Talk:Washington and Old Dominion Railroad

Desperately in need of a map
Is there a public-domain map of the line available? I can't recall seeing one. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Thetrick (talk • contribs) 01:42, 9 December 2006 (UTC).


 * Public-domain maps of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad and its predecessors are available in the Ames Williams Collection in a branch of the Alexandria public library system at the following location: Local History/Special Collections, 717 Queen Street, Alexandria, VA 22314-2420. Public-domain maps of the railroad are also available at the headquarters of the Washington and Old Railroad Regional Park in Ashburn, Virginia. Corker1 (talk) 21:41, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment
Dang that is one hyperactive bot. Thetrick 01:45, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

1911 or 1912?
According to the ICC valuation of the Southern Railway, the W&OD leased the line from November 15, 1911. Is this correct, or was it actually effective in 1912? --NE2 11:26, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The Washington and Old Dominion Railway concluded negotations with the Southern Railway for the lease of the Southern's Bluemont Branch in 1911. Under the lease terms, the Washington & Old Dominion Railway would take over all of the Bluemont Branch service on July 1, 1912. Reference:   Corker1 (talk) 21:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Coordinate error
The following coordinate fixes are need for LATITUDE NEED TO BE NEGATIVE...YOU END UP IN CHINA!!—72.192.201.191 (talk) 06:57, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Coordinate has been corrected and made negative. See Mapping on Bing Maps

Merge Railroad and Railway articles
This page has previously been merged into the Washington and Old Dominion Railway page, as that article is more concise and covers all important historical aspects of the line (see WP:DETAIL). A Wiki article should contain a quick summary of the topic's most important points. The level of detail contained in this article far exceeds the qualifications of a wikipedia article and is more appropriate for a fansite. A railroad line that did not exceed 80 miles does not need two articles covering its history. Please do not revert this move until first discussing on talk page. Thank you. Oanabay04 (talk) 19:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * WP:DETAIL encourages editors to create "parent" and "child" articles if a single article contains too much detail. WP:DETAIL states: The parent article should have general summary information and the more detailed summaries of each subtopic should be in child articles and in articles on specific subjects. This can be thought of as layering inverted pyramids where the reader is first shown the lead section for a topic, and within its article any section may have a or similar link to a full article on the subtopic summarized in that section (for example, Yosemite National Park#History and History of the Yosemite area are two such related featured articles). The summary in a section at the parent article will often be at least twice as long as the lead section in the child article. The child article in turn can also serve as a parent article for its specific part of the topic, and so on, until a topic is very thoroughly covered. Thus, by navigational choices, several different types of readers each get the amount of details they want.


 * Therefore, if an editor, such as Oanabay04, considers that an article has too much detail, that editor has the responsibility to create a parent article and child articles that together retain all of the verifiable information that the original article contains. Further, if an editor considers that an article contains too many Wikilinks, that editor has the responsiblity to remove those that are excessive on an individual basis, rather than deleting or replacing entire sections.


 * All of the information in Washington and Old Dominion Railroad is supported by in-line citations to reliable sources. However, some of the information in Washington and Old Dominion Railway lacks adequate in-line citations.  For example, the reference to information in The Historical Guide to North American Railroads identifies the editor of the book, but does not identify the author of the referenced information or the primary source of the information.  Readers therefore find it difficult or impossible to verify the relliability of the source.  Further, the infobox in Washington and Old Dominion Railway does not contain any citations to reliable sources.  This is important, as some of the information in the infobox is inaccurate (e.g., the logo in the infobox is not that of the Washington and Old Dominion Railway and the Alexandria, VA, did not contain the headquarters of the company that controlled the Railway.)  The merges and other edits that Oanabay04 performed removed a large amount of verifiable information from Wikipedia and replaced it with inadequately sourced information.  This is vandalism, regardless of an editor's intent.


 * One of the contributors to The Historical Guide to North American Railroads may have used the name Washington and Old Dominion Railway. However, there is no reason to believe that the contributor had sufficient expertise to use that name in the contribution.  As noted above, a public entity (the Northern Virginia Regional Parks Authority) has assigned the name Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park to one of its facilities.  Further, the authors of three books (including a 2013 book referenced in Washington and Old Dominion Railway before Oanabay04 deleted the reference without explanation) bear the titles of Washington and Old Dominion Railroad or Washington & Old Dominion Railroad.  Together, these authors and entities carry greater weight than does the unknown contributor to The Historical Guide to North American Railroads.  The title of the parent article should therefore be Washington and Old Dominion Railroad.


 * I am therefore restoring Washington and Old Dominion Railroad and Washington and Old Dominion Railway to their versions that existed before the most recent edits by Onabay04. I encourage Oanabay04 and other editors to create parent and child articles that retain all verifiable information in Washington and Old Dominion Railroad and Washington and Old Dominion Railway in a series of layered inverted pyramids in accordance with WP:DETAIL.  To avoid any loss of verifiable information, both articles should remain open to all readers until editors have created the parent and child articles. Corker1 (talk) 03:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I am glad you want to enourage myself and other editors to create parent and child articles that retain all verifiable information in these articles. The problem is that you failed to include the main purpose of the WP:DETAIL:
 * ''Summary style is based on the premise that information about a topic should not all be contained in a single article since different readers have different needs:
 * many readers need just a quick summary of the topic's most important points (lead section),
 * others need a moderate amount of information on the topic's more important points (a set of multiparagraph sections), and
 * some readers need a lot of details on one or more aspects of the topic (links to full-sized separate articles).''


