Template talk:Rail line

Documentation
Is this template documented anywhere? --Concrete Cowboy 14:40, 27 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Not that I can find. I am particularly wondering about the coloured bars - I think they're being used to distinguish railway companies, but I haven't found a key. --ColinFine 17:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Colour-coding for rail operators
As far as I can tell, from existing articles:
 * █ #FF0000 – First ScotRail and Virgin Trains
 * █ #FFFF00 – Merseyrail
 * █ #8B00FF – Northern Rail
 * █ #800000 – Wessex Trains
 * █ #010385 – First Great Western, GNER and First TransPennine Express
 * █ #30C5B8 – Arriva Trains Wales and Heathrow Express
 * █ #00BB00 – Central Trains and First Great Western Link
 * █ #FF9999 – Heathrow Connect
 * █ #008080 – Midland Mainline
 * █ #2E8B57 – Hull Trains
 * █ #C80051 – CrossCountry (Kevin Steinhardt 00:20, 28 October 2007 (UTC))
 * █ #FF7518 – London Overground (Kevin Steinhardt 00:20, 28 October 2007 (UTC))
 * █ #FA0000 – National Express East Coast (Kevin Steinhardt 03:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC))
 * █ #0D2A72 – Crossrail (Kevin Steinhardt 09:54, 30 October 2007 (UTC))

I'm not sure why several operators have to share the same colour in some cases. In the absence of anything else, I guess this can be used as a quick-reference -- Gurch 22:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Some time recently, it seems to have been decided to go pink with First ScotRail, primarily to keep with First ScotRail's colours. Some of the big ones have already been changed, here, for example, on the 28th April. Some work has already been done on this, and as I've gone through, I've changed with this move. Can we reach quick concensus that oweing to First ScotRail's new colours, and that Virgin Trains serve some routes that First ScotRail do, we can move to


 * █ #FF80C0 - First ScotRail

Cheers. M0RHI | Talk to me 23:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Colour-coding for Historical Scottish Routes
(from WPTIS Talk) Stewart 18:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * █ #66ba5a G&SWR: A light olive green
 * █ #496799 Caledonian: 'Caledonian Blue'
 * █ #517a6a Joint Caledonian and G&SWR: an aqua colour as a result of mixing the two colours together for G&SWR and Caledonian
 * █ #8f691e North British: 'French mustard'
 * █ #556920 Joint NBR and Caledonian: A mixture of the colours for NBR and Caledonian

Template:Rail station
Users of this template may be interested in Template:Rail station, being developed by User:Captain scarlet as a possible alternative or replacement. Warofdreams talk 23:46, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Auto-terminus
I've changed the template so that when "previous" and/or "next" are not defined, Terminus will automatically show up in the respective column. I hope this saves some space in the articles about termini. - Tangot a ngo 18:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

colours - update
I've done a load of "research" on colour used by each different TOC and put the results up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways (I'll copy the raw data over here later as an index). I'm asking some pretty key question that affect the use of colours relating to this template, all variants of it (heritage, disused, etc) and well as the "infamous" "s-rail". any comments, thoughts, agreement, disagreement would be welcome - before i do something drastic and upset someone! Pickle 08:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

"Next" and "Previous" Flexibility
Is it possible to have some flexibility in the "next" and "previous" settings, so that you can have more than one station as the next/preivous on the line? At present it seems that you can only have one, and this is not much use for stations before or after a junction. If there was some way of putting "Previous Stations: X or Y" that would be great. If there is already, please correct me and show me how!! Thank you. Chrisfow (talk) 00:24, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Border widths
For a long time, I've noticed that if is used inside route boxes commenced using, some of the borders will appear double-width, because of a differing method in border specification, as seen at Shildon railway station.

In technical terms, applies the   property to the table, and expects the cells in each row to have the bottom cell borders always suppressed, also selectively suppressing the left or right borders, so that only one border is drawn between any two adjacent cells. does not apply, and does not expect the row templates to specify any border suppression. This means that should a cell have its bottom border set, and the cell directly beneath have it top border set, two adjacent borders are drawn, which has the appearance of a double-width border. Similarly for the right and left borders of cells side by side. Less obviously, but equally visible, this causes the doubling of the width of the outer edges of the table - it gets one border from the table itself, and one from the cell inside.

We might be able to fix this by adding selective border suppression to : I have created a prototype at Template:Rail line/sandbox, and set up some testcases. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:14, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Further: also applies   where  etc. do not. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:08, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Collapse functionality
There really needs to be a way to collapse all these services. At present, look at the article Haymarket railway station. The services chart takes up way too much space. I'm not sure what to do about this, but I'll leave this here in case anyone cares to do anything about it. RGloucester — ☎ 17:13, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * This came up about a month ago on Talk:Filton Abbey Wood railway station/GA1. . -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

What should go in the 'Route' box?
I'm not clear what should go in the route box. Is it just (a) the name of the TOC and then (b) the name of the railway? In the absence of template documentation, 'custom and practice' seems to say yes, that's all.

