Talk:SE&CR Diagram 960 PMV

Final article title and scope
Per the discussion at WT:UKRAIL, the final article title needs to be settled on. To this end, I would suggest that Cavell Van would be a good title, but am open to suggestions. Scope-wise, I'd suggest that we stick with vans designated Dia 960 and 3103 by SR. Mjroots (talk) 15:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Reference style
As this article is likely to be collaborative right from the start, I think we should decide on reference style early rather than late, to prevent unnecessary tug-of-war. There are two main methods, which I call single-stage and two-stage.

In single-stage referencing, you put the full citation after the fact which was taken from that source, and so the full citation shows in the. This style may be seen in a short article, at Iffley Halt railway station. It is suitable for a wide variety of sources where few facts are drawn from each source.

In two-stage referencing, you only put a short note (author, year, page) after the relevant fact, and so the also gets a short entry; and below that, you put the full citation but without page numbers. This style may also be seen in a short article: Abingdon Road Halt railway station. It is suitable where there are many facts to be drawn from each source.

Each has several methods of implementation. If we decide on one of these two main styles initially, we can then go on to discuss the implementation details. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:47, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In this case, I'd say that two stage is the way to go. My only comment is that the sections should be headed "References" and "Sources" instead of "Notes" and "References". Mjroots (talk) 16:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I went for Notes & References per WP:FOOTERS, specifically this bit:
 * The most frequent choice is "References"; other articles use "Notes", "Footnotes", or "Works cited" (in diminishing order of popularity). Several alternate titles ("Sources", "Citations", "Bibliography") may also be used, although each is problematic: "Sources" may be confused with source code in computer related articles; ...
 * see also the three example boxes at WP:CITESHORT. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Subsidiary style
Now, as to details. There are, I think, four techniques to two-stage referencing. Let's take my existing ref to Gould as an example. In increasing order of usability (end-user primarily) we have:
 * 1) plain text:
 * 2) linked text:
 * 3) use :
 * 4) use :



They all look the same in the Notes section, with the exception that no. 1 is all in black, but nos. 2-4 all have a clickable link, which if the templates are constructed correctly, will take you to the relevant one (works better in Firefox which highlights the row, whereas IE7 doesn't). This is done in case 2 by the use of Gould1992, and in the case of 3 & 4 by means of harv. You will notice that case 4 does not use   - these are within. One way that method 4 scores over method 3 is when the same page reference is cited twice. Let's take the renumbering of the specific vans nos. 152 and 153 as an example. We could put:

Here you need to worry about whether you've cited that particular page before, and think up a parameter for ; and should the first be removed, the second will break. Now compare this:

As you can see, this produces identical results (both visually and operationally), but you don't have the aforemantioned worries: you just shove it all through and let the file servers in Miami worry about it. See Hinksey Halt railway station for a short, working example. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

To do
Ideas for improvement of the article. Mjroots (talk) 17:06, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Expand infobox - more details needed.

Diagram 3103 vans
It seems that there are quite a few Dia. 3103 vans preserved. Would it be better to list each of these individually, or make a table and note the van number and where preserved? Mjroots (talk) 16:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Table. I have a list dating from 1992 (in Gould, p. 43) which has three Dia. 960 and no less than 33 Dia. 3103 preserved - and more have probably been rescued since, because at that time, there were still quite a few in Departmental stock. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)