 * The only railroads that probably warrant full-sized separate articles would be the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central Railroad, Canadian Pacific, and public transit agencies with several moving parts, like SEPTA, MBTA, New Jersey Transit, etc. Creating two entire articles on the small W&OD brings up a serious question of notability WP:ORG. You seem to be under the impression that just because a fact is verifiable, it needs to be in a Wiki article. Hardly. Applying that logic to Wikipedia would result in excessively detailed articles on the over 10,000 small railroads that peppered the U.S. over the last 150 years. As long as the basic facts are present, written in a concise, simple manner and has a verifiable source, that works fine. Then, if you want to include additional sources that are not referenced in the text, you add "Further Sources," "External Links," etc. For the record, the excessive coordinate linkage of each and every station is hardly appropriate for a wiki article, but I left that (the sister article for Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park suffers from the same issue). Retaining two separate articles for a railroad the size of the W&OD overkill and more appropriate of a fanpage, as previously mentioned. I suggest you look through some other Wiki format links because it is really important to know unless you want your work mercilessly edited.Oanabay04 (talk) 18:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * WP:DETAIL describes the correct method for retaining verifiable information in Wikipedia while assuring that the main article and each child article will be concise. Adding "Further Sources" and "External Links", as Oanabay04 has suggested, does not permit readers to differentiate useful information from all of the extraneous, irrelevant and/or redundant information present in each link and source. Further, this procedure would often result in long and confusing lists of "External Links" and "Further Sources".


 * I agree with Oanabay04 that Wikipedia should contain only one article describing this railroad. This article should have several child articles, as WP:DETAIL recommends. In contrast, removing much verifiable and relevant information from Wikipedia by redirecting entire articles, as Oanabay04 has repeatedly done to Washington and Old Dominion Railroad, is inappropriate, is against Wikpedia policy, is an extreme form of vandalism, and needs to stop. Corker1 (talk) 20:14, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Dispute between two editors submitted to Third opinion for resolution. 03:52, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Article scope
What's this article actually about? If it's about the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad (as the lede says), the reorganized Washington and Old Dominion Railway, then it should start in 1936, but it's essentially a history of the entire company beginning with the Alexandria and Harpers Ferry. I'm not opposed to that, at least until such time as sub-articles can be written. Note that the existing Washington and Old Dominion Railway article is up for deletion as a copyright violation; copied much of the text word-for-word from George Drury's book. Mackensen (talk) 11:23, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070317083900/http://gfhs.org/pics/dickeys.htm to http://gfhs.org/pics/dickeys.htm

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...to make room, etc.
Quoting part of the source doesn't help. It says (use a map) that the location of the line and station in that area is now under I-66. An editor summarized it accurately. TEDickey (talk) 01:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I quoted the entire source, not just part of it. As I stated, a sentence near the top of Section 8, page 15, of the cited reference states in its entirety: "The station was dismantled in 1970 (Wrenn 1972:79)." The sentence says nothing about I-66, nor does any other sentence on page 15.
 * Further, the former station's site is now not under I-66. The site is not even close to I-66. It is about 200 feet south of the highway.
 * A NOVA Parks historical marker identifies the station's former site. The marker is under the W&OD Trail bridge over Langston Boulevard. I-66 (the Custis Memorial Parkway) is north of the trail bridge and Fairfax Drive. You can see this for yourself on the 2023 satellite image at https://www.google.com/maps/place/East+Falls+Church+Station+Historical+Marker/@38.8874385,-77.1652887,671m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x89b7b5e2b9dc3681:0x938599b99c7ece63!8m2!3d38.8874344!4d-77.1627138!16s%2Fg%2F11h01pck0h?entry=ttu. The satellite image identifies the location of the "East Falls Church Historical Marker", which is adjacent to the station's former site.
 * Figure 2 on the Historical Marker Database page entitled "East Falls Church Station" at https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=55964 contains a photograph of the W&OD's East Falls Church station. The legend beneath the photograph states: "From 1887 to 1970, the East Falls Church station stood on the site where you are located." Figure 3 on the page contains a 2012 photograph of the historical marker, which was near the south side of the W&OD Trail (before the trail bridge was constructed). The legend beneath the photograph states: "The old train station stood just to the right of the marker."
 * Pages 22-25 of the book "Guillaudeu, David A.; Foreword by McCray, Paul E. (2013). Washington & Old Dominion Railroad. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738597928. OCLC 811603181", which this article cites in its References section, describes and contains photographs of the demolition of the W&OD's East Falls Church station. The legend of the top photo on page 22 states: "The Virginia Electric Power Company had purchased the right of way for its power line and was concerned that the station could burn and severe its cables. It gave the station away to the Amissville Trading Post. Here, Trading Post workmen have removed the shingles and are removing the roof boards and rafters on August 18, 1970. (Photograph by Henry H. Douglas, courtesy of the Fairfax County Public Library Photographic Archive.)"
 * Based on the above, please remove the text in the article that states that the station was torn down in 1970 "to make room for I-66". It is not correct. 2601:140:9480:81B0:91CF:3966:9A0F:FBD (talk) 16:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)