Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Zealand Railways/Manual of style

Conventions for disambiguating names

I've just noticed a small issue with the title of a few articles and I figured I'd discuss it before making any change to the Manual of Style or the articles themselves. When I wrote the Manual of Style, I frankly didn't even think of this as being an issue, so I apologise for that oversight on my behalf. Some articles are disambiguated with brackets: e.g. Oxford Branch (New Zealand) and Appleby Railway Station (New Zealand). I think this practice began when an American, presumably unaware of New Zealand naming conventions, disambiguated a couple of our branch lines, and has been continued by a couple of recent articles. This, however, is contrary to the guidelines at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (New Zealand), which calls for a comma. We would have Oxford Branch, New Zealand and Appleby Railway Station, New Zealand. Before this becomes a more widespread issue, I would like to resolve it.

Accordingly, here is my proposal:

• Lines, railway stations, and any other fixed infrastructural/geographically recognised features conform to the New Zealand place name conventions of comma rather than bracket usage.
• Locomotives and other forms of rolling stock, however, do not fall under these conventions. The naming conventions for geography naturally do not apply, nor would it be grammatical to enforce them (while it is grammatical, under New Zealand English, to enforce them on the Oxford Branch and Appleby Railway Station). Accordingly, they continue to be disambiguated by year in brackets, e.g. NZR A class (1873) and NZR A class (1906), with the special exception for all the railcars unchanged.

If no objection is made within five days, I will go ahead and add this to the Manual of Style. - Axver (talk) 01:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The only objection I have to using commas is how clear is it what the real subject of the article is when it is necessary to have several levels of disambiguation? Using as an example the Appleby Railway Station article, the fact that there was more than one Appleby railway station in New Zealand could (theoretically) mean that it would be necessary to have Appleby Railway Station, Nelson, New Zealand and Appleby Railway Station, Southland, New Zealand articles. Is this considered to be a "better" way to name such articles rather than Appleby Railway Station (Nelson, New Zealand) and Appleby Railway Station (Southland, New Zealand) where it is clear what the subject is and what is intended as disambiguation?

This aside, I do entirely agree that all similar articles should be named consistently. I only elected to use parentheses after seeing other articles follow this convention and just assumed it was standard. -- Matthew25187 (talk) 05:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, no need to worry about circumstances like that. When there are more than two places in one country, they are disambiguated by region only. For example, see Douglas, Canterbury and Douglas, Taranaki, with Douglas, New Zealand as a disambiguation page for both of them. Accordingly, we would have Appleby Railway Station, Tasman and Appleby Railway Station, Southland. Though I certainly have no information to write anything about the Southland station, so for the time being, the current article on the Tasman station should be at Appleby Railway Station, New Zealand. - Axver (talk) 07:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe that I have adequately addressed Matthew25187's concerns and nobody else has commented, so as my deadline of five days has well and truly passed, I shall go ahead and add this to the Manual of Style. - Axver (talk) 23:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Locomotive article names

I suggest we should change the current locomotive naming convention from NZR x class to New Zealand x class. Thoughts? --LJ Holden 09:11, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the problem this proposal is supposed to resolve has been clearly defined. It is true that some editors, presumably well-intentioned, have expressed confusion as to the purpose of the NZR prefix for naming locomotive articles and suggested various alternatives, none of which are supported by the current MOS guidelines. Use of a common prefix for naming all articles on New Zealand railway rolling stock, as stipulated by the MOS, has several benefits including logically grouping all these articles together and making them easier to find. I assume the NZR prefix was selected when the MOS was drafted as it is clearly identified with New Zealand railways and most, if not all, rolling stock articles of the time were probably about vehicles either manufactuered and/or operated by the NZGR anyway.

I am definitely in favour of a common prefix for naming all articles on New Zealand rolling stock, as is the intent of the guidelines in the MOS, but could be open as to what that prefix should be. I would say that I definitely oppose any suggestion of prefixing rolling stock article names with the names of any owner, operator, business, or other organisation with the exception of the current guideline to use the NZR prefix which, the MOS notes, should not necessarily be interpreted as a specific reference to the Railways Department. Such a practice would only result in further confusion and a loss of the benefits of a common naming prefix.

In summary, I believe that the current use of the NZR prefix serves the rolling stock articles well by logically grouping them together, thus making them easier to find, and clearly identifying them as articles on the subject of New Zealand railways, and that the NZR acronym is reasonably well known, especially in railfan circles. If there are any other common usages, such as with a "KiwiRail" prefix for example, then these can be catered for with redirects. I am not necessarily opposed to a change to the relevant naming guideline in the MOS in line with this proposal but I don't think either the purpose or the necessity for such a change has been clearly explained. — Matthew25187 (talk) 12:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

To clarify, my proposal is not to change article titles to prefix the locomotive/carriage/vehicles original owner. My proposal is to replace the uniform use of "NZR" to "New Zealand" across all of the articles. This would deal with the issues raised around common names for locomotive/rail vehicle articles in this project.

My reason for doing so are:

* While 'NZR' is a known acronym in railfan circles, its not well known outside of them. In fact it can mean a lot of different things - it's actually the ticker name for the New Zealand Refining Company, for example.

* In any case, it's generally known in railfan circles that NZR refers to the former Railways Department. During the '80s there was a conscious effort to drop that designation and refer to NZR as "Railways", then of course NZ Rail, Tranz Rail, etc.

* It is confusing to anyone reading any of the New Zealand locomotive articles that locomotives introduced by, for example, Tranz Rail are classified as "NZR", especially where NZR refers to the Railways Department.

* It's also confusing for locomotives still in operation now under new owners.

