyrail has a number of pages on Wikipedia. There is Merseyrail, Northern line and Liverpool, Crosby and Southport Railway. One is the name of the combined service, one is the name of line, and one is the historic name of the line when it opened? all the same, but all different... would argue this is in the same light. I would agree more work is needed on the sections, and some duplication can be removed, or rewritten, to better highlight each page. Further I have been meaning to translate A2-A4 but have not been in the right mindset of late. I must add that I see this a friendly discussion, and if its decided to combine I will stand by the groups decision! ✠ Emperor of Byzantium ✠   (talk)  19:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I would like to make a reasonable proposal in light of recent developments that saw the introduction of (official) line numbers:
 * Restructure the line articles to "Lines A1 and A2 (Athens Suburban Railway)", "Lines A3 (Athens Suburban Railway)" and "Lines A4 (Athens Suburban Railway)". This is because Line A2 nearly duplicates part of Line A1, except for a significantly short section between Metamorfosi and Ano Liosia.
 * Maintain "Athens Suburban Railway" as a common name, but note the official name "Athens Suburban and Regional Railway" in context.
 * Delete "Line 5 (Athens Suburban Railway)" for now, because the section between Kiato and Aigio has always been separate from the Suburban Railway (source). There is currently no information on what number the Loutraki branch will use.
 * -- Minoa  (talk) 08:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The Metamorfosi-Ano Liosia section of line A2 is only six minutes, under 20% of the 34-minute service. A2 currently works as a supplementary route to A1, so for now you can put it on the A1 page. But it is kind of the successor to the Airport-Kiato route, of which the A.L.-Kiato section was transferred to the Athens-A.L. route which was named A4 last September. Yes, the official name considers A4 and A3 to be regional routes while A1 and A2 are the suburban ones, because A3 and A4 go out of Attica and to towns more than 80km away, but i also think that it is so they dont provide as frequent service and they can justify low frequency, as A4 is the only regional route with 1 train per hour, while the rest have frequencies of a train per two or more hours. People still call it προαστιακός though, they probably haven‘t noticed the longer new name.
 * About the history of each line, A3 started the same as it is now, then it was extended to Pireaus in 2012 and cut back to Athens in 2017, A1 was the original route, was extended to Pireaus in 2007, then discontinued in 2010, resumed in 2017 only to Athens and finally extended to Pireaus in 2018, and unofficially cut back to Rentis in 2021 due to electrification problems, A4 started in 2005 as Athens-Corinth, extended to Kiato in 2007 and to Pireaus, cut back to Ano liosia in 2010, cut back to Athens in 2012, extended to Kiato in 2017 and after these is the same as A1's history, and finally A2 was established in 2007 as Neratziotissa-Airport, extended to Ano Liosia in 2009, to Kiato in 2010, cut back in 2017 to S.K.A. and extended to A.L. in 2018. Former services include the Pireaus-Athens route in 2017-2018, which has unofficially resumed in 2021 as Pireaus-Rentis, and finally Airport-Kiato [not A2!] and Athens-Kiato[not A4!] in 2020, June to November(discontinued due to lockdown) which were semi express services that connected to the Aigio route when the Aigio section opened.
 * The Kiato-Aigio route is kind of an extension to line A4, but has low frequency like other regional routes. It will probably be discontinued when that section is electrified or extended if the next section of the railway to Patras opens first. It is only connected to the A4 route and the Odontotos touristic route. GoatGamer1 (talk) 09:55, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Line colours and numbers
The Athens Suburban and Regional Railway's services received numbers and colours, by their operator, Hellenic Train, in September 2023:

Line A1: Pireaus-Airport (yellow)

Line A2: Ano Liosia-Airport (purple)

Line A3: Athens-Chalkis (green)

Line A4: Pireaus-Kiato (blue)

Since 2023, the first two are considered the Suburban line (one according to Hellenic Train's website, but two routes according to the map), and the remaining two are considered the Regional lines. From the Suburban and Regional Railway's opening until 2023, the system was called the Suburban Railway (Προαστιακός Σιδηρόδρομος, or Προαστιακός for short), and the people still call it this, and TrainOse/Hellenic Train hadn't given much information about the numbers or colours of lines, but in 2023, the company suddenly changed from referring to the whole network as the suburban railway through its website, and it finally gave some information about its lines, and from suburban lines, the Chalcis and Kiato lines were changed to Regional lines, and only the Airport line(s) remained the Suburban line(s), and the network's name changed from Suburban Railway to "Athens Suburban and Regional lines" (Προαστιακή/ές και Περιφεριακές γραμμές Αθήνας), probably because the Regional routes outside of the single athens fare zone and the airport use seperate tickets from the athens public transportation system. However, this only happened in the company's website and some of the railway's stations, and pretty much everybody still calls it Suburban Railway, even the announcements, and the new naming scheme was not announced in any way. GoatGamer1 (talk) 17:38, 1 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Wow, just I was about to finish dumping Pumpie's line numbers for not being referenced, Hellenic Train decided that they should exist again. It's as if they knew I was about to revert back to the old naming scheme, and they stepped in to save face (of course, that is not true but still).
 * I hope Hellenic Train will actually and routinely use the line numbers, with the A- prefix to avoid confusion with the metro. If they don't then I don't know how we will keep up with the changes. It's not like we have as many editors for Greek railways as those for American politics. -- Minoa (talk) 21:56, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * This is sadly true, we are few in number... dealing with confusing numbering (no pun intended) ✠ Emperor of Byzantium ✠   (talk)  15:49, 29 March 2024 (UTC)