Talk:List of rail accidents/archive 1

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 early comments 2 "stop train" vs. "stopped train" 3 Nice TOC switch 4 past/present tense 5 This page is getting long 6 So many rail accidents in 2005? 7 Inconsistency of Flag thumbnails in List 8 Past and present tense; numbers. 9 WP:FL 10 Historic flags 11 Chicago rail accident today (Dec 9, 2005)? 12 Missing Rail Accident 13 Genthin desaster (22 Dec 1939) 14 Strongly suggest reorganisation 15 Derailment Photos 16 Broken down the list 17 Years without accidents 18 Suggestion for move

early comments

Some one needs to get a copy of the book "Red for Danger" and incorporate many other crashes mentioned therein.

Syd1435 04:24, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

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I'm adding a Washington DC metro subway one. Unknown if there is a seperate page for those. List of subway accidents does not exist.66.173.192.96 00:54, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

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"stop train" vs. "stopped train"

Is "stop train" a term that is specific to European railroads? The grammar seems a little odd to me as a native English speaker. I read the entry as one train collided with another train that was not moving, the stationary train was a stopped train. Is that right? Thanks. (Note that I left a similar message on the user's talk page to ensure that the question is seen) slambo 20:03, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

You're referring to the 1976 Schiedam crash, yes? A "stoptrein" is a Dutch term for a train which stops at every station. I presume it was mistranslated into English - in the UK we'd call it a "local train". -- Arwel 20:19, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification. slambo 20:23, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

- A local train is sometimes called a stopping train Tabletop 03:44, 21 August 2005 (UTC) - A local train is also called an all stops train Tabletop 03:44, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Nice TOC switch

The automatic TOC was looking rather ungainly. The new TOC summarizes the page quite nicely. The only thing that I might try to improve on it would be the color scheme, but I don't have a good palette handy. slambo 17:30, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

I just nicked the colour scheme from the toc at List of songs whose title includes geographical names, although I agree its not the nicest in the world! I've made a mockup at User:Thryduulf/rail accidents toc using the colour scheme from the info box to see how it looks. Feel free to play around with the colours on that page. Thryduulf 01:11, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Unless anyone objects in the next week, I will replace the current "list of songs grey" version of the TOC with the "custom grey/yellow" version at User:Thryduulf/rail accidents toc. Thryduulf 20:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

past/present tense

is there any reason why most of the article is in the present tense even though the crashes happened in the past? tommylommykins

Because it's standard practice on WP for timelines to describe events in the present tense. slambo 17:34, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Why? It doesn't feel right tommylommykins 13:29, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I always thought the opposite, that writing timelines with the events in past tense didn't feel right to me. Since I'm the editor who updates this article and the rest of the rail transport timeline pages (Category:Rail transport timelines, Category:Anniversaries in rail transport and Portal:Trains/Anniversaries) the most, I write events in the style that seems the most natural to me, and edit listings to a consistent format and style. Other timelines on WP use this style too, such as Timeline of hacker history, Timeline of lighting technology, and many others listed on List of themed timelines, so it's not just consistency within rail transport timeline pages, but with as many timeline pages as possible. slambo 15:03, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

:-) tommylommykins

This page is getting long

On my most recent edit to this page today, I noticed that it said the article is now at 51kb long. I think it's time to split it, and suggest we split by century: List of rail accidents: 19th century, List of rail accidents: 20th century and leave the 21st century events here (we could make a List of rail accidents: 21st century page, but then what would be left here?). Thoughts? slambo 14:18, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and we'd leave the entire contents block on the article, just update where the links point to. slambo 14:19, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this page is getting to long. I think that the main page should contain one accident of each type plus accidents from which important lessons are learned. Other accidents, such as level crossing collisions which are otherwise all the same might go into a page for each (major) country, such as list of Russian rail accidents. Accidents is smaller countries might go in files for suitable time periods such as List of rail accidents 1901-1950.

Tabletop 07:57, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

So many rail accidents in 2005?

This is my first visit to the List of rail accidents page, and it strikes me how there seem to be so many accidents happening in 2005 compared to the rest. I know wikipedia is biased towards current events, so can understand why we have more on the 21st Century than the 19th Century. But we're 4 months from the year end, and it already has over double the amount of accidents compared to 2004, was 2004 so long ago? Although we may just be having a very bad year. - Hahnchen 01:57, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I think it's just that we're paying much more attention to the accidents that are occurring this year, and we're adding them here as they happen. That's part of the reason for the page split that I suggested in an earlier comment. A while ago there was an editor who added a bunch of accidents from Norway throughout history, and I'd like to see the same for other parts of the world as well. slambo 02:45, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Well look at the kind of stuff added recently - "September 18, 2005 – Rillington, North Yorkshire, England: A 92 year old man dies when he drives his car into the path of a train at a level crossing.". If everything like this was added, the article will become endless. What next, subway suicides? Nfitz 22:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Yep, and the problem is what? It's not important enough because only one person died? Its a rail accident so unless there is a consensus that some kind of criteria (number of people dead/number of people injured/whatever?) needs to be met for it to be added to this list it falls under the scope of "rail accidents". chowells 22:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Inconsistency of Flag thumbnails in List

I've also noticed on my first viewing of this page, that there is an inconsistency in the small flag picture symbolising the country where the accident occurred.

