Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 June 8

= June 8 =

"American-style" railway carriage


The article about the Burwood railway station, Melbourne notes that beginning in 1898, it was served by a train consisting of one or two "American-style" carriages hauled by a steam locomotive. Any idea what an American-style railway carriage would be, or how it would differ from the typical late-colonial-era Australian carriage? Google gives me almost nothing; the results are either irrelevant (e.g. horse-drawn) or don't explain anything. Nyttend (talk) 04:30, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * This is like the, "what do they call Brazil nuts in Brazil?" problem. Abductive  (reasoning) 07:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * pt:Bertholletia excelsa uses the scientific name, but the first alternate name is "castanha-do-brasil"; this also is mentioned in the brazil nut article. Nyttend (talk) 10:11, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Scientific names are always italicized. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:33, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * British (or European) carriages have a side aisle and American carriages have a central aisle. Sleigh (talk) 07:23, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * A slight qualification; British carriages had compartments, either accessed directly from the platform or by a corridor at one side. Our corridor coach article says they were "first introduced, in Britain at least, around the start of the 20th century", so British carriages in the 1890s must have just had compartments with no connecting corridor. The same article also says: "The corridor coach was known on the European continent as the American system or American coach in the early 1900s". Both types were phased out in the UK during the 1970s IIRC. Alansplodge (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I am an American fan of rail history and in the US, we usually say "railroad" instead of "railway", and "railroad car" instead of "carriage". "Railway" was sometimes used for local commuter lines. My wife and I have ridden on many historic tourist railroads over the years, and by coincidence, we rode on the spectacular White Pass and Yukon Route from Skagway, Alaska to the Canadian border just one week ago. I can confirm that every American railroad passenger car I have ever seen (except sleeper cars and dining cars) is arranged with seats on either side of a central corridor. Cullen328 (talk) 02:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In Britain the central walkway is called a gangway, not a corridor. DuncanHill (talk) 00:09, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * To be clear, new UK carriages for many years have normally been "open plan" with a central passage, though some compartmented ones with a side corridor (especially for 1st class) have still been made. I think I last sat in a fully compartmented one (on a normal railway) in the late 70s or 80s. Among other issues, you couldn't get to the toilet, so they were used on lines with lots of stops. I think there was a famous case of rape/indecent assault involving one in the late 19th-century, causing their downfall. In the 1960's and early 70's some of the compartments were marked "Ladies only". Johnbod (talk) 04:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * There were fears for the vunerability of women in unaccessible compartments, but the crucial case was the robbery and murder of a man in 1864: see Franz Müller. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.30.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 11:06, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Very interesting. Except as a young child, I've never travelled in a railway carriage outside the Melbourne/regional Victorian/Sydney networks, so I've always assumed that open plans (example at right) were normal.  I've only once seen a carriage that had compartments, in a Tait that had been converted into a restaurant, and I assumed it had been completely redone.  This helps me understand the "Hogwarts Express" better, too.  Nyttend (talk) 05:36, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

The corridor coach article is a bit vague to the point of misleading. A cursory search of Google Books shows that corridor stock was clearly in fairly widespread use in the United Kingdom in the 1890s. You can even see the plan of one from 1898 here. &mdash;Simon Harley (Talk). 08:26, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I seem to recall "American coach" or "American style" being used to mean a car mounted on bogies, instead of on rigidly mounted axles. Couldn't give you a reference for that though. DuncanHill (talk) 00:04, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Deniz Baykal
In 1990, the Social Democratic Populist Party of Turkey wrote the article "Perspective on the Eastern and Southeastern Problems and Proposals for Solving Them" (Doğu ve Güneydoğu Sorunlarına Bakışı ve Çözüm Önerileri). The article criticised the Turkish government's policy towards the Kurds as "state terrorism" (Devlet terörüne). I noticed that the committee that wrote this article was headed by Deniz Baykal, which puzzled me because of his strict Turkish nationalist views when he later became the leader of the Republican People's Party. I have read two different accounts on the internet, one that he did agreed with the views in the article when he led the writing of it, and only later, for some reason, shifted to strict Turkish nationalist views, and the other that he was opposed to the views in the article from the beginning, and that he only nominally led the writing of it as the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Populist Party. Which is closer to the truth? Dinuco (talk) 09:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if this is the true explanation, but there appears to be a tendency among politicians to espouse at any given time those views that are politically the most expedient. In 1990, the SHP saw an opportunity to woo the Kurdish section of the electorate. The resurrected CHP might have been less strictly nationalist than its predecessor if it had not been vying for the same voters as the nationalist DHP. As I remember Baykal's opposition, it consisted solely of opposing in a negative sense; I don't recall any proposal ever being made, so it is hard to tell what his views, if any, were. --Lambiam 13:49, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "The duty of an opposition is to propose nothing, to oppose everything, and to turn out the Government" DuncanHill (talk) 11:24, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Gloriana Ranocchini
The article Gloriana Ranocchini lists her passing in 1993 but the statement is entirely unsourced. I fail to find anything on her passing online or in Swedish media archives, but presumably San Marinese (and maybe Italian?) media must have reported on it when it happened? AlexandraAVX (talk) 12:44, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I've removed this per WP:BLP. --Lambiam 14:15, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you.Unless San Marino is very different it feels like there should have been some reporting on her post 1993 to disprove it if she didn't die in 1993. Even if it's just "Former head of state acquires cute dog" or some other fluff piece. AlexandraAVX (talk) 14:42, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It feels to me like there should have been some reporting on the death of a former head of state if she did die. The absence of such reports is IMO more significant than the absence of reported signs of life. --Lambiam 21:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * None of the online mentions of her that I can find, some of them much more recent than 1993, indicated that she had died, except those that are obviously quoting or relying on the Wikipedia article. Many of the latter will, of course, not be updated: thus do false facts proliferate from unsourced (and possibly malicious) edits here :-(. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 16:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * This article says (I think) that she founded a cancer hospital in 1993 as the first president of the Associazione Oncologica Sammarinese (AOS). Alansplodge (talk) 11:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