Except when it isn't: sometimes we also have a (c) Terminus-1 –  Terminus 2. Whether or not item c appears seems to be at the whim of editors, so some add it and others delete it. But sometimes it seems indispensable, especially when cross-country services are involved (see Reading or Oxford for example) or for 'n-furcated' lines like the West Coast Main Line. Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Maynard Friedman (talk • contribs) 11:33, 15 September 2014‎
 * As I understand it, for routes with a current service, the route parameter holds the name of the TOC on the upper line, in normal size text; and the name of the route, line or service on the lower, in  tags.
 * The Reading/Oxford problem is one of a complicated service pattern. There are two main traffic flows for XC services to the north: those that at Birmingham go straight on towards Stafford, and those that back out again and head for Derby. Similarly, to the south, there are those which go no further than Reading, and those which back out again and head for Southampton. But there are many different origins, and destinations also: Bournenouth, Southampton C, Reading, Birmingham NS, Manchester Picc, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh (I may have missed some).
 * We have differing editor attitudes: on the one hand there are people (like me) who would have the routebox show only the principal services - most trains at off-peak times are either Manchester-Bournemouth, or Newcastle-Reading, so those are the only two services that I would include. But there are some people who wish to sqeeze in every possible origin and destination, even for once-a-day services (like the last train of the day which only runs part of the route). This in my view is unnecessary overcomplication. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:55, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * So you are saying that item c, the [primary] service being run, should always be shown? But surely that just duplicates the 'Service pattern' which has already been given under each TOC above? (and, as you say, it invites people to put in every destination).
 * You do many more of these than I do: what is your sense of the consensus 'custom and practice'? My objective in this discussion is to create a proper 'template documentation' that is much needed for this template. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:08, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * As I see it, (c) has crept in over recent years based on the parameter in . It used to be limited to routeboxes appearing in Metro station articles but then popped up in Crossrail stations. At best, it tells the reader what they already know. At worst, it adds another layer of complication as service patterns don't always allow for neat distinctions (e.g. Reading/Oxford), meaning that several rows would be needed to accurately reflect the situation. However, we're now straying into WP:NOTTIMETABLE territory. Surely the most simple solution is to follow the standard approach that routeboxes run from north to south, west to east. That way, we're only interested in the preceding and following stations without having to check TOC timetables to see if Bournemouth or Crinkley Bottom is actually the terminus for the service in question. Lamberhurst (talk) 16:22, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think that is referring to the "towards" items in the left/right columns of routeboxes like this, but to the station pairs in the central column of routeboxes like this. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:19, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I see...I hadn't come across that before. Although I can understand how such an addition can be useful, adding such a level of detail poses difficulties in terms of keeping the routes indicated up-to-date for complex service patterns. The point is well-illustrated by the situation at Oxford. Today's timetable between 1128 and 1243 reveals three different XC services: Newcastle/Southampton, Reading/Newcastle and Manchester/Bournemouth. Only the third service is correctly referred to in the Oxford routebox with the first omitted entirely and the second inaccurately mentioned. And I haven't even checked the rest of the day's XC services. Lamberhurst (talk) 20:58, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is particularly evident/severe in places like Oxford and Reading because the lines used by the XC services don't have pretty names like WCML or even EWRL, more a bit of this bit of that. As the template stands, this central box assumes that there will be such a nice name. Where it doesn't exist, people make something up like the Terminus-1 - Terminus-2 notation. Unfortunately that in turn becomes problematic if there are in fact no services from this station to one or other of those terminuses.
 * We also have to think of the 'world-wide perspective' in proposing rules for the template: just taking two places at random - Gare de Lyon-Perrache and Bologna Centrale railway station - in all cases the middle box is used simply for the type of service (TGV, intercity, sleeper, regional) [which, IMHO, would be an improvement on the mess we have here]. Maybe it is just too late to stuff the cat back in the bag? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:25, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * If such detail is not given either at Perrache or Bologna, that gives further support to the notion that it is not needed here. As far as I can see, it appears to be the action of a minority of editors, and I would therefore suggest not continuing it. This to Bletchley highlights the difficulties involved: the Southern service to MK from Croydon runs over the WCML, the Dudding Hill line, the WLL and the BML. Furthermore, the service has been known to start from South Croydon. The information there about the service is therefore inaccurate (but understandably so as the route is not well-known); why create a rod for our backs? Lamberhurst (talk) 11:15, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Consistency in route (succession) boxes
I've used these (as a reader), and also edited a few. I've noticed that they often contain a number or errors and inconsistencies. At the very least, I would expect that if you started at the first station on a line and selected the "following station", and repeated this you would eventually get to the last station... (More difficult if you're dealing with an unused or historic railway where maybe not all stations have an associated article).