Some show an English St. Georges Cross and some show the Union Jack. I say we should replace all the English/Scottish/Welsh flags here with the Union Jack. The railway in Britain is called British Rail and I think it would be more natural for the country flags to refer to Britain rather than the individual countries.

For example, I was looking for the Quintinshill rail crash on the list, the most deadly rail accident to occur in Britain. It took a slight while longer to find, because firstly I looked for the Union Jack, and then the St. Georges Cross, and then finally realised it was in Scotland. What do you think? - Hahnchen 02:12, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

When I added the flags, I used the flag for the country name that is listed in the dateline. I have no preference for versus the individual regions, so if someone wants to replace , , and and whatever other subregion flags on this page with , then I say go for it. slambo 02:41, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

What about having both the Union Jack and Scottish flag for the Quintinshill crash? Tabletop 03:47, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking about this yesterday. There's a time inconsistency as well. We use the East Germany flag for Langenweddingen (1967), presumably because that is the country it was in at the time but the 1924 to 1972 Flag of the Government of Northern Ireland for Armagh (1889), long before NI existed as an entity. Using the UK flag is probably the best solution for all UK incidents. I don't _think_ there were any incidents that will end up on this page in what is now the Republic of Ireland before it was created. --Cavrdg 08:20, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I would prefer the over the separate country flags. But when one considers British Rail, they would not normally consider Northern Ireland because that has always been operated by Northern Ireland Railways, a separate entity. So maybe we should have the Union Jack for England, Scotland, Wales, and something else for NI. However, this may offend the Unionists in Ireland, so I'm not too sure. - Hahnchen 14:36, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

There are some options for what the something else could be at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#A_better_flag_icon_for_Northern_Ireland.3F but, as with most things in NI, there's no easy answer. --Cavrdg 15:15, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

The use of flags is rather illogical. It would be sensible to use the Union Jack for all accidents which happened in Ireland pre-1921. We're also using the Ugandan flag for the maneaters of Tsavo incident, even though that was about 70 years before Uganda existed and the Union Jack would probably be more appropriate. To nit-pick, we're also using the 50-star US flag for pre-1960 accidents, the Maple Leaf flag for pre-1965 Canadian accidents, and the current German flag for the 1939 Genthin accident when the swastika flag was current. :) -- Arwel 14:44, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

We are looking back at past events from our own perspective. Thus, for an accident that happened in present day Uganga, should have a Ugandan flag. Any accident that has happened in present day Uganda should have the Ugandan flag on. I say, we replace , and with . Thoughts? - Hahnchen 23:33, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

An anon changed a couple from UK to Wales and England. I've reverted and left a note on the anon's talk to join the discussion here. Slambo (Speak) 15:51, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Use both together / . --86.29.251.116 07:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Past and present tense; numbers.

I have noticed that some reports are written in the present tense and some in the past. Compare:

• The train passes a red signal; the driver is killed.
• The train passed a red signal; the driver was killed.

I think these should be changed so all entries are the same, but which?

Also, what is the correct way of writing numbers?

• Seven dead and forty-three injured
• 7 dead and 43 injured
• Seven dead and 43 injured
• Some other combination

I am sure newspapers etc., have a rule, is it numbers under 10 are written as words and all others as numbers, or something else?

-=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 16:58, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I try to stick with the present tense as that's what's used on other timeline pages throughout WP. When I have time, I will sometimes go through this list and "re-tense" sentences into present tense, but usually only update the listings around whatever I'm editing at the time. I haven't seen it mentioned in WP:MOS yet, but it seems to make more sense to me (see above). As for the numbers, I'll usually use digits for numbers greater than ten, and words for numbers between zero and ten. However, I will rarely mix words and digits myself, preferring digits. slambo 18:35, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

WP:FL

I just stumbled on this article and thought it's not far off being up to featured list status. Congatulaions to the editors. A few things it does still need though:

• a lead paragraph or 2 (see: WP:LEAD)
• a statement saying what is the criteria for inclusion in the list, How major does an accident have to be?
• fix up the references using {{ref}} and {{note}} (like say List of Test cricket triple centuries)

-- Ian ≡ talk 03:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

So, to everyone else who participates here, what do we say? I'll try to work something up for a lead section, but what about the other points? We've got a brief discussion on the criteria for inclusion, and we probably need to take a closer look at this. Personally, I'm not listing every accident I hear about simply because they would overwhelm the list with incidents that do not involve any injury or property damage (just dropping one axle off the rail is not what I consider sufficient reason to add it to the list yet it happens every day on railroads around the world). My own informal gauge for an incident's importance and whether or not I list it here includes the amount of press coverage an accident receives, the amount of damage, the extent of any injuries and whether or not anyone was evacuated for the incident's cleanup. It is very subjective, but short of any formal criteria, it'll have to do. I have a strong suspicion that other editors use similar gauging strategies with incidents from around the world. This leads to the question, how do we state this in the lead section?

