Talk:City of New Orleans (train)

Question
That picture sucks. Anyone got a better one? 24 Aug 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.174.206.35 (talk) 19:33, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Was this market/routing originally called the Cannonball in Casey Jones' day? knoodelhed 11:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The train name Cannonball does not appear in either Illinois Central public timetables or in the ICRR entries in the Official Guide of the Railways for the year 1900. It is possible that Cannonball was a nickname in local usage, but it was not an official train name. In many parts of the country, the generic term Cannonball was used to denote a fast train. RI-Bill 02:07, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

In the route map, should Gilman, Rantoul, and DuQuoin stations be listed, greyed out, or otherwise footnoted? This train travels through these stations but does not stop. (Local Illinois Services trains do stop there.) UhYeahWhatever 05:41, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I took a quick look at the current timetable to verify that. You're right, and I've removed them from here. Slambo (Speak)  10:22, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

joan of arc was a woman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.153.84 (talk) 23:18, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Peacock terms
This article seems kind of unencyclopedic. The intro and everything seems all right but in the 1990s and 2000s section it got very opinionated with statements like "The dramatic improvements which had successfully attracted more patronage" and "While all this improvement boosted the City of New Orleans' ridership, it eventually started sharing equipment with the Empire Builder and the train lost its ambiance". It reads like a review, I know this has to violate several wikipedia content standards (the one I know it violates is wording policy) I'm surprised that this article hasn't been tagged. 107.10.53.28 (talk) 05:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposed move

 * The following discussion is an archived 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Move. Cúchullain t/ c 21:42, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

