Talk:Zürich Hauptbahnhof

Move (changeset #229309526)
The English "Zurich Main Station" is always used when announcing connections in English at the station and in announcements in long-distance trains. 87.245.90.72 (talk) 12:28, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh OK, I hadn't noticed that, I haven't taken any of the long-distance trains. I guess my "the English is never used" was a bit foolish. Nevertheless the move is consistent with the general practice on Wikipedia. All the articles in Category:Hauptbahnhof use "Hauptbahnhof" as opposed to an English translation, since that is actually part of their name. Similarly for Category:Railway stations in France where "Gare de" is common. I'm not sure this is an actual guideline somewhere, but it seems sensible to me. the wub "?!"  17:09, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I cannot agree. I spent the past two years in Switzerland and the Swiss know Hauptbahnhof as Main Station in English. After working in Hauptbahnhof for over a year (and my wife still does), I think I might have a bit of insight on this. Anyway, I cited this site as Main Station last summer on my translated Brugg article.


 * Postauto is called PostBus in English because the Swiss purposefully translated it as such. If the SBB translates the station as Main Station, it should appear as such in English.--Ami in CH (talk) 05:24, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

"the curious Swiss rule that only shops located in Federal areas, such as railway stations and airports, are allowed to open on Sundays": this is wrong, as in some cities some shops, which are not in "federal areas", are open on sundays; what's more, the adjective "curious" is not informative about the subject of the article, but about the author of the article, and this is of no concern here.--Klumpfuss (talk) 14:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Open shopping center in Zürich HB
It is not due to the fact that stores in "federal areas", whatever that is exactly and legally supposed to mean, can open on Sundays that Zürich HB stores (the "ShopVille") can open on Sundays, but due to the fact that Swiss employment laws only allow people to be empoyed on Sundays in "centers of public transport." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Exuperantius (talk • contribs) 19:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Translation
I have translated the first section of the German article and I have updated the German article during this process.--Bk1 168 (talk) 17:40, 7 May 2010 (UTC)



Puzzling reference to 2 tracks out of 16 being permanently closed
The infobox indicates that there are 16 long distance tracks:


 * 16*
 * tracks 3 to 18, Street Level
 * 2 tracks permanently closed

I'm puzzled by that final note. If they are permanently closed, the correct approach would be to drop the footnote and say there are 14 tracks. But actually I don't think that is correct; I'm pretty sure that during my last visit (in September) all 16 tracks were in use.

Is this a very recent closure, or out of date information, or a just a very confused editor?. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 21:25, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Count again! 3 to 18 is sixteen tracks. I suppose this explains why there is No.1 or 2. Secondarywaltz (talk) 05:22, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Platforms 1 and 2 most definitely exist and are not closed, they are just are not long-distance tracks. They are the underground terminal tracks of the SZU (S-Bahn lines S4 & S10), as the infobox and/or article goes on to explain. If the infobox was referring to them as the closed tracks it is (a) plain wrong, because they are not closed and (b) confused, because the wording implies that two of the 16 tracks are closed, not 2 of a notional 18 tracks. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 10:50, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I've just checked with the SBB's online departure information, and between 08:00 and 10:00 tommorrow morning (2011/11/14) there are departures advertised from every platform between 3 and 18. So the idea that two of those 16 platforms are permanently closed is clearly wrong. As discussed above, the statement cannot sensibly be related to platforms 1 and 2, as they also are open. I've therefore removed the statement. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 21:10, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Requested move: Zürich Hauptbahnhof → Zurich Central Station

