Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/SR Leader Class/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 23:50, 18 April 2009 [1].

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SR Leader Class

Nominator(s): Bulleid Pacific (talk) 20:33, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/SR Leader Class/archive1

I am nominating this for featured article because the experimental nature of the Leader class represented an important departure from traditional British steam locomotive design in an attempt to address some of the shortcomings associated with their operation. Bulleid Pacific (talk) 20:33, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment – What were the intended advantages of this design? Nowhere (that I can see) does it explain why Southern/BR were investing so much time and effort in this project. Also, just by looking at the photos I can see that it's very different in appearance to pretty much every other steam locomotive (I'd never have guessed it was steam, or a 1940s design, by looking at it) – I think it needs to be explained why the external appearance was so radically different to everything that came before and after. (Very interesting article, though; I'd never heard of it before). – iridescent 20:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• Tech. Review

• There are no disambiguation links as checked with the dab finder tool.
• There are not dead external links as checked with the links checker tool.
• There are no errors in ref formatting as checked with WP:REFTOOLS.--Truco 21:00, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment – Iridescent, the advantages regarding this locomotive are there, such as the modernisation of the steam fleet, user-friendly innovations etc., for example the leader states that: "The Leader project became part of Bulleid's desire to modernise the steam locomotive along the principles based upon experience with the Southern Railway's fleet of electric stock. In finalising the locomotive, Bulleid saw that changes regarding the labour intensity of steam operation were being mooted, and in response the new locomotive was to push forward the boundaries of steam power in the little time available before nationalisation in 1948."

The Southern Railway seemed to take the view that 'if Bulleid asked for square wheels, then give them to him', (St. John Thomas & Whitehouse, SR 150: A Century and a Half of the Southern Railway (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1983), 25), and apart from this rather vexing statement by the 'Top Brass' at Waterloo, the reason why they the the Leader was constructed at all has never really been ascertained. Officially, as mentioned in the text, it was supposed to replace the aging Drummond M7 locomotives. Suffice to say, to go any further into it would start entering the realms of original research and speculation, as there is still heated debate as to 'why' they were constructed.

As to the photographs, it is mentioned later on in the article that the design was intended to be put through carriage washers as an economy measure in terms of manpower, and the fact that a cab at either end improved visibility and operation procedures. I hope this goes some way towards allaying some of you comments. Thanks for your interest, --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 21:21, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• • This isn't an objection, but I think the article ought to make that much more prominent. The "non-train" reader's first reaction to this is going to be "That's a steam locomotive? Really?" – it looks so radically different to later steam designs like the Class 9F for example. Since the experimental nature is (presumably) what makes this design significant, I think it warrants being spelled out in the lead. (That's just my personal opinion, though; as I say, it's certainly not something I'd oppose over.) – iridescent 21:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment – Well any suggestions, queries etc., it's all good! But I think the fact that it says "experimental locomotive" in the first sentence of the leader paragraph should highlight to the uninitiated reader that they are seeing something that doesn't quite follow the grain... --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 21:47, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comments -
• The Harensape ref needs a publisher

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:00, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

clarification The images are claimed to be under expired crown copyright. The state and the government are two seperate entities, and these images were produced by a state owned industry, what makes you think they fall under crown copyright? Fasach Nua (talk) 17:57, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

The crown is the head of state in the UK. All official government documents are therefore crown copyright. --Malleus Fatuorum 19:57, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Would you have a reference for the management structure of BR during the period these images were taken? Fasach Nua (talk) 21:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

What has BR's management structure got to do with anything? It was a state-owned industry; the UK's head of state has been the crown since 1688, hence the crown copyright. --Malleus Fatuorum 21:31, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

British Transport Commission explains the setup 1947-1962; British Railways Board 1962-2001. (The articles are currently unsourced, but accurate.) British Rail was a trading name of the Commmission/Board, which were in turn part of the Department for Transport – so British Rail was a "true" trading arm of the government, rather than a Northern Rock style "private company in which the government happens to be the majority shareholder", which seems to be the confusion here. – iridescent 21:33, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, the article states that "Its first chairman was Lord Hurcomb", but it doesnt say if this was a managerial board or a board of directors and the article doesnt have any external refs, do you know of an external link for this? Fasach Nua (talk) 22:05, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Official summary of the history of the management of the nationalised railways at the UK Government National Archives. – iridescent 19:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comments by Malleus Fatuorum. I think the article is generally very good, but some of the prose reads very awkwardly to me, to the extent I'm not certain I understand some of it. A few examples from the lead:

• "In finalising the locomotive, Bulleid saw that changes regarding the labour intensity of steam operation were being mooted, and in response the new locomotive was to push forward the boundaries of steam power in the little time available before nationalisation in 1948." Finalising the locomotive or the design? What does "mooted" mean here? It generally has two meaning, the older legal "hypothesised", or the newer "unimportant". Which does it mean here? Why was Bulleid so keen to "push forward the boundaries of steam power anyway"?

• "The Leader project became part of Bulleid's desire to modernise the steam locomotive along the principles based upon experience with the Southern Railway's fleet of electric stock." Became part of his desire? So it wasn't why he designed it, but only later did it become important to him?

• "However, these innovations were some of the reasons why the project was discontinued in the early 1950s." Surely it wasn't the innovations that caused the problems, but their failure?

• "Only one Leader was completed for trial purposes, although four more were in varying states of completion." How many were completed for purposes other than "trial"? Four more were in varying stages of completion when?

• Is it really necesssary to label the image in the infobox as a photograph? The other pictures aren't identified as photographs.

--Malleus Fatuorum 21:21, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment – I think the leader section is better than before after taking on board the above. However, its the case that I can understand the rest of the article, so I need someone to literally point out the thorny issues. Please note that some of the more technical sections are unavoidable, as they provide key reasons for the failure of this locomotive. --Bulleid Pacific (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support. Although the changes over the past week have all been cosmetic, I think they're a significant improvement; it's now clear why this was a significant design, why it came about, and why it was abandoned. I think it could be improved with an expansion of the "End of the project" legacy section explaining what innovations (if any) from the design were taken forward and used on other locomotives (the "peat-burning locomotive to a similar design" produced for Ireland, which is briefly mentioned, ought to at the very least be a redlink as it surely warrants its own article even if it doesn't yet have one). That's a trivial point, though. A nod of the head is due to Malleus on this one as well, who yet again has demonstrated a gift for cleaning up articles on obscure subjects. – iridescent 12:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support. I'm ready to support this interesting and comprehensive article on a rather obscure steam locomotive as well. I've just got one further very minor point to raise, which I seem to remember has come up during the reviews of other loco articles. It's to do with the formatting of a class name, like "Pacific". Ought that not to be italicised? I checked with this similar FA, but it seems to format class names inconsistently. --Malleus Fatuorum 13:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support. As the nominator knows, this article has been on my Watch-list for some weeks and I raised one or two points on the Talk-page. Malleus's recent edits have greatly improved the prose and have brought it to FA standard. The article satisfies all the FA criteria. Graham Colm ^Talk 13:31, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

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