Talk:Rail transport in Victoria

comments
The section about the Warrnambool line probably needs some mention of its closure by Kennett and subsequent reopening by West Coast Rail. Rebecca 08:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Jeff Kennett didn't close it. He contracted the service out to West Coast Rail.  Philip J. Rayment 15:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * same thing happened w/ the line to cobram 113.211.210.117 (talk) 02:25, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

History
I am currently splitting out the mind numbing 'this branch from def to abc opened in xyz and closed in plf' bits (eg old version) into the relevant lines articles, and am writing a better 'overall' view of rail history like what I did to the Railways in Melbourne page. Feel free to jump in and I will add my bits to yours. ;-) Wongm (talk) 10:17, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Split out and converted to summary style. Have to write some more new stuff now. Wongm (talk) 13:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * And more stuff added. Wongm (talk) 12:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

ATC signalling
Doesn't ATC stand for Automatic Train Control? Automatic and Track Control doesn't make much sense, perhaps Automatic Track Control.--Grahame (talk) 09:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It is a Victorian only thing as far as I know, who knows the origin of it. A bit more history is here - a scan of a 1928 Victorian Railways magazine on it. I'm not sure how it would be best clarified in the article. From the V/Line network data, part of the Geelong line (PDF, 150KB)


 * Automatic and Track Control as described in Section 36 of the Rules and Operating Procedures is in force between WERRIBEE and LITTLE RIVER, LITTLE RIVER – LARA, LARA – CORIO and CORIO – NORTH GEELONG Signal Posts GLG 58, GLG 60 and GLG 62.


 * Wongm (talk) 09:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess if that's what it called its OK. Maybe we should have a reference to Section 36 of the Rules and Operating Procedures (online or offline). If it's different to the Automatic Block System, its differences and advantages should be briefly explained--Grahame (talk) 10:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Another thing: "On 1 October 2003, V/Line reverted to government ownership with the collapse of National Express,[44] and M>Train was sold to Connex after the withdrawal of its parent company; and the Freight Victoria business and rural track lease was purchased by Pacific National."—did all of these things happen on 1 October 2003 or only the first?--Grahame (talk) 10:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have rewritten the statement with references. Wongm (talk) 10:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Commodities: the table should make clear that is based on tonnes consigned, not tonne-km or value, if this is the case. (I remember being told once, 15 or 20 years ago when working for a federal transport department, that V/Line had no scales and relied on customers to tell them the weight of their consignments)  The first column of the table adds to less than the second, and it would be interesting to know what accounts for the decline in non-grain movements. One thing is livestock, but I don't think it ever moved in significant quantities.
 * I see it says livestock finished in 1986.--Grahame (talk) 14:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

This section might mention that distances to port are short and competition with road transport is intense, so that there are no particularly profitable movements of agricultural commodities, even wheat from the northwest (but only if it could be sourced, which might not be possible).--Grahame (talk) 11:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Has added some referenced statements re decline of traffic because of road. Wongm (talk) 10:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

New Deal: Was this term used by the Govt of the day; if so it should say so. "The 1980s saw corporatisation of the Victorian Railways carried out, with the railway commissioners replaced by VicRail and later government authorities."—I thought VicRail was just a brand name and the commissioners continued. As stated in Companies, corporatisation occured in 1983, when the State Transport Authority and the Metropolitan Transit Authority were established.--Grahame (talk) 12:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * New Deal was an official term - a Newsrail magazine from the last few years covers the history of it, I need to chase it down some more references. The VicRail name appeared in the 1970s but still had the board. Then in 1981 (?) the orange livery appeared, followed by the breakup in 1983. Wongm (talk) 10:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Railway preservation sections needs some referencing.--Grahame (talk) 13:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks a bit better now? Wongm (talk) 10:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks fine (I haven't quite made up my mind on whether I'll do my first GA review, although I don't think I have COI issues as my early and rudimentary contributions to the history section have been mostly moved to subsidiary articles). The sentence: "After World War I road competition increased, until in 1993 legislation was passed to regulate trucks competing with rail on specific routes" (Commodities) is not quite right.  Page 5 of ref 1 implied that the first regulation of road transport was in 1933 and I can remember it being abolished by the Kennett Government, but I can't see the date 1993 in the reference. The sentence should probably read: "After World War I road competition increased, and in 1933 legislation was passed to limit trucks competing with rail on specific routes.  This legislation was repealed in 1993."--Grahame (talk) 04:56, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * This wasa typo - fixed. Wongm (talk) 06:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