I recently tried to "virtually travel" from Birmingham (New Street) to Liverpool Lime Street (with intermediate stations Cosely, Wolverhampton, Penkridge, Stafford, Crewe, Runcorn, Liverpool Parkway). Also, for simplicity, I've not included visiting the smaller stations of Winsford, Hartford, and Acton Bridge (and striked them out in the following table).

The following table shows the route boxes in the order of travel:

It goes reasonably well until you get the Runcorn, where (clicking on "following station") you get to Crewe - to go to Runcorn (Oh! Mr Porter). It begins to sort itself out after that but there are some other inconsistencies: I've seen these sorts of errors/inconsistencies when following through different succession boxes (try the South Wales valley lines or the lines passing through Bristol Temple Meads).
 * The route is shown in four different ways (Birmingham-Liverpool, Liverpool-Birmingham, Birmingham New Street - Liverpool Lime Street, and Rugby-Birmingham-Stafford Line), and that's ignoring minor differences of brackets, spacing, wikilinking or not...
 * Where the route is wikilinked, it points to three different lines (West Coast Mainline, Rugby-Birmingham-Stafford Line, and Crewe to Liverpool Line). Some of this might actually be ok - but only if it was done consistently.

I'm quite happy to have a go at tidying this up, but have some questions: Robevans123 (talk) 00:17, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Would you name the line as Liverpool-Birmingham or Birmingham-Liverpool? I think I favour Liverpool-Birmingham - most (all?) route maps (including the West Coast Main Line) have some relationship with the geography showing (for example) Liverpool above Birmingham - it seems slightly more intuitive that the "following station" describes the next station moving down (south-ish). And lets not get into West/East routes just yet...
 * Should the links underlying the route names point to different routes? BTW The West Coast Line doesn't show Liverpool Parkway, but the Crewe to Liverpool line does.
 * If yes, what would they be? I'd certainly put the Crewe to Liverpool line under the link in the route boxes for Liverpool Lime Street, Liverpool Parkway, Runcorn, and probably Crewe. But for the remaining stations, should they point to the West Coast Main Line or the Rugby-Birmingham-Stafford Line?
 * As regards direction, there is a convention (which is not universal) that the left-hand column shows the station that is further west or north, the right-hand column shows the station that is further east or south. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:28, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks - useful to know - must admit I've not been able to discern a convention... Is it described somewhere? Which takes precedence - N-S or W-E? But would it be better to establish a convention based on the general direction of the whole line? You can then move from one "following" station to another "following" station?


 * I'm sure one of the South Wales valley lines effectively goes in the opposite direction to all the others (and they all basically run N-S) - will check it. And the Welsh Marches line seems the wrong way round to me... Robevans123 (talk) 01:10, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I have been gradually amending routeboxes to reflect the convention mentioned by Redrose64. It's preferable to have one approach for all routeboxes precisely to avoid the situation that you have highlighted very well in the examples above. In the routebox, there should always be a link to the route and if the link is piped, the description given should be the same for all routeboxes on the route. I'm happy to go with L'pool-B'ham but it should be consistent. The Crewe to Liverpool line should be linked only in routeboxes for stations on the sections of the route via Weaver Junction. Lamberhurst (talk) 10:43, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll go with Liverpool-Birmingham throughout. For the stations from Liverpool Lime Street to Crewe, I'll put the Crewe to Liverpool line in the link; and for Stafford to Birmingham New Street I'll put the Rugby-Birmingham-Stafford line in the link.
 * It would still be nice to know where the convention mentioned above is described - useful if someone objects to changes, or is just asking about it.
 * Good to see someone else working on these lines. Should we set up a mini-project somewhere in UK trains? Nothing complicated - just three lists (routes checked/edited and ok; routes checked and found wanting; and routes not yet checked)? Robevans123 (talk) 14:04, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It isn't documented anywhere but there have been discussions over the years. The closest one gets is here. There's a red link on WP:UKRAIL which refers to Guidelines where this sort of information should go. Without it being documented, you run the risk of somebody reverting your edits as happened to me  Lamberhurst (talk) 14:37, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's interesting - definitely a need for a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways and if possible something derived from that to go in Guidelines (and while we're at it, the contents of the routeboxes as in previous topic on this page, and also the amount of detail shown in the route diagrams as well...). All three topics that exhibit a wide variety of detail and inconsistency. I'll have a think about that, but in the meantime I'll try to bring some semblance of order to Liverpool-Birmingham. It'll be interesting to see if anybody reverts or rejects. Robevans123 (talk) 16:05, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

So here's what the stations on the Liverpool-Birmingham route should look like (I've left the station names in for now for ease of editing):

I'll start editing the stations soon (expect more reverts round Birmingham than Liverpool)...

