Talk:Donkey puncher

Thank you
Thank you for recently helpful collaborative edits by and. Much appreciated! Cheers, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 14:45, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Steam vs. diesel or gasoline
The one in the picture looks like it's powered by diesel or gasoline rather than steam. I wonder if it might not be better to rewrite this so that the means of powering the donkey aren't so central. These things are still in use and they're roughly the same as ever, but I doubt there were many powered by steam after the perfection of the internal combustion engine. They were still called donkeys, though, and the people who operated them were still called donkey punchers. Obviously this kind of major change needs discussion here for a while, hence this note.&mdash; alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 20:23, 29 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes - I noticed the same thing. We probably need to revise both this article and the Steam donkey one to make clear that a 'donkey' may be diesel powered. Then again, to confuse matters further, civil airline pilots seem to routinely refer to jet engines as 'donks'. The 'donkey' metaphor seems to be widespread. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:03, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Great suggestions,, do you have any secondary sources to recommend? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 21:39, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I will try to look into this today sometime.&mdash; alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:47, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * This (and the references it provides) might be useful: AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:04, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

That encyclopedia entry is good. The refs are all snippet view or no view on GBooks. Here are a few from GBooks for now; I'll look into JSTOR soon: &mdash; alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 22:26, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Those look like promising refs. Thanks again for the helpful research! &mdash; Cirt (talk) 02:17, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Technology time line of the various industrial uses for the Donkey (steam), Donkey (internal combustion), (electric) etc. Use of the donkey in the rail industry. Categorization work to improve finding and linking the various topics with their uses. Welcoming discussion. Greetings, Paptilian (talk) 14:35, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Work as defined by scientific process began with steam motive power, the train locomotive was just one invention for motive power, the winch is about the steam donkey and other topics being linked and referenced. Paptilian (talk) 14:40, 16 November 2019 (UTC)