Category talk:Standard gauge railway locomotives

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Diffuse?[edit]

A single category this large is going to be ridiculously large. What purpose would it then serve?

If it exists, then it should be diffused - maybe by country.

There's also the issue of countries where a "broad" gauge is their local "standard" gauge. How are they to be handled? Andy Dingley (talk) 00:09, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I started adding pages to this category because since the category's creation in 2011, very few of the locomotives used on North American railroads were added to the category despite the fact that the vast majority of them were standard gauge locomotives. The category was severely underpopulated, and as it's now got almost 800 pages and many more yet to be included, there has to be a better way to categorize them.

I was thinking about diffusion as I worked through all of the pages where I added this category this week. Dividing this by country might be difficult because there are a number of different locomotive types that were used across international borders. For example, most of the EMD and ALCO designs used in the US were also used in Canada and Mexico, and several have been exported to other continents; also, many locomotives used in Europe regularly cross many international borders (the EMD Class 66 or the new Eurosprinter and TRAXX locomotives come to mind). These locomotives would then have several categories added instead of just one. Some of the other gauge categories have subcategories by country, but just looking at ALCO (steam, diesel and electric) and EMD locomotives, the US category will still be huge.

As to countries where a broad gauge is normal (like in Ireland, India or Russia), there is one gauge that is known internationally as "standard gauge", it is 4 ft 81⁄2 in (1,435 mm). There are other categories for other gauges (except I don't see one under Category:Locomotives by gauge for 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm) gauge). The terminology is clear on this, so I don't see this part as an issue. Slambo (Speak) 16:59, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So after a year and a half, I just started splitting this out by country (you've noticed this by suggesting that the UK category should be renamed to GB instead; and I'm waiting for the result of that discussion to add more to that country-specific category). As I thought there would be, I've already come across several articles that are now in as many as six new country-specific categories, but that's not as big of a problem as it could be. The hard part is ensuring that the various country usages for each locomotive kept the locomotives as standard gauge; I tried to be as accurate as I could. There may be some errors on the locomotives that were used in many countries because they weren't specifically noted as to what gauge each country used (I used the railroad company information as a guide if it wasn't stated in the locomotive article). Slambo (Speak) 02:31, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]