reference librarian questions

 * I am doing a driveby edit of Crimean hetmen and several of them could use a source that Qaplan I Giray lost at the Battle of Kanzhal. Those two for example. Preferably in English. Can anybody suggest one?


 * Also, can anyone identify a Eropkin who would have done battle with Qaplan Giray at the Terek river in 1733 or 1734? I am assuming a Russian general? (Qaplan artcle)

Thanks for any thoughts Elinruby (talk) 23:21, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * The surname Eropkin in Cyrilic is Еропкин, which can also be transliterated as Yeropkin. None of the many entries at the Russian disambiguation page Еропкин is a fit. The page Битва при Чершете (Battle of Chershet, a battle between the Circassian and the Crimean Tatar army) gives a quote from a report issued in 1731 by D. F. Eropkin (no link), "the commandant of the fortress of the Holy Cross". The article does not cite a source and does not make clear who he was reporting to. --Lambiam 07:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The Russian article on the Eropkin family lists one "Eropkin Dmitry Fedorovich – lieutenant general and governor of Riga". No dates, no links, but some sources. He is not mentioned in the list of governors of Riga on the Latvian Wikipedia, and the Russian article on his son Еропкин, Пётр Дмитриевич makes him only vice-governor. --Lambiam 07:25, 9 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I like the association of "driveby" with "hetmen" (sounds like "hitmen"), but the plural of hetman is hetmans. Just so you know. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:19, 9 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you both. I will circle back and try to do something intelligent about this. Elinruby (talk) 02:02, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

= June 8 =

"American-style" railway carriage


The article about the Burwood railway station, Melbourne notes that beginning in 1898, it was served by a train consisting of one or two "American-style" carriages hauled by a steam locomotive. Any idea what an American-style railway carriage would be, or how it would differ from the typical late-colonial-era Australian carriage? Google gives me almost nothing; the results are either irrelevant (e.g. horse-drawn) or don't explain anything. Nyttend (talk) 04:30, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * This is like the, "what do they call Brazil nuts in Brazil?" problem. Abductive  (reasoning) 07:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * pt:Bertholletia excelsa uses the scientific name, but the first alternate name is "castanha-do-brasil"; this also is mentioned in the brazil nut article. Nyttend (talk) 10:11, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Scientific names are always italicized. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:33, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * British (or European) carriages have a side aisle and American carriages have a central aisle. Sleigh (talk) 07:23, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * A slight qualification; British carriages had compartments, either accessed directly from the platform or by a corridor at one side. Our corridor coach article says they were "first introduced, in Britain at least, around the start of the 20th century", so British carriages in the 1890s must have just had compartments with no connecting corridor. The same article also says: "The corridor coach was known on the European continent as the American system or American coach in the early 1900s". Both types were phased out in the UK during the 1970s IIRC. Alansplodge (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I am an American fan of rail history and in the US, we usually say "railroad" instead of "railway", and "railroad car" instead of "carriage". "Railway" was sometimes used for local commuter lines. My wife and I have ridden on many historic tourist railroads over the years, and by coincidence, we rode on the spectacular White Pass and Yukon Route from Skagway, Alaska to the Canadian border just one week ago. I can confirm that every American railroad passenger car I have ever seen (except sleeper cars and dining cars) is arranged with seats on either side of a central corridor. Cullen328 (talk) 02:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In Britain the central walkway is called a gangway, not a corridor. DuncanHill (talk) 00:09, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * To be clear, new UK carriages for many years have normally been "open plan" with a central passage, though some compartmented ones with a side corridor (especially for 1st class) have still been made. I think I last sat in a fully compartmented one (on a normal railway) in the late 70s or 80s. Among other issues, you couldn't get to the toilet, so they were used on lines with lots of stops. I think there was a famous case of rape/indecent assault involving one in the late 19th-century, causing their downfall. In the 1960's and early 70's some of the compartments were marked "Ladies only". Johnbod (talk) 04:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * There were fears for the vunerability of women in unaccessible compartments, but the crucial case was the robbery and murder of a man in 1864: see Franz Müller. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.30.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 11:06, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Very interesting. Except as a young child, I've never travelled in a railway carriage outside the Melbourne/regional Victorian/Sydney networks, so I've always assumed that open plans (example at right) were normal.  I've only once seen a carriage that had compartments, in a Tait that had been converted into a restaurant, and I assumed it had been completely redone.  This helps me understand the "Hogwarts Express" better, too.  Nyttend (talk) 05:36, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