GA nomination
GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria


 * 1) Is it reasonably well written?
 * A. Prose quality:
 * It is reasonably well written.
 * B. MoS compliance:
 * It appears to be MOS compliant. (I prefer all caps for titles in references to be changed to title case, but MOS is not entirely prescriptive, and I'm not sure if the bolding of line names is still considered appropriate)
 * 1) Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
 * A. References to sources:
 * References are in order.
 * B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
 * Sources are good
 * C. No original research:
 * No OR concerns
 * 1) Is it broad in its coverage?
 * A. Major aspects:
 * It covers all aspects that should be included.
 * B. Focused:
 * It is well focused.
 * 1) Is it neutral?
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * No apparent bias.
 * 1) Is it stable?
 * No edit wars, etc:
 * No edit wars.
 * 1) Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
 * A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
 * It has sufficient images, all but one have appropriate copyright tags. I'm not sure if the tag on Image:X32.jpg should say "assumed to be fair use", when the claim is that it is the public domain.
 * B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
 * Yes
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass or Fail:
 * --Grahame (talk) 14:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Naming lines
I think we need to work out naming and article conventions for railway lines. For example, for what was once known as the Serviceton line to the SA border now appears in a number of articles:


 * Melton railway line, Melbourne - not a real 'line' as such, but a passenger rail service that exists on top of the Ballarat / Arart line because of the use of the Metcard suburban ticketing system for a few stations. Still appears on passenger network maps though.


 * Ballarat railway line, Victoria - a V/Line interurban service. Appears in VLP passenger literature.


 * Ararat railway line, Victoria - V/Line intercity extension of the Ballarat service, stops at some common stations, expresses some others. Appears in VLP passenger literature.


 * Western standard gauge line, Victoria - opened in 1995, took over part of the Serviceton line, Australian Rail Track Corporation control the main line, which runs from Adelaide to Ararat, then over to Geelong over another route.

I need to dig up some older Victorian Railways documents to show how they named the lines. I think the grades and curves diagram might do for now - 1980s era: http://www.vicsig.net/index.php?page=infrastructure&article=grades-curves

For reference V/Line currently names the track infrastructure as such: Dynon to Ararat - (From http://www.vline.com.au/rna/rna/information_pack.html)

Maybe redirect all the current V/Line service names to the List of regional railway stations in Victoria page, then create new articles on the lines themselves. These articles will cover history, description of the route, towns on the way, traffics carried, and links to the V/Line services that operate on them.

Any other ideas on how to unscramble this egg? Wongm (talk) 01:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have afew ideas on this issue i would like to share, however i am having internet problems and will post my ideas when i get the time to. --Dan027 (talk) 09:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * In regards to the naming of articles current lines used for passenger services should be simply that an article detailing the stations used in said service, with a brief history linking to the main article on the line which goes into a more greater depth, there is still the possibility of some articles overlapping and covering both the current passenger service and the lines history, one line i can think of Bairnsdale railway line, Victoria, an example of splitting the two would be Swan Hill railway line, Victoria which original extended to Yongera making the main article Yongera railway line, Victoria(or after a terminus that was used for a longer period of time maybe?) with other possible names redirecting to the main article, so Piangil railway line, Victoria would be a redirect Yongera railway line, Victoria.


 * Another way ive been thinking of doing this would be simply having a Bairnsdale railway line article for the passenger service and the main article being called Main Eastern railway line, Victoria or something similar. anyways those are just acouple of my ideas i hope they made sense, its been a long hot day outside. --Dan027 (talk) 10:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that - I think that is a better idea than my earlier idea of redirecting to the list of station article, at least it will be a bit less ahem controversial. NSW does this too - articles on the track, then smaller articles on the passenger service 'lines'. Some of the passenger services have interesting histories - in the 1990s Warrnambool had WCR, Shep had Hoys buslines hiring trains.


