Talk:Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway

Route diagram
The route diagram needs fixing - it is positively misleading or confusing as it stands - about 70% of it is unrelated lines, why in the name of God are there lines north of Doncaster?

The is nothing of this line west of north of Black Carr/Potteric Carr both of which are south-west of Doncaster.
 * Selby and Goole lines - miles away - unrelated
 * Hull and Barnsley lines - do not cross or come close to the line - unrelated
 * How much more of the diagram is unrelated?
 * etc

There is no indication of which lines are the joint line The Railway Clearing House currently do a 100x better of job of explaining the line. The template diagram is just confusing.

I'll move the template here, and leave a note as to fixing it. Prof.Haddock (talk) 15:11, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, so it needs work; be specific: exactly what changes need to be done? Also, with respect to your reference to The Railway Clearing House: a link, please? Useddenim (talk) 14:10, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Railway Clearing House. See gallery at Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway. These six are from a book of 158, the rest of these (1914 edition) may be found in subcats of c:Category:Railways Junctions Diagram 1914. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:16, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Why is the Axholme Joint Railway shown crossing the GN&GEJR, with two curves? It didn't go further south than Haxey; there was a connection there (see bottom of Template:Axholme Joint Railway), but no crossing. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:15, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That was my original interpretation from the source I used when doing the diagram. I am looking at my Jowett now to see whether my more experienced eyes still think that is valid. Britmax (talk) 19:41, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Seems to be an odd arrangement with two stations at the junction but no south to west link. I will play with other sources but take it out if I cannot find backing. Britmax (talk) 19:44, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I have found that the railway going west from Haxey is the Tickhill Light Railway. There is no article on this line and information is sparse. A challenge for someone, possibly me this week unless the weather stays as it is. Britmax (talk) 19:04, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, Tickhill Light Railway, but old OS six-inch maps of 1922 and 1950 call it the Bawtry and Haxey Railway. Some sources:
 * Bawtry signalbox & station at signalboxes.com
 * Haxey signalbox at signalboxes.com
 * &#x5b;Britains_Lost_Railways&#x5d; Re: &#x5b;Bygone_Lines_UK&#x5d; Tickhill Light Railway at Yahoo Groups
 * That last one suggests that there's an article in The Railway Magazine for October 1985. I've got that somewhere... ah, archive box 11 - now, where did I stack that? -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:39, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * A couple of comments:
 * I believe it is useful to show the interconnecting lines which put the route in context and show the different onward possibilities. They are distinguished from the main route with continuation arrows.
 * The RCH diagrams only have snapshots of parts of the route and don't take into account post-1914 changes. They have the advantage over our routemaps as they use different colours to distinguish between lines; something which our system doesn't allow for.
 * Tickhill Light Railway is indeed the correct name. The line ran into Haxey Junction.
 * There was no separate "GN Joint Station". The East station was to the south-east of the North station.
 * The recent changes made by Britmax are a substantial improvement. However, I would have retained a mention of the disused lines at Bessacarr Junction (Dearne Valley Line).
 * (off-topic) Railway Magazine should really make an effort to produce an electronic version of their back issues, just as Railway Observer has been doing for years. Lamberhurst (talk) 20:18, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Let me know which of the disused lines you would have kept and I will try to produce something if possible, without the cats' cradle that was there. I was going to ask about the East station at Huntingdon and will tweak that as well. Britmax (talk) 20:35, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * - about $5 1/2$ column inches; it's almost word-for-word the same as the blue text in that Yahoo post. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:01, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I would put back the disused triangular junction plus the disused connecting lines from the junction with the GN&GE, and having a continuation arrow at the top of the triangle for the DVR. Lamberhurst (talk) 21:25, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Much better now. I will reinstate the RDT in the article. Lamberhurst (talk) 06:34, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Didn't mean to cause so much trouble..
 * And agree on back issues of the Railway Magazine. Obvious license to print money. I've been hoping for this for some thime. Maybe they just don't have the resources?
 * Personally I'm not of the opinion that showing "all lines in time" in a single template is the right way to go - eg the as built route at the SYJnt.Rly was just a plain junction, the spaghetti came later. It would be preferable to show the line as built and have smaller inline diagrams associated with the text showing junction development. But that's more work (maybe for me or someone else) for another day - I'm not asking anyone to do that today. Article needs more text first
 * Also in the vicinity of Lincoln - it's not clear which of the three paths is the route ? Prof.Haddock (talk) 13:46, 8 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Trouble? Not really. Now we have to consider whether we mark out the joint line in some way or whether the diagram should be taken in partnership with the article text in these things. As for the diagram showing places that were not on the joint line, I think this achieves two things. First it doesn't leave the end of the line at an anonymous junction in the middle of nowhere, and second it gives those with no grounding in railway history a better idea of where it fits in the current system. Britmax (talk) 14:02, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem with showing a line as it was at a particular date is that it will not show subsequently built lines and junctions which were constructed specifically for services on the line, not to mention stations which opened later. I could accept that kind of approach for a historic system map such as the one at North Staffordshire Railway, but I don't think it works for a line which is still very much in use and moreover is known as the GN/GE line. It would not be long before we had comments here pointing out "errors". The RDTs we use here have their limitations and having too many on the same page imho can be overbearing; better to use for particular detail tailored SVG maps (such as those found at Brill Tramway) but that of course takes time plus the right software. As regards Lincoln, both the (much lamented) avoiding line on the left plus the line through Central on the right were used for GNGE services; St Marks is shown as it is what is being "avoided" and there really wouldn't be much to gain by replacing it with continuation lines, particularly as helps to illustrate the west-east connections. Lamberhurst (talk) 14:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * You don't need special software for making SVGs. I write all mine using Windows Notepad, and test them using a web browser (any desktop browser like Firefox or Opera from the last eight years, except IE 6/7/8/9, will do). For reference I use this website. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Do the diagrams come out as professional as those on the Brill page? I've tried my hand at Inkscape but couldn't make it work. I've been meaning to do a track diagram covering the Honeybourne junctions and had thought that only a programme such as Corel could do it justice. Lamberhurst (talk) 17:00, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, Template:Duckmanton Junction is an example that has several of the features mentioned above: snapshots in time; coloured highlighting of specific lines, and multiple diagrams in one template. Useddenim (talk) 17:54, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * (Re:Duckmanton Junction) Yes absolutely lovely, more like that please .. :)
 * (Re:Inkscape/svg) I think it just takes time and practice.. I admit I tried inkscape mulitple times and gave up - out of frustration - now I understand it it still isn't the easiest program to use. I claim I could make a diagram as good as that used at Brill tramway using Inkscape. Also the drawing program in Google Docs has an easier to use curve tool (technical: single control point for quadratic curve instead of multiple points for cubic spline), and might be worth trying, but it's a bit slow and lacks features, but is a lot easier to use.. It exports svg.
 * Whilst on the topic of maps - does anyone know a good (easy) source for height maps, or very simple background maps - eg coastlines, major rivers, and height shaded hills - I've been meaning to make maps for some of the Yorkshire Wolds lines - but they really need some indication of how the hills rise to make sense.Prof.Haddock (talk) 21:46, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
 * A big problem with Inkscape is that if you ask it to edit an existing SVG that wasn't 100% created using Inkscape, it often fouls up the appearance. Even if it doesn't, it loads the file with overprecise inaccuracy (it can use values like 0.99999999999 when 1.0 would have done perfectly well) inefficiencies, redundancies and pure do-nothing code, bloating it up for no practical gain.
 * has created a lot of SVG maps. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:18, 10 August 2014 (UTC)