User talk:Slambo/Archive 0412

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Good work putting the railroad historical society links in! —Morven 17:53, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Adding more pages...

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been adding information that I know about into various new pages. I've now added pages for the following:

• Railroad companies
  1. Green Bay and Western
  2. Soo Line
  3. Wisconsin and Southern
  4. Wisconsin Central
• Named passenger trains
  1. Category:Named passenger trains
  2. 20th Century Limited
  3. City of Denver
  4. City of Los Angeles
  5. Overland Flyer
  6. Super Chief

There is a ton more information on historical railroad subjects to add and expand on, and I'm updating links and related pages with links to these new pages as appropriate. slambo 18:14, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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More additions and (significant) updates to railroad pages:

• Railroad companies
  1. Monon
  2. Reading Railroad
• Named passenger trains
  1. California Zephyr
  2. List of named passenger trains

I have quite a lot of data on named passenger trains. I may end up subdividing the list page further for the North American section to include a subsection for each letter of the alphabet. The last time I added to that list early this morning, it gave me a warning that the list is over 30kb long. Adding sections for the alphabet and editing the page by those subsections will simplify updating it a little, but the page will still be quite large when I've added all of my data to it. Perhaps one of our fellow readers has a suggestion?

Also, I know the webmaster for the Wisconsin & Southern railroad and a few other railroad employees, so I expect to be updating that page with more data and graphics soon. slambo 17:37, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Another addition before heading off to work:

• Lima Locomotive Works

I hope to add more to it soon... slambo 11:38, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Two new categories: Category:Locomotive manufacturers and Category:Named locomotives, both subcategories of Category:Locomotives.

Another new article:

• John Bull (locomotive)

More is coming... slambo 15:02, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I declare the John Bull article is no longer a stub. It's fleshed out with plenty of additional data (although there may be more that can still be added). slambo 01:51, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Following on the heels of the John Bull article is another article about a significant locomotive in American railroad history:

• Sandusky (locomotive)

You guessed it, more to come... slambo 17:22, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mira Costa High School

Welcome to Wikipedia, Slambo! You've made many fine edits. I see you are a train buff. . . Perhaps you might want to add a bit to Tehachapi Loop, which is in my "neck of the woods" so to speak, since I'm an Antelope Valley native. I see you have lived in what we Valley residents call "down below", at least from where you went to high school in the Beach Cities area.

As far as on how to get the MCHS aricle removed from possible undeletion, it has to be a notable subject, worthy of inclusion in a typical encyclopedia. As you could imagine, I'd like my high school alma mater to be included in Wikipedia too. . . but it's not notable as yet. Until it meets that test, I'd say it will suffer deletion. Sad but true. Even the bit about Shaq practicing there isn't in itself enough to make it noteworthy, IMHO.

Granted, you know lots about the school, but knowing lots about a subject doesn't meet the test of noteworthiness. Otherwise, I'd be writing lots of articles about Quartz Hill High School, "Antelope" Al and his amazing football exploits, Cantil elementary school, and the telephone booth off of Backus Road, to name a few local items of interest. Don't know about these things? That's the point! They need to be topics of note and stature. If you peruse my user page, you'll see the articles of noteworthiness I have created or added to (including Pearblossom, Rick Warren, Gorman, and The Door. Last but not least, there's Ridge Route - a formerly forgotten road that now is getting written material about it substantiating its importance to California history - which allows a reasonable case for it to be made for its inclusion within Wikipedia. (Barrel Springs Road, by contrast, has no Wikipedia article on it and if there was one, I'd vote to delete it as not being anywhere near notable.)

I hope this helps. I was once a new Wikipedia user too, and for a time I was frustrated on what I could do (and having my material stick around some) and what I could not do. Please let me know how I may be of assistance further. Comments are welcome at my discussion page. I'm here to help! --avnative 16:24, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Hey, thanks. I've got a much longer entry to add later tonight as I finish off some more details, so we'll see what the community thinks of it. Maybe I should have waited until I got the rest of the article before starting with such a minimalist stub. B-) Oh well, live and learn.

I haven't added to the Loop article yet as I've been concentrating more on adding passenger train data the last couple days (I recently found and added the consist data for the first Super Chief trains in 1937 and 1938, and there's still a ton more to add on all the other trains), and there are a lot of railroads to write about still. I've got data and photos that I've taken that I can add to the Loop article, so I'll probably stop in there to expand it a little. Model railroading is my favorite hobby, which is why it's listed first on my user page.

slambo 20:07, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Expanding pages to Southern Pacific

I've added a significant amount of text to the Southern Pacific page today, adding a timeline, list of presidents and some references. There's more to come as I go through my own research from many years ago on this railroad and the line from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

Great additions, Slambo! A question and a comment: I remember hearing the SP steam locomotives after 1957 as a child growing up fairly near the SP tracks which run through the Antelope Valley, as well as the new diesel locomotives (much quieter running). Could you recheck your reference and see if I'm right on that point? I think the facts may be that SP ceased ordering new steam locomotives in 1957, but ran them on its routes for years afterwards, as they were gradually replaced by the new diesel locomotives after 1957.

Regarding SP's running its line into Los Angeles via Tehachapi Loop and the Antelope Valley: I've run across some research materials (Ridge Route: the Road that United California) by Harrison Scott which state SP's high prices/gouging of customers (freight and passenger alike, back in those days) as a result of the expense in building its tracks from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. For decades after SP's entrance into the LA market, it charged excessively high prices to recoup the expense, according to Scott's research. Thought you might want to know about it - and perhaps this could be added into the SP article. Your thoughts?