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Favonian (talk) 10:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Zürich Hauptbahnhof → Zurich Central Station – The other train stations in Category:Hauptbahnhof are titled as "Central Station." The word "hauptbahnhof" is not found in the major English-language dictionaries.,, ,. According to WP:UE: “If there is no established English-language treatment for a name, translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader.” Removing the diacritic here allows this title to correspond to the city article, which is at Zurich. The Google book hits for "Zurich Hauptbahnhof" are almost exclusively in travel literature. "When a guidebook or roadmap written in English shows an autobahn between München and Nürnberg, it is attesting to local usage, because that is what the signs on the autobahn will say; Munich and Nuremberg are still the English names." (WP:NCGN) Kauffner (talk) 07:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose Until recently, English Wikipedia did not translate "Hauptbahnhof" into English, partly because the consensus was that there is no standard translation for that expression. The recent changes of names of articles about stations in Germany came about because the Deutsche Bahn was said to have adopted the translation "Central Station" for all purposes.  See Talk:Berlin Central Station.  I am not sure whether that really is true even in Germany, but it certainly is not the case in Switzerland.  See the discussion above.  Google searches establish that "Zürich Hauptbahnhof" is more commonly translated as "Zurich Main Station" than as "Zurich Central Station".  However, the station's owner and operator, SBB-CFF-FFS, most commonly names the station in printed or online material (eg timetables) as "Zürich HB", and does not translate that expression at all, whether into French, Italian, English or any other language.  As the expression "Zürich HB" is widely used and understood, I would not be opposed to giving the article that name, but in my view "Zurich Central Station" would be inappropriate.  I might add that in my view, for much the same reason, it would have been better to use the expression "Hbf" for English Wikipedia articles about German stations than the expression "Central Station". Bahnfrend (talk) 10:15, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose - There are no evidences that "Zurich Central Station" is the common name. "Zurich Main Station" seems to be the official (and rather common) English name, so it might be used as the title of this article, although the German name is still very common in English. mge o  talk 17:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Actually I'm pretty unconcerned about whether it should be Zürich or Zurich, but I'm strongly opposed to changing Hauptbahnhof to Central Station. It is not even a good translation; Central Station implies a geographically central location that is utterly missing from the German term Hauptbahnhof, which implies a position in a heirarchy of importance amongst stations rather a geographical position. The DB may, for whatever misguided reasons, have decided to translate Hauptbahnhof to Central Station, but Zurich is in Switzerland. If you search for Zurich Central Station on the SBB's english language website you get no hits. If you search for Zurich HB you get back a single hit for Zurich HB (Mainstation). -- chris_j_wood (talk) 17:43, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment. Train stations don't usually have English-language common names. We "use English" and translate them. This is supported by the guidelines cited in the nomination. Collins German-English Dictionary defines "hauptbahnhof" as, “main or central station.” "Central" is big in railway-speak with Grand Central Terminal, Central railway station, Sydney, Central Station (Chicago terminal), Central Station (Memphis), Central Station (Montreal), and Glasgow Central station. We have an article about this type of station at central station, and nothing at main station. "Berlin Central Station" is mentioned often enough in English-language media for this to be considered a common name. Other Hauptbahnhofs were translated the same way for consistency. "Zurich Central Station" is given by Irish Independent and Times of India. SBB translates it as, "Zurich main station." So the railway is not expecting English-speakers to call the station a "hauptbahnhof." I get 13 Google News hits for "Zurich Central Station, 49 for "Zurich Main Station". I'm fine with either "central station" or "main station". Kauffner (talk) 09:18, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Response I don't see any reason why the name of the article should be translated at all. Nobody's suggesting that the name of the article Bahnhofstrasse needs to be translated, so why translate the name of the article about the station at the end of it?  Also, if you have a look at Category:Buildings and structures in Zurich, you'll see that many of the articles about other buildings and structures in that city have a name that has not been translated.  The biggest problem with the proposal, however, is that the word Hauptbahnhof has no real English language equivalent.  If you translate it as "main station", you create an expression that is simply not used in the English language to refer to stations in the Anglosphere.  For example, there's no Sydney Main Station, nor any Grand Main Terminal in New York.  If, on the other hand, you translate it as "central station", you come up with an expression that means something different from Hauptbahnhof, and that, for that reason, is also misleading in many cases.  For example, the truly central stations in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt/Main and Vienna are Stadtmitte, Marienplatz, Hauptwache and Stephansplatz, respectively, and none of these stations is a Hauptbahnhof.  In fact, most, if not all, Hauptbahnhöfe were constructed quite deliberately outside the former city walls of the city they serve, and are therefore outside the city centre.  By contrast, the cities in many English speaking countries never had any city walls, so the stations serving them could be built just about anywhere.  For example, the Anglophone city where I live was cut in half by the railway lines when its central station was built more than a century ago.  As the German Wikipedia article Hauptbahnhof confirms, the word Hauptbahnhof means, in many (but not all) cities in the German speaking world, the principal or most important passenger station in a city, as long as it has more than one passenger station.  But the expressions "Principal Station" and "Most Important Station" are not used in the English language, either.  So why can't it just be accepted, as the German Wikipedia article also confirms, that the word Hauptbahnhof is a German language word referring to a central European concept, and therefore can't really be translated into English? Bahnfrend (talk) 07:03, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose: In my experience, English-language transportation-focused publications are much more likely to refer to this as Zürich Hauptbahnhof than by some English term.  And we're talking about the title of the article.  