Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Wotton 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 16:12, 31 July 2010.

Wotton railway station

 * Nominator(s): –  iride  scent  20:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

This may be yet another disused railway station in Buckinghamshire, but this one's more important than it seems at first glance. Although only a tiny village with a population of 220, Wotton was the home of the Duke of Buckingham, and its station was the focal point of the Duke's increasingly harebrained scheme to provide a mass-transit service to an area populated almost exclusively by cows. Against all the odds Wotton remained a relatively important station, particularly as a transshipment point for dairy products, for more than 60 years before London Transport pulled the plug on the whole crackpot venture. Yes, it's not the most exciting article on the 'pedia—"brilliant refreshing prose" and "bulk milk traffic statistics" make uncomfortable bedfellows—but it says everything that ought reasonably to be said without going into unnecessary detail, and I can't see any obvious way to say it better. – iride  scent  20:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and the fact that the Tramway station was older than the GCR station by some 34 years (they co-existed for less than that - 29 years, and the GCR station existed alone for just 18 years). -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:50, 24 July 2010 (UTC) If the tramway station must be moved, I can cope with Wotton (Brill Tramway) railway station but not Wotton (Wotton Tramway) railway station. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment—no dab links or external links. Ucucha 20:13, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Why does this article get the good spot at Wotton railway station, while Wotton's other station only gets Wotton (GCR) railway station? Ucucha 20:21, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Simple answer would be that this one is far better known. Because of its brief time under London Transport and John Betjeman's writings, the Wotton Tramway/Brill Tramway is one of Britain's best-known disused lines, while the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway is about as obscure as they come. This Wotton also opened 35 years earlier than the other one, and was in existence for longer. Besides, Wotton (Wotton Tramway) railway station or Wotton (Metropolitan Railway Brill branch) railway station look ridiculous. If someone has really strong feelings, it's moveable, but I'd say the Metropolitan Line one (that is, this one) is the primary usage. There are precedents for "two disused stations where one gets the name" situations, such as Bishopsgate railway station/Bishopsgate (Low Level) railway station. – iride  scent  20:44, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Correct answer is that I created Wotton railway station first (19:41, 12 September 2009) and then Wotton (GCR) railway station less than an hour later (20:40, 12 September 2009), so the second article got the dab. As I recall, I had two reasons for doing them that way around: (i) there were several articles with redlinks to Wotton railway station and the majority of these were in the context of the tramway, although a significant minority were for the GCR station btwn Ashendon Junc and Grendon Underwood Jc; (ii) I believed that more sources could be found for the tramway station compared to the GCR one. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Good; I think that if there are only two meanings of a term, it is reasonable to make the more prominent one the primary topic, as has been done here. Ucucha 14:40, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Support—the usual good work. I made a few tweaks, but could find no major problems. Just one query: Ucucha 14:40, 16 July 2010 (UTC
 * "Earl Temple's Estate"—is that the same as the Duke of Buckingham's estate?
 * More or less. "Duke of Buckingham" was a title passed only in the male line, but his other title "Earl Temple of Stowe" had special arrangements and was exempt from the usual primogeniture rules of inheritance. The 3rd Duke (Richard P C T-N-B-C-G) had no son, and thus when he died "Duke of Buckingham" became extinct, but his nephew became Earl Temple and took over Wotton House and its associated lands; by the time the nephew died, the railway was an incorporated company and thus continued to be administered by his trustees (hence the "estate") rather than be inherited by his son. There's a (rather confusing) article about the whole setup at Earl Temple of Stowe. The rewritten Brill Tramway parent article is going to explain the rather tangled history of the Grenville family, to save repeating it across all the individual station articles. – iride  scent  14:50, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. I do think we need some clarification in this article; it now first says the O&ATC was set up by the trustees of the Duke of Buckingham's estate, and then that it was controlled by the trustees of the Earl Temple's estate, without explaining the change. Perhaps the best solution is simply to remove the mention of the Earl Temple's estate. Ucucha 15:03, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed and removed. The actual ownership of the companies involved doesn't really matter in this context. – iride  scent  15:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Sources comment: All sources look good, no outstanding issues. Brianboulton (talk) 17:24, 16 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Note; following discussion, one of the images used in this article has been changed to fair-use, as its original publication date can't be verified. – iride  scent  16:18, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Support - This is a very well written and informative article. There were only two suggestions for improvement I could nitpick over. 1.)The first use of the abbreviation "MR" is in the first paragraph of the "Wotton Tramway" section, yet the explanation that it stands for the Metropolitan Line of London isn't until several paragraphs later. Hence, I would try to move the explanation of that abbreviation up to the first mention of it. 2.) The use of the world "small" in the first sentence of the lead section doesn't seem to live up to the specificity of the article's body. Personally, I'd either simply remove the word small from that sentence, or somehow incorporate the station's dimensions into the lead section. Either way, those two suggestions are no big deal, and I congratulate you on a job well done. Cheers, Monowi (talk) 00:29, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Puzzled - the first use of "MR" is indeed in the first paragraph of the "Wotton Tramway" section, but why is the sentence fragment "On 1 September 1894, London's Metropolitan Railway (MR) reached Aylesbury," unclear? -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:50, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree (with Redrose); I can't see what's confusing here. "MR" stands for "Metropolitan Railway", not "Metropolitan Line" which came 70 years later. Regarding "small", I can't see the issue; as stated in the article, the building was 24 feet (7.3 m) ×10 feet 9 inches (3.28 m), which is tiny; to put that in perspective; it was half the size of a standard US shipping container. – iride  scent  19:31, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * In regards to my first suggestion, it looks like I simply missed some of the text; I see the abbreviation is explained in the second sentence of the "Wotton Tramway" section, which reads, "On 1 September 1894, London's Metropolitan Railway (MR) reached Aylesbury...." So, clearly that first suggestion was an oversight on my part. For my second suggestion, as someone who really has no basis for comparison in regards to the size of train stations, I thought more specificity would be appropriate for the lead section. That said, with the dimensions listed in the body of the article, it's completely accurate to describe the station as small, and why I have no objection to it using the current phrasing. Again I'm bringing in a perspective of someone with no basis for comparison in regards to train stations and train transportation systems, so playing the devil's advocate, I look at the use of the word small and ask "who's to say if it's small or not" and "that phrase isn't as objective as it could be". Like I mentioned, I really had to nitpick to find any suggestions for improvement, and that's why I support the article. Cheers, Monowi (talk) 05:06, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Support – Another high-quality article in this subject area that meets FA standards, with strong writing and sourcing the highlights. I made one small change while I was reading, but it was a minor one.  Giants2008  ( 27 and counting ) 03:41, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I've actually undone that (assuming you mean the reference inside the parentheses). To me, if the reference is the source only for what's within the parentheses rather than the entire sentence/section, it should be within the brackets to make that clear. Not sure if anyone else has opinions on this, I'm certainly willing to be persuaded otherwise. – iride  scent  08:40, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Support Having commented on/reviewed other FACs for the rest of Iridescent's Brill Tramway opus. I have no hesitation in supporting this one as well. --DavidCane (talk) 16:35, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.