Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Rail transport in Germany task force

German railway stations without geographical coordinates
I've used CatScan to generate a list of railway stations in Germany missing geographic coordinates

The articles are all marked with coord missing tags, which need to be replaced with coord tags that contain the location's latitude/longitude coordinates; or you might be able to add coordinates to an existing infobox, where appropriate. You can find out how to do this, and how to format coord tags, at the Geocoding how-to for WikiProject members.

Lists for other countries can be generated similarly to the above, by changing the category entries in the search form in the obvious way. -- The Anome (talk) 01:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Eisenbahn und Häfen GmbH
As the german wikipedia page already had a fleet list I thought I might try to 'complete' it - it not being expected to be an overlong (and therefor crufty) list...

The company started in 1949, and the electrics go back to 1955, so I suppose there would have been a few steam locomotives... If anyone knows where to look or can give me hints I would appreciate it. Alternative if anyone has info/links to locomotives of the Thyssen steelworks that would probably have the answer too - since these might have been inherited. Thanks. (not an important request)FengRail (talk) 02:11, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Wanne-Herner Eisenbahn und Hafen GmbH
On a similar note the above article now exists... Curiously the german wikipedia has no article, but does have red links... If anyone is capable of a reverse translation please feel free. Although very stubby, I'm 95% certain that the article is free from errors, and does have references.FengRail (talk) 01:20, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

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Problem with infobox
Those articles using the german loco infobox aren't displaying the 'UIC axle class' eg DB Class V 60 has the info in the box - but its not turning up on screen as far as I can tell213.249.232.187 (talk) 17:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks for spotting that and letting us know. It should now be fixed! --Bermicourt (talk) 21:45, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

"Conventions" have been "moved"
I note all discussion of conventions has been "moved" to WikiProject Trains/Rail transport in Germany task force/Conventions. No pages link there, and all user comments have been eradicated. This kind of unilateral action removing others' legitimate comments without so much as leaving a comment on the page they were does not seem appropriate to me. Moving this content is appropriate, but it should have been done non-destructively, with a clear trail leading there, the original version discussed as the first version of the new page and all user comments preserved, perhaps on the associated talk page. Since the page had absolutely no links (before I created the above one), the only way to get there was via the special page All pages with prefix. I will assume that the changes made were a good faith attempt to address the concerns raised. --Rogerb67 (talk) 23:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I have now restored the deleted comments verbatim on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains/Rail transport in Germany task force/Conventions. I also temporarily restored the version of the conventions originally discussed on the project page, then immediately reverted to the current version, in order to assist editors in discerning where changes have been made. I suggest any further comment on these conventions is made on its associated talk page.--Rogerb67 (talk) 23:26, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The page was moved because it became clear it was in the wrong place (i.e. it was on this discussion page). Thank you for moving the comments too. The conventions need to evolve and the plan was always to link them from the main page anyway. This will happen shortly. Thanks again for your help. --Bermicourt (talk) 08:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Other sections
Interested editors might also want to review the WikiProject Trains/Rail transport in Germany task force/Importance criteria suggested by Bermicourt, but as yet unlinked. --Rogerb67 (talk) 23:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a pleasure.
 * (Let me welcome you here, unless you've already been here ages - in which case - welcome me?)
 * I'd like to suggest History of rail transport in Germany as 'High Importance' (or top imporatance) for obvious reasons. Unfortunately the article probably requires some remedial work, or at least expansion.
 * Luckily (as ever) there is a (very) good article at the german wikipedia page (my reading of german and knowledge of the subject isn't really good enough to make that sort of value judgment - but it looks ok..)
 * An enjoyable task for someone to translate perhaps.
 * FengRail (talk) 00:20, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Roger, thank you. I had missed that. There is now a section and link on the main page to importance criteria. I also agree FengRail's suggestion that History of rail transport in Germany should be 'Top importance' within the task force, although probably only 'High importance' within the Rail transport project overall. Germany has been very influential in the development of rail transport within Europe and, to some extent worldwide. --Bermicourt (talk) 10:01, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

English articles that I can't redirect
Though I'm terrible ar reading and writing in German, I found some redlinks on an German article about Railroad museums(Eisenbahnmuseum). I just tried to redirect some english speaking versions of those articles, and it didn't work. Is anybody willing to help with this? DanTD (talk) 01:39, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * If you want to create an interwikilink, you need the prefix ":id:", i.e.  links to de:Eisenbahnmuseum. But take care, interwikilinks within continuous text is not the best idea!  a x p de  Hello!  12:20, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Popular pages stats request
I've made a request for this task force to get its own entry in Category:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject. Once created, it will be available at WikiProject Trains/Rail transport in Germany task force/Popular pages. The request key is f8e2af8. Bahnfrend (talk) 09:33, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Pageview stats
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Trains/Rail transport in Germany task force to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at WikiProject Trains/Rail transport in Germany task force/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 00:41, 1 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Outstanding - well done! --Bermicourt (talk) 12:41, 1 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I requested the creation of the popular pages page for two reasons. First, I was curious to know how the pages maintained by this project ranked in popularity.  Secondly, I think it's a good idea for us to focus attention on improving and updating the most popular pages.  As I had anticipated, pages about major stations are generally more popular than pages about long distance lines.  The statistics also reveal other interesting information.  In particular, a high proportion of the most popular pages are articles about modern rolling stock and their manufacturers, and about major U-Bahn and S-Bahn systems.  All of this suggests that many of the visitors to pages maintained by this project are non rail enthusiast visitors to Germany who are curious about what they are seeing.  Another interesting statistic is that many of the most popular pages are assessed as start or stub pages, but I suspect that in many cases the assessments are out of date (the one for AEG being an example). Bahnfrend (talk) 13:03, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Move request at Alb Valley Railway
There is a request to move Alb Valley Railway to Albtalbahn at the talk page. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