City of New Orleans → City of New Orleans (train) – In this case the primary topic is the train's namesake city New Orleans. It was unanimously decided in in August that these sorts of titles should redirect to the settlement. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 07:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per nom -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 09:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose - who enters "City of New Orleans" into the search field trying to find information about the city? Most people are probably looking for information on the train or the song. Reub2000 (talk) 10:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If I came across "City of New Orleans" online and wanted to check the allusion (in Wikipedia or in Google which tries to put Wikipedia articles right at the top of its hits), I would not be helped by the present arrangements. Here, look at that search: "City of New Orleans". See how far down the list this article turns up? And indeed, what if "most people are probably looking for information on the train or the song", as you assert? How are they helped by the present imprecise title? They cannot tell what the article is about until they go to it! Inefficient and frustrating. N oetica Tea? 22:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that I follow. The official website of the city is #1. Amtrak's train is #2. #3 is the song on YouTube. #4 is our article on that song. The reader will find the appropriate information. There's nothing at all imprecise about the title, and your proposed solution makes no sense. We wouldn't move New Orleans to New Orleans (city), would we? Mackensen (talk) 00:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * What's not to follow? This article is way down the list in that Google search. Isn't it preferable to have it at the top? That is overwhelmingly what happens when Wikipedia articles are named with precision – enough precision, that is, to steer people in the right direction immediately. For a great proportion of WP's worldwide readership, "City of New Orleans" has only its surface meaning. They have no idea that a train has been named by re-appropriating that phrase. Now, Google bends over backwards to work with Wikipedia titles. If we help it do that, we invariably help our readers find what they're looking for in Wikipedia articles also. N oetica Tea? 01:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * P.S. This differs from the other previously moved articles in that it is both the name of a current Amtrak train as well as a Folk standard. Reub2000 (talk) 04:30, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose per Reub2000. It was also decided last August that this article was different from the others, given that "City of New Orleans" is a proper noun referring to this train and the song. The train is the primary topic for "City of New Orleans." City of New Orleans is an unlikely search term for New Orleans, especially when "City of New Orleans" is a notable topic in itself (the could not be said for the UP's streamliners). Mackensen (talk) 19:20, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * As it is not technically possible to create a redirect from city of New Orleans to New Orleans, there is no distinction between the proper noun and common noun like MAVEN and maven. Also you are mistaken, this article was never addressed in the last discussion. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 06:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It was to the extent that you moved it without it being listed, and after a short discussion it was moved back. Mackensen (talk) 16:19, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * There was no discussion to my knowledge. If there was, I wasn't invited. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 06:29, 18 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. -- Necrothesp (talk) 20:34, 9 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support. Obviously misleading and confusable as it stands. N oetica Tea? 22:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support, per nom, and in all honesty, I'm surprised it wasn't included in the list from the Summer of 2012. Regarding User:Reub2000 and User:Mackensen's opposition, when I heard the song as I was growing up, I had no idea the song referred to an actual train called the City of New Orleans. I thought it was just a random train leading to New Orleans, Louisiana. Maybe that's just me, but it's easy to see why it's possible to make that mistake. -User:DanTD (talk) 00:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. I think it's obvious that the primary topic for "City of New Orleans" is, well, the city of New Orleans, and, so, this title should redirect to the article about that topic.  Therefore the title of this article needs to be disambiguated, and (train) makes the most sense.  --Born2cycle (talk) 03:16, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support - we did a bunch of these some months ago, like City of Los Angeles (train). I had to clean up most of these afterwards, as quite a lot of links concerned with the train (which should have been amended to point at City of Los Angeles (train)) were left pointing at ; this was fine until the redirect and suddenly a lot of rail-related links now led to Los Angeles in error. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Those moves appeared to be a mistake. The closing admin said "I would bet 95% of the hits these articles get are from misdirected people looking for the cities."  That turns out to have been completely incorrect.  City of Los Angeles (which was then the train article) received 989 views in December 2011; City of Los Angeles (train) got 932 views in December 2012.  So rather than 95%, the number was actually very very close to 5% -- the exact opposite.  Powers T 20:54, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support - an easy cause for confusion at present. Lukeno94 (talk) 21:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose clear primary topic. Who's going to type in all that when looking for the city?  Powers T 20:54, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Could be someone who doesn't know the Wikipedia naming conventions for cities, or anyone who gets a paycheck from the city of New Orleans or anyone who utilizes the Wikipedia search bar's autocomplete feature. If the primary topic is not the city, it is definitely not the train. The song is. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 22:24, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * There is a link to the disambiguation page at the top for the few people who come to this page looking for information on the city. Actually if there is no consensus on what the primary topic of City of New Orleans is, then maybe redirecting to the disambiguation page isn't a bad idea. I think it was redirected there up until a few years ago. Reub2000 (talk) 04:05, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Obviously this is going to pass, although I maintain that it's a mistake. I'd love to see usability testing demonstrating that persons looking for information on the city of New Orelans and typing the "city of." Hopefully when this move gets executed the mover will have the courtesy to actually fix the redirects, unlike last August's move which led to chaos (as Redrose64 notes). Mackensen (talk) 16:19, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I do not see any benefit to redirecting this to the city. Nor do I see anyone typing in city of when they are looking for NOLA. For example, City of Los Angeles gets 509 views vs. 326964 for LA, and City of Chicago gets 568 views vs. 278015 for Chicago (I used December because LA got about a bazillion more views on 1/16/13 than any other day – almost a third of all views for the last 90 days were on that one day). So I would strongly encourage leaving the train at its natural title of City of New Orleans. As to the song, the song is based on the train, so I would leave it at (song). The song does get more views but not enough to usurp the title. Apteva (talk) 05:22, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The song's name is based on the train, yes. Well the train's name is based on the city. If there is a primary topic, it is the city. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 05:57, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That would only be a factor if we were going to move New Orleans to City of New Orleans. As it is if we rename this article, and City of New Orleans becomes a redirect to New Orleans, we rob "City of New Orleans" of its own title, in favor of a redirect that at most is going to receive a few hundred hits, and for what? To make it harder to find the train article? Apteva (talk) 01:01, 20 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support -- The present title should be a redirect to the city - obviously. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:54, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.