Translations can and will be included in the lead sentence, but in my view the title does not need to be translated. With reference to the Autobahn-signs example given in the move request, this is not an article about a broad subject, such as a city, but rather about a very narrow subject – and it's a transportation facility, so it's not unreasonable to give greater weight to usage in (English-language) transportation publications, over general publications such as the Irish Independent. SJ Morg (talk) 09:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose, per SJ Morg. For instance,the (anglophone) Railway Gazette calls it "Zürich Hauptbahnhof":  . By the way, removing umlauts doesn't make a spelling english, it makes it wrong. bobrayner (talk) 13:13, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. Very common English usage is to call the principal station of a city the "Central Station". Few English speakers will understand Hauptbahnhof and we do a disservice to our readers when we fail to adequately translate such terms. --Bermicourt (talk) 14:25, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Militant employment of WP:UE doesn't help anyone (either). Oppose per SJ Morg. Jared Preston (talk) 16:14, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. This flawed translation of Hauptbahnhof to Central station has already led to the ridiculous situation that we now have articles on Koblenz Central Station (for the station known in German as Koblenz Hauptbahnhof) and Koblenz-Stadtmitte station (a completely different station whose name may, with some degree of legitamacy, be translated as Koblenz Central Station). This renaming project has therefore already put us in a hole; time to stop digging. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 17:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the softball. Stadtmitte translates as "city center", so Koblenz City Center Station. So many responses assume that a particular English-language name must already be dominant before we can use it. But the guidelines, which I quote in the nomination, tell us to translate. The meaning of central station given in that article corresponds exactly to hauptbahnhof. Kauffner (talk) 01:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Beware! some of us think that Stadtmitte actually translates as City Centre, not the Americanism you quote (in any case, isn't the American term Downtown?).  Do you really want to get into an argument about whether a German railway station should be named in American English or Proper English?  Incidentally, the meaning of central station given in the article you quote also corresponds exactly to the North American union station.  I can't wait for your proposal to move Hartford Union Station to Hartford Central Station for consistency.  Skinsmoke (talk) 05:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: I'm not sure that "central station" has a clear meaning in any version of English. The article central station looks to me like it may need a major rewrite, because what it says in the lede section is contradicted further down.  For example, it seems, from the contents of the section about the UK, that in that country "central station" means "a station that its owner has named 'Central Station', even if it is not the most central, nor the most important, station in the relevant city".  The three Central Stations in Australia are a good further illustration of the problem.  Central railway station, Brisbane is on the northern edge of the city, but is the closest station to its centre.  Central railway station, Sydney is further away from the city centre than at least two other stations, Town Hall and Wynyard.  Meanwhile, Melbourne Central railway station is so called only because it is underneath a huge office and shopping complex called Melbourne Central; if there were Hauptbahnhöfe in Australia, then Melbourne Hbf would be either Flinders Street Station or Southern Cross station, or perhaps, as in Vienna, there wouldn't be a Hauptbahnhof in Melbourne at all. Bahnfrend (talk) 08:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose - WP:UE does not mean WP:MAKEUPANENGLISHTRANSLATION. What next, Gare du Nord moving to North railway station, Paris? Mjroots (talk) 14:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose I am prepared to accept that many English readers may not know that Hauptbahnhof translates as Main railway station or is akin to Central Station to some people.  However, surely the purpose of Wikipedia is to be of use to its readers.  Those most likely to be looking up the article on the station are those travelling to it, and they will find the station described on their journey planner, timetable or tickets as Zürich Hauptbahnhof or Zürich HB.  Unless they can guess that Wikipedia mistranslates this as Zurich Central Station, how are these less informed readers supposed to work out where the article is located?  Our guidelines tell us to use the version of the name most commonly used in reliable English language sources.  In the case of a railway station, travel guides and rail timetables are probably the most reliable sources available, and so should not be discounted when searching on Google.  Most travellers will not have the faintest idea what name is used in academic literature (if there is any).  Check journey planners and timetables here in the United Kingdom, and you will find the station under Zürich HB. An advanced Google search in English for "zurich hauptbahnhof" excluding "wikipedia" produces 130,000 hits.  A similar search for "zurich central station" excluding "wikipedia" produces 16,800 hits.  The most popular search term appears to be "zurich hb" excluding "wikipedia", with 664,000 hits.  Accepting that all three searches produce a lot of "false hits", that's still a pretty convincing margin in favour of Hauptbahnhof or HB.  Google doesn't differentiate between Zürich and Zurich.  Skinsmoke (talk) 05:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: I agree with this rationale.  Although Wikipedia is not a travel guide, people wanting to find an article about a central European station will often be travellers who will therefore not need a translation of Hauptbahnhof.  Interestingly, of all the many en wiki articles I have created about Italian railway stations, the ones that seem to receive the most hits are Fiumicino Aeroporto railway station and Malpensa Aeroporto railway station, both of which are of much more interest to travellers than to those interested in architecture or railways.  People looking for an article about a Swiss railway station will also often be people who already know something about railways in central Europe and will therefore already have some idea as to what Hauptbahnhof means. Bahnfrend (talk) 08:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You know what's way more popular than Zurich HB? Zurich Train Station. The most important feature of a title is that it be recognizable to as many readers as possible. Then they know which item to pick when it shows up on a result list and can find the article. Kauffner (talk) 14:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is an encyclopedia, not The Sun or some other cheap tabloid. From the beginning of rail transport, the correct term is railway station. I know that modern yoofspeak is "train station", but we ain't gonna use it. It always has a railway, even if it doesn't have a train. Mjroots (talk) 15:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Railway station, train station, central station, or main station is all the same to me. But I think we can assume that the people who type in "zurich train station" are more likely to recognize "central station" than "hauptbahnhof". Kauffner (talk) 21:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Second oldest?
The lead paragraph's text used to say 'one of the oldest', which is, I think, evident from the history section. User:SouthBundy changed this to 'the oldest', which is certainly untrue, without any comment or cite. User:ZH8000 then changed it to 'second oldest', correctly pointing out that Basel was first. But Basel being first doesn't prove Zurich is second, and there is no cite to back that claim up. So I have added a cite needed template. If we cannot come up with a decent cite, I think the text should be changed back to 'one of the oldest'. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 15:13, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

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