DBAG ICx needs translation
DBAG ICx is a project(worth 6 - 10bn €) of Deutsche Bahn and Siemens to buy 220-300 high-distance trains. --78.35.206.5 (talk) 16:13, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

U-Straßenbahn Wien
I am currently translating de:Straßenbahn Wien into Trams in Vienna. I've reached the point where I have to create a redlink to a future en.wiki equivalent of de:U-Straßenbahn Wien, which I also plan to translate in due course. But I'm not sure what to call the redlink. My internet researches indicate that the expression U-Straßenbahn in this context is sometimes translated as "Light rail". However, I think that either "U-Trams in Vienna" or "U-trams in Vienna" would be a more appropriate choice. When it comes to choosing between these two options, I am inclined to prefer the latter (see WP:LOWERCASE). Any comments? Bahnfrend (talk) 13:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A follow-up to the above: I have now discovered the article de:U-Straßenbahn, which is interwikilinked to Premetro. The latter article does not refer to any of the U-Straßenbahn systems in the German speaking countries.  However, there is an interesting English language article here that not only uses the word premetro to describe the Vienna system, but also explains the word's origins (in francophone Belgium).  Note that the heading to that article is The Underground Tram.  I have also found the en.wiki article Stadtbahn, but that word is used in Vienna to describe a different form of urban transport (see Wiener Stadtbahn).  Yes, I'm now very confused ... Bahnfrend (talk) 14:00, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Station infobox colours
See question raised at Template talk:Infobox Deutsche Bahn station.--Grahame (talk) 03:46, 3 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Graham, well done for matching the colours with the German infobox - looks cool! --Bermicourt (talk) 06:46, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Discussion on Template:Infobox Bahnhof
Please note discussion on merging Template:Infobox Bahnhof at Templates for discussion. This might make some sense if anybody was proposing to do the work to make it work.--Grahame (talk) 03:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Hauptbahnhof again
An editor has been removing links at Central station prompting a discussion at Talk:Central station which you may be interested in. --Bermicourt (talk) 14:37, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Station naming guidelines
I noticed this discussion rather late which is of importance Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles. Simply south...... cooking letters for just 7 years 15:27, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Popular pages tool update
As of January, the popular pages tool has moved from the Toolserver to Wikimedia Tool Labs. The code has changed significantly from the Toolserver version, but users should notice few differences. Please take a moment to look over your project's list for any anomalies, such as pages that you expect to see that are missing or pages that seem to have more views than expected. Note that unlike other tools, this tool aggregates all views from redirects, which means it will typically have higher numbers. (For January 2014 specifically, 35 hours of data is missing from the WMF data, which was approximated from other dates. For most articles, this should yield a more accurate number. However, a few articles, like ones featured on the Main Page, may be off).

Web tools, to replace the ones at ~alexz/pop, will become available over the next few weeks at popularpages. All of the historical data (back to July 2009 for some projects) has been copied over. The tool to view historical data is currently partially available (assessment data and a few projects may not be available at the moment). The tool to add new projects to the bot's list is also available now (editing the configuration of current projects coming soon). Unlike the previous tool, all changes will be effective immediately. OAuth is used to authenticate users, allowing only regular users to make changes to prevent abuse. A visible history of configuration additions and changes is coming soon. Once tools become fully available, their toolserver versions will redirect to Labs.

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S+U Bahn station naming conventions
To those souls who might still be lurking around these hallowed spaces, looking for a discussion...

The question is about S+U Bahn stations which have two names, one according to Deutsche Bahn, and the other according to the local transport union. Often this is just a minor change in name, but still significant. For instance in Munich, the station Harras is called by Deutsche Bahn/S-Bahn München (which operates the S-Bahn) as "München-Harras" whereas the MVG (which operates the U-Bahn) calls it plainly "Harras".

I checked the currently existing Conventions page, and there is nothing that addresses this point specifically. A quick peek at the Berlin S-Bahn conventions seem to prefer the S-Bahn names, although I can't really say why. Anyone up for discussing which names should be used, and why?

