Talk:List of unused railways

Heading categories
There are several railways that I can add to this list, but firstly I would like to query the headings. The "Partially built" heading includes lines that had no part of them opened for traffic, and these seem better listed under "Financial" and "Political". I notice one dittography caused by this. Could this heading be renamed "Partially completed and operated"? Also, the latter two headings seem inadequate. Railways were abandoned uncompleted for other reasons, such as the GWR Fishguard scheme in Wales (harbour was poorly surveyed, and proved inadequate for the proposed ocean liner traffic justifying the railway), or the NWR Collywell Bay (north-east England) and the Cromarty Light Railway both of which were stymied by the outbreak of the First World War. Would a "Social and economic changes" heading be appropriate? "Financial reasons" could be confined to the schemes running out of money, and have schemes listed elsewhere which were stymied by the collapse of an industry. Also, what does "political" mean here? The term seems ambiguous. For those not familiar with those countries containing competing railway and railroad companies (UK, USA), it means problems with government interventions. Shubimperatrix (talk) 12:22, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Ouse Valley Railway
I have had my revision of moving this entry from Political to Financial reasons reverted. The proposed line was probably going to be built for political reasons but the scheme was abandoned due to the collapse of Overend and Gerney Bank in the 1860s. This is stated in the Wikipedia article under the paragraph "Construction and abandonment".Steamybrian2 (talk) 14:00, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Not so much reverted, as had it removed altogether. I too would be interested to know an explanation for this (too many capitals?)
 * I don't see this as at all "political", for at this scale surely politics means national government? These "spoiler" lines were done for commercial reasons, not political. Also that's why the line was planned and begun (slowly). Its collapse was, AFAIK (I know nothing of the South Coast) because of the general collapse in the railway boom around this time, thus clearly and only financial. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:10, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Unfinished Railroads?
Anybody mind if I add my Unfinished Railroads (of New York) entries to this page? They're at http://russnelson.com/unfinished-railroads.html RussNelson (talk) 13:15, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

I had the same thought, but perhaps one needs to start by being selective and not have only New York State examples when there are very few from elsewhere in the USA. There were huge numbers of railroad companies which did construction work, but never opened for traffic. Would it be best by starting with those that actually ran trains on a completed fragment of their scheme, such as the Midland Continental or the Denver, Laramie and Western? Shubimperatrix (talk) 12:22, 28 November 2019 (UTC)