Came across the Severn Beach Line recently and tweaked two of the stations to go in the same direction as the others. Services run from Severn Beach, via Avonmouth, to Bristol Temple Meads, but many start at Avonmouth, and services from Bristol Temple Meads often terminate at Avonmouth. I'm not sure the Avonmouth entry is quite right to reflect this variation of service. If anyone would like to check and correct?

An alternative convention to N-S, W-E, that I've noticed on a number of UK main line routes is: "start at London and work out". Robevans123 (talk) 17:56, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Severn Beach line looks ok; SB is the northern terminus and Avonmouth is the 2nd station to the south. St Andrews Rd needs tweaking as Chittening Platform was to the north. Same with the Henbury Loop reference in the Avonmouth routebox. Lamberhurst (talk) 19:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Using Template:Rail line in infoboxes
Currently, using Template:Rail line in Template:Infobox station doesn't work because some of the formatting is broken. A couple of minor changes fixes this. This will allow succession boxes to be placed in infoboxes without needing to create and debug the multiple sub-templates required for Template:S-line.

See User:Antony-22/Rail line and Merced (California High-Speed Rail station) for a test case. The changes needed are as follows:
 * Add  to each cell of Template:Rail start
 * Remove  from the first line of Template:Rail line
 * Add  to each of the three table cell style elements in Template:Rail line.

After the changes the template should look like this:

Thanks. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 19:36, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES - also, please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:11, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussion
Okay, I've made the changes to the sandbox, see Template:Rail line/testcases. It looks like the Template:S-rail titles still work so the changes to Template:Rail start are unneeded. Any feedback? Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 21:02, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment: Are these changes really necessary? Template:Rail start is predominantly used by UK articles and there is no consensus for integrating the routebox into the infobox. UK station infoboxes typically contain more information than those in the US, so including yet more information would add to the "infobox bloat", especially where the routebox is particularly long - see for example King's Cross. Lamberhurst (talk) 09:15, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Template:S-line is used extensively in the US for both Amtrak and rapit transit; see, for example, King Street–Old Town station or Diridon Station. The problem is that S-line requires multiple sub-templates to be set up.  Utlimately I'm not proposing changing how the templates are used, I'm suggesting providing an easier backend, since giving the option of using rail line instead allows the values to be plugged in easily.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 19:18, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Are there any other objections or concerns? Or does silence constitute consensus around here? Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 23:23, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, this page has only 19 watchers (including myself and probably Lamberhurst). Have you advertised the discussion at a page with more visibility, such as WT:RAIL (336 watchers)? -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:52, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * If s-line is used extensively for US articles, why provide for rail line? Are you going to go through all these articles and rework them to rail line? Am I going to have to formally object here to prevent the semblance that consensus exists for these changes? Lamberhurst (talk) 11:40, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * No changes will be made to existing infoboxes. Fixing the formatting gives the option to use this template, which is much easier to use than S-line, in new infoboxes.  Honestly, I thought that a minor fix to prevent a template from displaying incorrectly in some circumstances, and that is transparent to all other uses, would be uncontroversial.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 21:29, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I use s-line almost all the time, but there are occasions when it would be silly to create all the background templates for a single use. This could apply to discontinued service where not every station still exists and you want to indicate the previous continuity for the few that remain. Secondarywaltz (talk) 22:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Is this enough discussion to make the change? I really don't think it's necessary to essentially run an RfC just to get the text to center properly.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 00:37, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You didn't answer my q of 00:52, 7 November 2015 - where was this proposal notified? -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:15, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

All right, I can post a note at WT:RAIL. To anybody joining this conversation now, I want to emphasize that I'm merely observing that both Template:Rail line and Template:S-line are acceptable for station succession boxes, that both the bottom of the article and the infobox are acceptable locations, and that the text doesn't center correctly for one combination of these. I'm only proposing to fix the formatting to get the text to center correctly, and not any change to the usage of any of the templates. See Template:Rail line/testcases. For the sake of clarity, the only changes are: Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 18:56, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Remove  from the first line.
 * Add  to each of the three table cell style elements.

Template-protected edit request on 7 January 2020
Please, add vertical-align: middle among the attributes of style= for the three text cells. Used within "Infobox station" (services parameter) as it is now, this template ends up with the text vertically aligned on the top. Yak79 2.0 (talk) 17:30, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:05, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

I made the requested change on the template's sandbox, and seeing the template's textcases page, it's working just fine. Regards, Yak79 2.0 (talk) 22:15, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:41, 7 January 2020 (UTC)