And also, I'm translating all the names of the stations in München from German to English; don't know why they weren't moved earlier. Comments welcome! MikeLynch (talk) 12:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Mike, I guess this hasn't been picked up before. German Wikipedia articles seem to use the format Bahnhof München Marienplatz, but then their route diagrams just call it Marienplatz. I'd be tempted to adopt the formats Marienplatz station (Munich), Alte Heide (Munich U-Bahn) or just Marienplatz station if no dab is needed. I still think München Hauptbahnhof should be Munich Central Station (the most common English name), but that was debated a couple of years ago along with all the others and everyone else voted for the native names. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:26, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for replying. I think here it often goes about the official name and the common name. As you suggest, I think it's better to just make it into formats like "Marienplatz station (Munich)", or "Isartor station" (without a city identifier where no ambiguity reasonably exists). I think this sits better with WP:COMMONNAME on the Enwiki. I find the dewiki naming conventions for railway stations rather simplistic and without nuance, or maybe I'm just missing a part of their discussion process that went into forming the convention...
 * Anyway, I find it a bit tedious to call the stations "München-whatever", just because Deutsche Bahn says so. The full, "official" name is hardly ever used, and often the local name is simpler and more commonly used. Are you aware of any page where this discussion can be raised and people can comment? (I see this page has been rather inactive for some years now) MikeLynch (talk) 19:11, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The main page hasn't - we're constantly adding articles. I guess there's generally a good consensus and it's not a controversial area. ☺ Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains is the main project page, but be aware you'll get opinions from folk who've never set foot in Germany and don't speak any German either! Cheers. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Please identify the rolling stock
Re: Talk:Charlevoix tourist train. Train Tales/Please identify this German origen rolling stock. Peter Horn User talk 14:30, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, the rolling stock is only shown on the the French language version of the site. Peter Horn User talk 14:37, 4 September 2016 (UTC)


 * DB Class 628.1. ☺ --Bermicourt (talk) 15:02, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Peter Horn User talk 20:39, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Station naming conventions modified
Hello all, I have modified the conventions on naming railway stations in Germany so that it now stands like this:
 * Deutsche Bahn officially uses the city name as a prefix when referring to many S-Bahn stations located within cities (e.g. Munich-Harras station). However, this full, prefixed name is not often the most commonly used or recognised name, and article titles should typically omit the city prefix. When a certain station name exists in two or more cities, then the name of the city should be used in parantheses to disambiguate. Exceptions would be: Central railway stations, as well as major stations which cater to a large number of long-distance train services (e.g. Munich-Pasing station or Hamburg-Altona station) because they serve long-distance trains. Therefore, their scope would be throughout Germany instead of just within the city, hence necessarily requiring a city prefix.

I believe this is more meaningful and more understandable as opposed to the patchwork of naming styles we currently have. I have also raised this at WikiProject Germany where some users have kindly responded. I would love to hear your opinions on this matter at this WikiProject. MikeLynch (talk) 10:13, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Excessive quantity of links to German railway forum?
I've been going through locomotive articles in the past few months to sort them into appropriate categories (and making other small edits as appropriate and needed). It seems that almost every German locomotive article includes a link in the extlinks section like:
 * There is a relevant English-language forum at Railways of Germany

While it is all well and good to link to relevant materials, this link is applied to every locomotive article whether or not there is a comment anywhere on that external forum about that locomotive type. The only connection is that the forum is about German railways. This is in addition to the fact that the previous location for the forum is now a dead link and has been updated with an archive.com link by a bot; I found yesterday that the forum appears to now be located at yuku.com, so my edits yesterday and today have been to simplify the text and update the extlink.

But it seems excessive to have this forum linked on every locomotive page because Wikipedia is not a link collection and we should avoid links mainly intended to promote a website. If the link pointed to a discussion about the specific locomotive type in the Wikipedia article, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. I am strongly tempted by the external links and external link spamming guidelines to simply remove this forum link from the locomotive pages because it is not directly related to the subject of the articles on which is placed other than being about German railways. For comparison, the articles about British locomotives will often include an extlink to the RailUK database, but there the link will point directly to database query results for the locomotive type that is discussed in the Wikipedia article, and the RailUK database is not a user comment forum. On all of the German locomotive pages, the extlink points only to the root of the forum and not to anything about the specific locomotive type.

So the Railways of Germany forum links look like spam links to me and I believe they should be removed, but I want other opinions on this from other interested editors. Thanks! Slambo (Speak) 13:53, 20 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I added them when I was new to Wikipedia, Slambo, and thought it was relevant at the time. Do what seems right to you. --Bermicourt (talk) 16:22, 20 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Cool, thanks for the feedback. Slambo (Speak) 16:56, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:Infobox German railway vehicle
There is a discussion about how best to improve this template to make it work with Infobox. Would be wonderful to get some people from the taskforce to chime in. The discussion is at: Template_talk:Infobox_German_railway_vehicle. -- Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 00:16, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report
We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, will post at /Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of. We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:
 * The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
 * The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
 * The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to for his original, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool
Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Alstrom Coradia
I don't think Alstom Coradia and Coradia Stream should be the same article. They are very different in construction and usage. In particular, the models that Metra has ordered, I imagine they will be much larger in volume than e.g. the Arlanda Express trains. Thoughts? What kind of granularity should we aim for? --Ysangkok (talk) 19:53, 20 December 2023 (UTC)