BTW, if the SP book from 1985 is the book I've read before, it's excellent. --avnative 06:06, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

I'll have to check my other resources on SP's dieselization. '57 is the date in Bill Yenne's book. It's a little before my time, but I've got plenty of other printed matter around here... The bit about price gouging is exactly the level of detail that I was hoping to add to a narrative for the article. Now I have to read your article. B-) slambo 11:01, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

MCHS

Sean, that article looks a lot better. I suggest expanding the bit about "Dr. Whirry," including the addition of his first name. In fact, I'm willing to change my vote. A lot of articles nominated for deletion have grown into great additions which is why they're listed for a week. Oh, and since you're into railroading check out my Wigwag and General Electric U25B articles. "Wigwag" made featured status! - Lucky 6.9 21:25, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• • Sorry 'bout the MCHS. It's just that there's been a huge amount of contention regarding high schools as of late. Glad you liked my railroad articles! I forgot to tell you about Orange Empire Railway Museum over in Perris. I'm not a current member, but I had a blast helping to design and build their interactive signal garden. Good luck on the U25B! The OERM unit is just fabulous and having two working units in the US is a wonderful thing. Take a peek at EMD FP45 as well. I didn't write it, but I did add to it. Then, go on over to [1] for a look at the old Western Pacific F-unit they're restoring up in the Bay Area. - Lucky 6.9 04:05, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad

Thanks for the cleanup - it looks much better. I am slowly getting the hang of this Oldfarm 00:29, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Trains/Todo and Category:Locomotives. I made some small changes to AAR wheel arrangement, and I've added to Talk:AAR wheel arrangement. You might want to check out the latter to see if it's easy to understand. It's getting late for me. Rmeier 04:39, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

U25 doubleheader

By all means, please feel free to merge the info! The newer article has some technical specs and that neat category box, not to mention a more user-friendly title. Thanks! - Lucky 6.9 20:26, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Looking absolutely wonderful. Fabulous job!! - Lucky 6.9 23:45, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Combino

Hi -- are you sure rolling stock is the right category for Combino? It's a tram, not just a car. Martg76 18:58, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

PRR

I'm intending to put a huge amount of my PRR info into Wikipedia. I have a few dozen books at home, plus the enormous online PRR resources to call upon. It's one of the best documented railroads online. I need to work on getting photographer permissions to post some newer than 1923 photos, too. —Morven 00:36, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Copyrights

I noticed that the pictures you've put into Wikipedia use the cc-by-sa-2.0 copyright. Would you care to explain that choice versus GPDL? Are you like me, and think that one day you might want to write a railroad book? Rmeier 18:39, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fomatting

I still don't like the way the text interacts with the fact box and photo on Chicago and Northwestern. The text area looks so skinny, or even blank. When I removed the thumbnail option from the photo, the photo was mostly hidden by the fact box. So I didn't save that. Is this skinny or no text problem just due to my 16" monitor at 800 x 600 pixel resolution with the MS Office shortcut bar on the right, or do you see it, too? Rmeier 18:39, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Railroad fact boxes

The CNW fact box Locale is missing Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Are you trying for a particular year in the history of the CNW, or for a cumulative, CNW was once in that state kind of approach? Rmeier 18:39, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I’m confused (again). Some fact boxes list states for the locale. Others list just cities, or parts of the country. Has anyone agree on a standard? I’d like to go with states. I have a 1973 Handy RR Atlas of the US, which lists states served by each railroad. Rmeier 07:09, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Autorack

Sean, please see notes at my user talk page. Mark Vaoverland 04:50, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Auto Train

Sean, please see new notes at my user talk page. Mark Vaoverland 03:33, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Class 1 railroads

The differences between Class 1 railroad and Template:US class 1 need to be reconciled: any thoughts? Where can we get an 'official' list of current class 1s? —Morven 02:07, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Well, an Official Railway Equipment Register is always a handy reference for this type of information. The most current that I've got covers the era that I'm modeling, 1984. I've been trying to find a reliable source that has a more current list on the net, but even searching the AAR's site I've come up empty so far. slambo 02:14, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Etc.

Please review List of United States railroads. Somehow, a lot of text was duplicated. I have removed that, and preserved the desired additions of the Chicago Central and the South Shore line. Rmeier 07:14, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I was working in the list last night when I had a system crash. I hope I was not accidentally the culprit. Vaoverland 08:28, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks fine now. slambo 11:53, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

U36B photo

The same photographer who authorized use of the AT caboose (G.R. Harper) sent me a photo he took of the A-T in Louisville. It is a head-on of one of the U36B locomotives. I am waiting for an email to confirm its OK to use. Where do you want to use it? Vaoverland 21:29, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll start a page tonight for it as GE U36B. slambo 21:32, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Did you know has been updated

And an article you created recently has made the line up and is now featured on the main page. Enjoy! -- [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 14:43, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway a Class 1?

Sorry if you don't know anything about this, but you seem to know a lot about railroads. Is the EJ&E really a Class 1? It's rather small ([2]) and is part of the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association ([3]).

According to the April 1984 Official Railway Equipment Register, it was a Class 1, at least in 1984. It was on that authority that I put EJ&E in the template. slambo 02:57, Nov 23, 2004 (UTC)