Talk:RMS Empress of China (1890)

Why WikiProject Trains?
In the 1920s, Canadian Pacific Steamships was a wholly owned subsidiaries of Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). It's a bit of a stretch, but this conglomerate can be construed as somewhat akin to the pre-war Japanese zaibatsu in the apples and oranges sense that the trans-Pacific fleet (and trans-Atlantic fleet) were construed as adjuncts to the primary trans-Canada railroad business interests. The conflation of ships in a rolling-stock context of WikiProjectTrains may appears counter-intuitive; but the the 21st-century rationale which informs the judgment of those who have worked with this tag (NE2, Traveler100 and Slambo) is justifiable -- see Canadian Pacific Railway; compare Talk:RMS Empress of Canada (1928). The term of art is "intermodal" -- see Intermodal passenger transport and Intermodal freight transport.

CPR was an intermodal pioneer, making it possible to travel from Britain to Hong Kong using only the CPR's ships, trains and hotels -- see Canadian Pacific hotels.

The CPR president in this period, Edward Wentworth Beatty also presided over the genesis of Canadian Pacific Airlines, which is also tagged as part of WikiProjectTrains. His predecessor at CP, William Cornelius Van Horne, considered the railway an integrated communications and transportation system and convinced the directors and shareholders to create a telegraph service as a complement to the railway. Van Horne's legacy is reflected in the RMS prefix which distinguished the fleet CP Ships --Tenmei (talk) 19:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)