 * The only tricky bit is the names of the 'infrastructure' line articles themselves - this site has scans of the Victorian Railways Grades and Curves book (1923 ed) and most lines are 'X to Y'. If I find a VR reference to a 'north, south, east, west' type names I will mention it here. Wongm (talk) 11:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The Shepparton railway line, Victoria page has been moved to Tocumwal railway line by WikiSandbox1 without any discussion or reason given for such a move. --121.200.0.46 (talk) 06:07, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Tiny freight stations
Do tiny freight stations deserve their own articles? Boort station doesn't exist of anything bar the remain of a platform. My preference is that these tiny stations just get redirected to the towns themselves - in the case of New South Wales and Western Australia even active passenger stations get this treatment. I just don't see the point of a stub about a town saying where it is in Victoria, and a second stub about the railway station of that town saying what line it is on.

Any thoughts? Wongm (talk) 10:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * OK once upon a time there was a project called Australian places - it endevoured to make sure there were articles for most named places in australia. Also various battles in category, and other interesting corners of wikipedia have endevoured to flush out particularism where some lines of thinking try to remove 'local' versus 'universal' ideas and issues - and the battle is endless - sometimes you just have to look for signs of it, other times it is very obvious. In relation to named railway locations/places in australia - existng or past - there is a very valid issue and programme to actually identify earlier forms of transport settlement - consequently in my edit history you will find references to now flooded railway stopping places in western tasmania - I believe that former railway locations are a valid exercise - regardless of the fate of the australian places project.  However if there is unsufficient information about the location and its functions - I see no harm in subsuming it into adjacent locality articles. However I do see any project to eradicate established articles about old railway stations as being retrograde and not a good idea. I await others comments with interest. SatuSuro 10:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * They're former passenger stations, and current freight stations. They've got a long history, having formerly been one of the major ways of accessing said towns, and like other stations, there's plenty to be said about them should someone bother to do the research. Wongm, this is not the first time you've suddenly gone on a random merging spree of perfectly good and notable content with relation to railways - and frankly, I wish you'd bugger off. Rebecca (talk) 21:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * For comparison sake, this is how the other states handle their country passenger services:


 * Queensland - Traveltrain: list of routes, and the stops they make, wikilinked to towns.


 * Western Australia: three routes, example Transwa Australind. Links to regional towns, city stations. For example, Cookernup, Western Australia: "The town also serves as a stop on the Australind passenger train from Perth to Bunbury.".


 * New South Wales - List of CountryLink train routes: just like above, but some city stations have own articles (because they fall into CityRail). For the country towns you get town articles like Grafton, New South Wales: "The Murwillumbah - Byron Bay -Lismore railway (opened in 1894) was extended to north Grafton in 1905. The North Coast Line reached South Grafton from Sydney in 1915. Pending the opening of the combined road and rail bascule bridge in 1932, Grafton had a train ferry to connect the two railways."


 * A railway station is a product of both the railway line and the town community it serves. Hence there are three possible subjects to write on - the contribution the station made to the line, the contribution it made to the development of the town, and then the station itself which overlaps both. Even a well written article on the station has a lot of overlap - I still am of the opinion the railline article details all the stations, wikilinked to the towns, and the town articles say the town had a station on line X from years Y to Z and had facilities A, B, C with train services D, E, F. You can always split later on, rather than having stuff scattered everywhere. Just my anal retentive opinion I get too worked up about. ;-) Wongm (talk) 01:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The other states have worse articles on railway topics because they've never had the same active community of editors writing railway material as occurred with Victoria in the early days of the project. It's not "their way of dealing with things" - they're simply behind the Victorian editors.


