Template talk:West of England line

Usage or non-usage of certain stations by TOCs
The RDT is not the place to highlight which companies use or don't use station on the route. That St James Park isn't used by SWT is possible worth mentioning in the article on the station or in the article on the line. The template has the capacity to be used in other articles where such information would be out of context, so such comments should be reserved for articles. NtheP (talk) 13:23, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Direction of axes crossing.
Two major railways cross the line
 * 1) What has become the south-west peninsular main line crosses at a corkscrew in Exeter.
 * 2) With two more informative continution arrows it is easy to ascertain that is a major axis which should be examined further and/or which plays a vital economic role. Indeed due to 1980s policies it describes the former continuation of the line no longer worked from Waterloo, but which could be so and which shaped its very existence.
 * 3) I fully appreciate Wikipedia is not a travel guide but neither is it a history book. The directions have a great practical meaning for ordinary people.
 * 4) The poetically named Wessex Main Line also intersects, co-running with the line at Salisbury and many people catch the regular London service via most of Surrey and north Hampshire to destinations to and from the west part of that line, which is otherwise divorced from the capital save at Bath and the rest of the regular worked route to Bristol Temple Meads.
 * 5) Consideration to reality means it should be given some weight in diagrams - I do not propose a full or partial collapse section for it as that would be overkill (and wikipedia is not a travel guide clearly would apply to that), however the line is inter-related and on an established basis to a very significant degree.
 * 6) The axis of the Wessex Main Line is however not a competing (parallel one) or perpendicular but simply oblique. This is not hard or controversial information for a decent diagram to show.
 * 7) My point is proven a fortiori but the grand sweeping junction for the what is a couple of miles of line to Exmouth. Really things must be given some sense of importance just like road diagrams.- Adam37  Talk  10:17, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Reversion tantamount to vandalism
I appreciate your recent efforts but they are far from the early wave of creativity for which I associated your work. I can see sense in the first of your two points. I see no objective merit in your second point made on your reversion (having made none via talk) - the bold rebuke "(and is NOT mentioned in the article)".

Thanks for your first point. I agree that the three words from the clearly redundant line entry (for the former line) below are better placed on the same line as the place served by the former destination (ie Red Post Junction), instead of alongside in a widened column as that creates a degree of mess which you harshly refer to rather than work in collaboration constructively to fix, which takes seconds not minutes.

However your second point is in this context irrelevant or misguided. If you care to look at the much tinkered and advanced example of the diagram we are talking about Template:Thameslink you will find that not all of the information within a decent diagram of the state of a major piece of UK infrastructure has to be subsumed within the wikipedia article, indeed to do so would be off the subject of text but definitely not off the subject for those consulting a map. I will draw an analogy if I may - in presenting a map of New York, it is very interesting to see the names of all the nearby cities and most readers would like to know that when they look but it is of course not relevant to make specific mention of all of them in the text. These matters are intuitive and subjective but while we are not talking about boring motorway diagrams we have some way to go to keep up with the information they more helpfully provide, indeed they have the inherent advantage they can be shown simply on an accurately aligned map whereas rail diagrams have to simplify direction usually best to 8 compass points not 360 degrees, let's not make it any worse than it is by making that 4 compass points and ascribing two line entries to a minor junction of a historical footnote.- Adam37 Talk  10:36, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't understand your objection to having Red Post Junction and the MSWJR occupy two lines. It is no different than the arrangement of Exmouth Junction/Avocet Line. Useddenim (talk) 16:14, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The junction has gone. It should be a footnote now like totally disbanded roads, airports and so on, the fact it branched to Cheltenham is not relevant to the subject of the diagram as it now stands, I propose a historic diagram with all the various major destinations served in the 19th century and extended old dead junctions if that is of interest.  The Avocet Line is clearly not a footnote but an active line of decades of interest and current importance to Exeter.- Adam37  Talk  16:20, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Also it was in all dark red, hence my consternation. I am only looking to follow best practice.- Adam37 Talk  16:22, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * IMHO, the best practice would be—where there is both a named junction and connecting line information—to split them into two separate lines rather than trying to cram everything onto one. The pattern I follow is:
 * {|class=wikitable

! Junction name only ! Connecting line only ! Connecting line & destination ! Junction name & Connecting line ! Junction name, Connecting line & destination tends to get too long, and also produces very small text
 * Xxx Junction
 * Yyy Railway
 * Xxx Junction because
 * }Useddenim (talk) 16:46, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * PS. MSWJR has been shewn in red since this diagram was created by in November 2007. Useddenim (talk) 17:21, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Gosh that's really quite something (of a schematic). I am however still in awe of basic roads diagrams which have been a little more up-to-date, not prone to excess information (or instead collasping that) and are easy on the passing eye. I do however appreciate the content.- Adam37 Talk  23:02, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Insertion of a collapsible major stop Woking
For fear of sounding "metropolitan elite", I would like to insert a collapsible Woking section as it serves many areas and is a considerable railway junction as well as a regular stop along the route. I am not sure if it would be considered relevant, even if collapsed though? I would add that Woking is now a major place in its own right, if that helps.- Adam37 Talk  16:00, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I would prefer not to see this, even in collapsible state. The article is, after all, about the line from Salisbury to Exeter, not the service from Waterloo to Exeter. Having Waterloo is useful; I don't think Woking would be, and then where do we stop? Basingstoke, Clapham Junction? Geof Sheppard (talk) 08:51, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well Basingstoke of all places is included. Far more traffic enters via Woking and Clapham Junction than down the line so to show them collapsed would be a nod to reality as well as historic purism for which the rail articles are noted.- Adam37  Talk  15:08, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * P.S. Salisbury is not the start of the line; the start is a couple of miles west of Basingstoke in north-to-northeast Hampshire.- Adam37 Talk  15:10, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Salisbury? Sorry, brain fade! Basingstoke is necessary for the map as it is the effective junction station for the line. Geof Sheppard (talk)