* It's also confusing for locomotives that weren't initially operated by NZR, e.g. W&MR locomotives. Then there's the Price bush tramways lokeys, which really deserve their own articles - NZR would be totally inappropriate for these locomotives.

* Looking at other article series on locomotives, we're a bit out of step. For example South African locomotives (e.g. South African Class 15E) are classified in a similar manner to what I'm proposing. Like New Zealand, South African has had multiple operators of the same locomotives. Similarly, the New South Wales locomotive articles are now classified in this way - for example New South Wales C38 class locomotive. In Queensland they appear to prefer to designate locomotives by manufacturers, e.g. English Electric 1300 Class.

Anyway, my 2c worth. I'm not going to die in a ditch over NZR v New Zealand, but I do feel it would be an improvement. --LJ Holden 10:54, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm in favour of changing to New Zealand bla bla Class. Time for NZR bla bla Class to die in a ditch. Nankai (talk) 06:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC) ...but I don't think it matters enough to go back and change article titles of classes that are greatly or entirely linked to New Zealand Railways Department. I'd like to see New Zealand DL Class locomotive though.

Oh goodo. So that's two for and one against? --LJ Holden 04:08, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Any further comment on this? I'm slowly changing the articles themselves to New Zealand XX class --LJ Holden 00:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Any comment, anyone? --LJ Holden 02:45, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

You know, I thought I'd oppose this, especially since I was the one who initiated the "NZR" usage, but actually I think a change will make everything a whole lot clearer for non-enthusiasts. I only used "NZR" back in the day because I was following a few overseas precedents I was shown (where the railway company's abbreviation was used), and all locomotives were operated by the NZR at some point in their lifetime. In hindsight, New Zealand xx class would have been preferable from the beginning. So apologies for the additional workload, especially since I'm effectively inactive on Wikipedia these days and am rudely leaving it to you lot to sort out! Somebody might want to clean up the MOS. Axver (talk) 05:19, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Multi-page request

I've put up a multi-page move request on NZR DL class. --LJ Holden 00:01, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I've changed this to "New Zealand xx class locomotive" --LJ Holden 22:38, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Capitalisation

I've just noticed that stations in New Zealand consistently use title case names like Dunedin Railway Station and Morningside Train Station, whereas most of the rest of the world uses sentence case names (e.g. Morningside railway station in Australia and Morningside Road railway station in Scotland). Is there a reason for this? Thryduulf (talk) 11:13, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

America (or at least some) capitalises eg Hunter Railroad Station, for the same reason ie where it is is part of a name all the words are capitalised. Eg Eiffel Tower not Eiffel tower. Hugo999 (talk) 12:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

So are you saying that NZ and US English considers the "Railway Station" to be part of the proper noun? Certainly in British English (and apparently in Australian English too) it is not - i.e. the name of the Scottish station is "Morningside Road" not "Morningside Road Railway Station". Thryduulf (talk) 12:23, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe the usage of capitalizing "Station" or "Railway Station" is correct. In the US disused station articles are named idiosyncratically, often following whatever name was logged with the National Register of Historic Places. US English definitely does not consider Railway Station part of the proper noun. Mackensen (talk) 13:26, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

• I don't believe they should be capitalized for 99% of cases either, pretty much as per Mackensen, except this is from a British perspective. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 13:42, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

The applicable standard policy on this issue is WP:NCCAPS that specifies, in general terms, words subsequent to the first word in a title shouldn't be capitalized unless they are part of a proper noun. However, as New Zealand rail-related articles fall under the stewardship of the NZR Wikiproject, this MOS applies and hence "train station" and "railway station" are considered part of the proper noun that is the name of the station.

I note on "official" publications variations of "XXXX", "XXXX Station" (e.g. Metlink Hutt Valley Line timetable), and "XXXX Train Station" (e.g. www.maxx.co.nz) are used, possibly others, so there doesn't appear to be consensus. If this project were to adopt the official policy on capitalization then more disambiguation would be required where names clash with those used for stations in other countries and may currently be differentiated by case alone. As an article title the form "XXXX Station", as in the Metlink example, isn't appropriate as it is necessary to clearly identify the subject as a railway station, but neither is the form "XXXX Railway station" appropriate.

It seems to me that because the current Wikiproject NZR policy doesn't typically hinder a user in finding the article they are after as, in the absence of another article of the same name but using lower case, Wikipedia will redirect to the New Zealand article with its full capitalization, we can leave the current policy as is or rename hundreds of articles and introduce a lot more disambiguation. — Matthew25187 (talk) 01:29, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation only by case is not something we should be encouraging as it makes it much harder for people to correctly link to the article they want to. We can keep a check on uses on Wikipedia (but it's more difficult to spot) but we can't check links elsewhere on the net. If disambiguation is needed it's much better to use either natural disambiguation or parenthetical disambiguation than case disambiguation. Thryduulf (talk) 09:30, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Auckland station names

Some time ago the Auckland railway station articles were unilaterally renamed to use the Railway Station nomenclature as is standard with the other New Zealand railway station articles. While this isn't wrong, per se, it is inconsistent with this project's MOS which states Auckland has Train Stations. If no-one has any objections, I'll modify the appropriate section to make it clear that all New Zealand stations are Railway Stations (with the rare exception like Britomart) and in the Auckland case to encourage the creation of a Train Station redirect to the Railway Station article for users searching by the MAXX nomenclature. — Matthew25187 (talk) 01:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Naming conventions (Australasian stations)

Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Australasian stations). Based on existing station naming. Useddenim (talk) 04:07, 18 March 2016 (UTC)