 * How can someone who has evidently never tried to write a railway station article be so sure on prepondering what such articles would supposedly contain? There's material for most stations to create quite an interesting history of the station, generally also containing material on issues such as architecture and technical features as well. The sort of articles you imagine would never involve going beyond the fucking obvious, because you'd never contemplate doing actual research. This is precisely why merging them is such a stupid idea - you wind up with one useless sentence (as in your WA example) rather than a researched, interesting, and well-sourced article. Rebecca (talk) 10:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks like the consensus of where to start writing about a station is don't give a rats, with the exception of me who says starts somewhere then split, and you who says to split from the start. I might as well leave sleeping dogs lie, but I doubt I will be starting millions of station stubs myself. I have been more of a big picture and railway line person myself anyway. Wongm (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The idea of "starting" an article in an unrelated article and then merging out later is bollocks: I know of no single article where this has actually worked on a topic like railway stations and actually resulted in an article being split out later. This is not for no reason: a good town article will contain one sentence on a railway station, and anything resembling decent content would result in seriously undue weight in the town article. On the other hand, what we're doing now regularly results in informative and interesting articles, but takes time to get there. It's worked pretty bloody well so far, except where certain people decide to go on a rampage through the material that hasn't been worked up yet every couple of months. Rebecca (talk) 04:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Lets face it mate there have never been consistencies between the states in real life when it comes to railways - dont expect them in wiki life - probably better to just get on with it - we could all spend our lives on talk pages - the ideas are one thing the article work is another - :) SatuSuro 06:28, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The way i have always envisage station articles for closed and present stations should be kept seperate, there is more then enough different sections and pieces of information to be included in each article to make it worthwhile as a stand alone article;


 * The small info box with a general breakdown of information.
 * Previous and next station navigation box.
 * Images of the station buildings; Goods shed, platform, station building and a view of the station layout.
 * Lead in paragraph.
 * Breakdown of historical events at the stations, eg breakdown of eras in the stations life, opening, closing of passenger and/or freight movements as an example.
 * Station layout diagrams from multiple periods of the stations existence.
 * Other railway facilities that have existed within the station grounds or within a close proximity, station masters residence, signal boxes and so on.
 * there is more then enough ways to create an article on past and present stations, if the articles are included as a subsection of local towns it lacks the space and deters editors from making small contributions as we all did first starting out here on wikipedia. Perhaps instead of talking, arguing and being stubborn about whether the articles should exist we create some proper guidelines and a template for all station articles here! --Dan027 (talk) 10:04, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry few visit these parts - either australian noticeboard or australian places project talk page - nothing less SatuSuro 10:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

My opinion is that all railway stations are notable. Since notability does not expire, this extends to former stations as well. What is my justification for "all railway stations are notable"? It is the presence of such stations in paper encyclopedias, and it is impossible to have a more stringent inclusion criteria than that. OK, I'm in the wrong country here, but small stations like Hallingskeid and Haugastøl have entries describing them as railway stations in paper encyclopedias. They are served by a couple of trains each day in each direction, have few passengers, and are not particularly outstanding. Yet encyclopedias with limited space have considered them "encyclopedic". Sjakkalle (Check!)  12:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Station article layout and resources
I copied Dan027's ideas to this page, and have linked to some online reliable sources at the new page Talk:Rail transport in Victoria/Station resources. Any more suggested resources and inclusions for a station article can be mentioned there. Wongm (talk) 02:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Freight only vs closed demarcation
At present any line or station not served by V/Line or Connex falls into the 'closed station / line' categories, along with the green-brown infoboxes and navboxes. We need a 4th category for 'open for freight only' stations and lines, and the closed and removed lines (and closed stations on open lines) stay in the existing green-brown 'closed station / line' class. Any ideas for the category name? And colour - grey for the infoboxes? Wongm (talk) 02:26, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

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Britannia Creek


Do you know or find anything about the Britannia Creek tramway? --NearEMPTiness (talk) 11:18, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Restructure?
I think this article might benefit from a slight restructure, particularly for the 'operations' and 'by line' sections. It may make more sense to have a 'passenger services' section with a history of the operators, the overview of the lines and a clearer link to the VLine page. Then maybe a 'freight operations' section or something similar? Would love to hear others thoughts. Gracchus250 (talk) 04:43, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment on terminologies
Please comment on some proposals potentially affecting articles related to this subject area »» here. Cheers, SCHolar44 🇦🇺 &#128172; at 00:17, 14 August 2020 (UTC)