Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Westcott railway station/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 21:05, 8 May 2010.

Westcott railway station

 * Nominator(s): –  iride  scent  16:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

An object lesson in the Law of Unintended Consequences. In 1871, the splendidly-named Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville decided to make things a little bit easier for the horses transporting goods and produce around his lands and to & from the nearest rail station. In so doing, he inadvertently set in train[sic] a sixty-year chain of cause-and-effect that ultimately led to the absurdity of a tiny village deep in rural Buckinghamshire, two hours travel from London, briefly becoming a part of the London Underground network.

This one's short, but comprehensive; while it doesn't say all there is to say on the matter, it does in my opinion say all that any non-specialist would ever reasonably want to know. The initial section on the history of the line is intentionally terse; the intention is to give just enough background that the rest of the article makes sense, without including too much that would be better placed in the Brill Tramway article itself. – iride  scent  16:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Technical stuff: The link to a disambiguation page at Junction station is intentional – that page serves both as an article on the topic of junction stations, and as a dab page for the many stations worldwide named "Junction Station". There's a single non-free image, but I think it's essential to the article and no free-use equivalent exists – it may in fact qualify as public domain but I've erred on the side of caution and treated it as fair-use. – iride  scent  16:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. Junction station should probably be a set index article. Otherwise, no dab links or external links. Ucucha 16:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * A tricky one (see my note above). It certainly should be something other than what it currently is—a single page serving as both an article and a dab page is A Bad Thing—but I'm quite reluctant to amend it myself as it looks set to be an Augean-stables cleanup job with very little benefit (very little actually links to it). – iride  scent  16:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it fits the scope of set index articles well, so I changed it myself. Ucucha 17:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me. – iride  scent  17:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Support Great article, and an interesting read. I always enjoy reading articles about trains. My basement is a big model train playground. Just a few comments:


 * Query: "Despite the low frequency of service and relatively low numbers of people using the station, Westcott station was staffed;" - I find this curious. I am guessing that all stations had staff at least at some points during their operation. Because if some stations had no staff, how did they operate? I am guessing maybe it should say "permanent staff" or "regular staff" to clarity. I may be off base here though.
 * "...and the spur was lifted" - this might not make sense to someone unfamiliar with railroads. Perhaps say "removed" or "dismantled" instead?
 * Should reference #24 be moved with the notes rather than citations?
 * Referencing is impeccable, all are reliable
 * Prose is excellent
 * Alt text present
 * Images
 * Note: File:Westcott railway station, 1935.jpg is non-free, fair use rationale is acceptable
 * Other images check out

Another wonderful article. Great job! &mdash;Charles Edward (Talk 15:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Replies to your queries:
 * No, most rural stations (and many urban ones) in Britain aren't staffed (other than in the sense that a guy with a broom comes by every few days to clean the platforms, and so forth). Nowadays there are ticket machines at the station entrances; historically, trains had conductors and one bought tickets from them once on the train. Remember, this was a line with staggeringly low usage (one of the stations generated total annual passenger revenue of £4 per annum), and with the trains just shuttling back and forth along the line, there was no need for signalling. If you'll forgive a brief bit of OR, I can safely assume that the only reason it was staffed at all was to help load and unload bulky goods more quickly—while working the crossing gate was doubtless useful, it's hardly a full-time occupation and elsewhere on the line a member of the train crew would just run ahead and open/close the gate themselves.
 * Reworded to "and the track of the spur was removed". "Lifting" has a specific meaning—removing the track without demolishing anything else—but I agree that if you don't know the term it's confusing.
 * Reference 24 (the CPI link) is automatically placed in the "References" section by inflation-fn. In this case, I'm very reluctant to subst it and fix it manually to appear in the Notes section, as that template has quite complicated syntax to auto-update when the source changes and thus always show a current equivalent figure.
 * The non-free image is possibly free use, but I decided to play it safe and treat it as fair use. London Transport in this period had an odd status in that its shares were 100% state-owned but it was never formally nationalised so its unclear whether Crown Copyright (and hence, public domain 50 years after creation) applies; it's also not clear whether it was taken on behalf of LT or by someone else. – iride  scent  17:02, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Support and one comment  A good read, well up to FA. I'm not sure that there is any point to the 2010 equivalent of the house sale price. House price rises have vastly outstripped the general change in the value of sterling, so the £15,000 bears no relationship to modern house prices  Jimfbleak -  talk to me?  06:43, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I intentionally used modern-CPI figures as the comparator here, to make it clear(er) to the modern eye the way in which ticket sales compare to the present day, and just how little was raised by the forced liquidation of the company once London Transport withdrew their services. Given that CPI is used as the figure for sale of the line's goods and chattels, I think it looks more confusing to use a different scale (or no modern comparison) for the sale of the two houses; the point I was trying to make is "how much did this raise for the line's owners?" rather than "how much would it sell for today?". – iride  scent  09:32, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Support. A charming little article - I enjoyed reading it. Despite its short length, I didn't have any outstanding questions. Karanacs (talk) 13:56, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.