The corridor coach article is a bit vague to the point of misleading. A cursory search of Google Books shows that corridor stock was clearly in fairly widespread use in the United Kingdom in the 1890s. You can even see the plan of one from 1898 here. &mdash;Simon Harley (Talk). 08:26, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I seem to recall "American coach" or "American style" being used to mean a car mounted on bogies, instead of on rigidly mounted axles. Couldn't give you a reference for that though. DuncanHill (talk) 00:04, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Deniz Baykal
In 1990, the Social Democratic Populist Party of Turkey wrote the article "Perspective on the Eastern and Southeastern Problems and Proposals for Solving Them" (Doğu ve Güneydoğu Sorunlarına Bakışı ve Çözüm Önerileri). The article criticised the Turkish government's policy towards the Kurds as "state terrorism" (Devlet terörüne). I noticed that the committee that wrote this article was headed by Deniz Baykal, which puzzled me because of his strict Turkish nationalist views when he later became the leader of the Republican People's Party. I have read two different accounts on the internet, one that he did agreed with the views in the article when he led the writing of it, and only later, for some reason, shifted to strict Turkish nationalist views, and the other that he was opposed to the views in the article from the beginning, and that he only nominally led the writing of it as the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Populist Party. Which is closer to the truth? Dinuco (talk) 09:17, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if this is the true explanation, but there appears to be a tendency among politicians to espouse at any given time those views that are politically the most expedient. In 1990, the SHP saw an opportunity to woo the Kurdish section of the electorate. The resurrected CHP might have been less strictly nationalist than its predecessor if it had not been vying for the same voters as the nationalist DHP. As I remember Baykal's opposition, it consisted solely of opposing in a negative sense; I don't recall any proposal ever being made, so it is hard to tell what his views, if any, were. --Lambiam 13:49, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "The duty of an opposition is to propose nothing, to oppose everything, and to turn out the Government" DuncanHill (talk) 11:24, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Gloriana Ranocchini
The article Gloriana Ranocchini lists her passing in 1993 but the statement is entirely unsourced. I fail to find anything on her passing online or in Swedish media archives, but presumably San Marinese (and maybe Italian?) media must have reported on it when it happened? AlexandraAVX (talk) 12:44, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I've removed this per WP:BLP. --Lambiam 14:15, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you.Unless San Marino is very different it feels like there should have been some reporting on her post 1993 to disprove it if she didn't die in 1993. Even if it's just "Former head of state acquires cute dog" or some other fluff piece. AlexandraAVX (talk) 14:42, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It feels to me like there should have been some reporting on the death of a former head of state if she did die. The absence of such reports is IMO more significant than the absence of reported signs of life. --Lambiam 21:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * None of the online mentions of her that I can find, some of them much more recent than 1993, indicated that she had died, except those that are obviously quoting or relying on the Wikipedia article. Many of the latter will, of course, not be updated: thus do false facts proliferate from unsourced (and possibly malicious) edits here :-(. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.136.217 (talk) 16:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * This article says (I think) that she founded a cancer hospital in 1993 as the first president of the Associazione Oncologica Sammarinese (AOS). Alansplodge (talk) 11:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

reference librarian questions

 * I am doing a driveby edit of Crimean hetmen and several of them could use a source that Qaplan I Giray lost at the Battle of Kanzhal. Those two for example. Preferably in English. Can anybody suggest one?


 * Also, can anyone identify a Eropkin who would have done battle with Qaplan Giray at the Terek river in 1733 or 1734? I am assuming a Russian general? (Qaplan artcle)

Thanks for any thoughts Elinruby (talk) 23:21, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * The surname Eropkin in Cyrilic is Еропкин, which can also be transliterated as Yeropkin. None of the many entries at the Russian disambiguation page Еропкин is a fit. The page Битва при Чершете (Battle of Chershet, a battle between the Circassian and the Crimean Tatar army) gives a quote from a report issued in 1731 by D. F. Eropkin (no link), "the commandant of the fortress of the Holy Cross". The article does not cite a source and does not make clear who he was reporting to. --Lambiam 07:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The Russian article on the Eropkin family lists one "Eropkin Dmitry Fedorovich – lieutenant general and governor of Riga". No dates, no links, but some sources. He is not mentioned in the list of governors of Riga on the Latvian Wikipedia, and the Russian article on his son Еропкин, Пётр Дмитриевич makes him only vice-governor. --Lambiam 07:25, 9 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I like the association of "driveby" with "hetmen" (sounds like "hitmen"), but the plural of hetman is hetmans. Just so you know. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:19, 9 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you both. I will circle back and try to do something intelligent about this. Elinruby (talk) 02:02, 11 June 2024 (UTC)