Talk:H. F. Stephens

Untitled
I feel that this article is much too short to encompass Stephens' railways - and him too! - and it is also inaccurate in giving the impression that they were all one amorphous whole. That is far from the truth: they were scattered and existed like that - even though they were under the same umbrella at Tonbridge. It is also untrue to say that they all excaped grouping: three of them had been part of some of the major railways - look at the Paddock Wood line on the website, for example.

I am about to alter this so that the article will be entitled Colonel Stephens and his Railways so that his biography can be included in the article: the present biography (for some unknown reason relocated to Holman Fred Stephens from Colonel H.F. Stephens needs destubbing anyway and can be easily done by using the said website. Peter Shearan 12:27, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I think I have done what I can to fill out this article: I am not too sure whether some of the really minor lines need a separate article, since they are fairly comprehensively described on the website. If however ther is more information, such articles may well follow! Peter Shearan 14:39, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it's relevant, but you should be aware that the MOD has maintained a speciality reserve of logisitics business heads, about 200 of them, who have the honorary rank of Colonel, effective in times of war. This was part of the special arrangements needed in the wake of the First Battle of the Somme to rationalise the overfragmented supply train serving the front, but continued thereafter to this day. This may explain why someone suddenly becomes a Colonel in that environment.

Check gauge please
North Devon and Cornwall Junction Light Railway (1925-1982): originally a 3 ft (762 mm)


 * 3' 0' = 914mm
 * 2' 6" = 762mm

Which is it?

Tabletop 03:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Tenterden
The Tenterden has been repeatedly removed from this article with the rationale "Ridiculously tenuous connection".

HFS was the consulting engineer who built the Rother Valley Railway, and Chairman of the renamed K&ESR for 31 years. This information is covered in the article under "The Stephens railways".

I contend that HFS should be re-added to the template, and that the template should be re-added to this article. Mjroots (talk) 20:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds plausible, except that his career was also significant as a railway builder, and he was involved with dozens of such railways. The fact that he was chair of the KESR is only one of many aspects of his career, and the location of KESR's hq is a piece of trivia in the context of such a lengthy career with so many railways.
 * The location of the HQ is so trivial a part of his career that the current version of the article doesn't even mention in passing the location of KESR's HQ ... so spamming on a template about Tenterden gives grossly undue weight to that factoid.  See WP:UNDUE.
 * By your logic, you would add add him to a location navbox for every significant piece of railway he was involved in, cluttering the article with dozens of such tenuously-related places.
 * Your template-spamming has been discussed at length, in several locations. Please stop it. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Did Stephens live in or close to Tenterden when he was chairman of the KESR? If so, I'd say he should be part of the template, otherwise probably not., especially as there's no mention of Stephens in the Tenterden article. Mind you, there's no mention of Clare Atwood, Joseph Diggle, George Elgood or Christopher Love in that article either. —  Tivedshambo   (t/c) 22:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There are two questions here, which can be answered differently. I think that Tivedshambo seems to be addressing the second question, rather than the first one.
 * a) Should the template be on this article, and b) should this article be in the template
 * On question A, I don't see that Tenterden is anything other than a footnote in Stephens's bio
 * On question B, there's no evidence so far that Stephens even rates a passing mention in the history of Tenterden.
 * I have been busily purging Tenterden of lots of ppl whose existence does not seem to be an important part of the history of Tenterden (see these edits, and some of those remaining should possibly be removed too. So far, I have found only one who should probably stay: Joseph Diggle, who was mayor of Tenterden. Merely living there at some point is not enough to justify inclusion in the template unless the connection with Tenterden was itself notable. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:49, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * As far as a) and b) go, in my view they're one and the same - i.e. if a navbox is used in an article, then the article should be listed in the navbox (and conversely, if an article is listed in a navbox, the navbox should be used in the article). To deal with the other point, I would disagree that "merely living there" would not justify inclusion in the navbox, for a small place like Tenterden. If Stephens did live there (though it's not clear he did), then he should be included in the Navbox as a notable resident. If he didn't live there, then I agree the link is probably too tenuous. —  Tivedshambo   (t/c) 12:30, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The convention has long been that notable people who lived in an area get listed the the "notable residents" section of the article, and I have no argument with that. But the template is not about that; it's about creating a link to them from other articles, and per WP:NAVBOX we have to ask "Would a reader really want to go from A to B?"
 * Do you think it's likely that a reader would want to go from the bio of a railway engineer directly to the other articles in Tenterden? And if so, why?  It's hard to see why the reader who want a menu of links to things associated with an entity which is not even mentioned in the article, other than as the name of one of 8 locomotives. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:56, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120204035507/http://www.hfstephens-museum.org.uk/colonel-stephens-railways.html to http://www.hfstephens-museum.org.uk/colonel-stephens-railways.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120204035507/http://www.hfstephens-museum.org.uk/colonel-stephens-railways.html to http://www.hfstephens-museum.org.uk/colonel-stephens-railways.html

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External Links not there
I have not been able to access the site from the links provided. Sadly. ixo (talk) 17:30, 21 September 2021 (UTC)