The third point above, about references, could easily get out of hand if we include every reference. For example, the References section on September 2005 in rail transport includes complete citations for each reference used in the news events there; but there number of entries here is much larger than there. I suspect that many of the earlier accident accounts came from collections of accident reports. Whatever is the case, it seems to me that if we used a reference for information in the list, we need to list the citation. I've been trying to do this for the incidents that I add to the list, but many others aren't. As a minimum, I think we need to get all of the current reference and footnote information into a consistent format and ensure that future additions follow the same format. Is anyone willing to tackle this part of the project?

slambo 16:49, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Historic flags

I think they should go. They will only confuse people who do not come from those countries. tommylommykins(sorry about the name)

I was tempted to revert, but I couldn't remember if there was any discussion on that part of the flag issue and didn't want to undo it without talking about it first. I would tend to agree; I'm more in favor of using a region's current flag, but I see the merit in using the most time-appropriate flag for a region. It seems similar to the discussion that we had a while ago on using the regional flags for portions of the UK rather than the current unified flag. slambo 16:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I see we're still on thw old flags... It's anly going to be a simple global replace job in a text editor, so I'm happy to change the flags back if nobody wants to argue. tommylommykins 17:57, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. Slambo (Speak) 18:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, that failed... Lets try again. tommylommykins 19:19, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. Sorry about the mess. Some stupid mistakes there.

Chicago rail accident today (Dec 9, 2005)?

Since I didn't see any mention on the news sites of an accident occurring today in Chicago, I've reverted the edit that added such a mention. If there really was an accident today, we need more details and a reference. Thanks. Slambo (Speak) 19:47, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Missing Rail Accident

Yesterday, an emergency vehicle drove throught an open drawbridge in Jersey City, NJ. This reminded me of a similar accident occuring in Bayonne, NJ, in which a train drove through an open drawbridge killing 53, as I recall. I have no exact date, though and am having difficulty finding corroborative news articles. John07801 (Speak) 16:31, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Genthin desaster (22 Dec 1939)

The death/injured numbers are too high. In all my sources there are 186 killed and 106 injured people. By the way, on the same day(!) another heavy desaster occured in Germany. Near Markdorf (Bavaria), a frontal collision of a special passenger train with a freight train resulted in 101 killed and 28 injured people. (Source for instance: Schatten der Eisenbahngeschichte. Ein Vergleich britischer, US- und deutscher Bahnen. (by Hans Joachim Ritzau, first published in Pürgen in 1987).) (A translation of the title would be: Shadows of railroad history. A comparison of British, US and German railroads.) Best regards, --Thomas Goldammer 15:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Strongly suggest reorganisation

Following from comments above, this page really seems to have got too long and is inconsistent in style. Brief summaries of major crashes of historical importance are cheek-by-jowl with woffles on minor derailments or detailed accounts. It's getting hard to see the wood for the trees.

I suggest that this page should concentrate on brief 2-line summaries of key international accidents. Detailed descriptions of accidents should be cross-referenced either by country or individual accident. A list of US rail accidents needs to be set up (like the British one) and the longer descriptions and minor shunts like Manassas need to be shifted to that. The significant accidents can be cross-referenced from this page. Maybe a statement of intent is needed at the top to encourage people not to add trivia to this particular page. Hyperman 42 02:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this list is very interesting and informative, but do feel it is somewhat unwieldly, and could used breaking in fifty year segements or so. The information presented is largely very good, although there are a few individual articles about events here that aren't linked to, I tried to add them in, but I doubt I got all of them. Anyway, good job, well done--Jackyd101 02:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I also came across this website, which lists a number of Indian accidents, some quite serious, which aren't on your list. Its here just in case you find it useful.

"Train wrecks in India"

Derailment Photos

Ive found a website that has lots of pictures of derailed trains. Storm05 18:45, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Broken down the list

Alright, at 121 kilobytes this thing was a _tad_ bit long. I've stripped the content prior to 1950 and put it in List of pre-1950 rail accidents, changed the TOC headings so that every year can be jumped to right from the TOC (before that, this only worked for the 1990s and 2000s) and removed some fluff from the USA entries (which, in my opinion, do need a lot of copyediting). --Doco 19:35, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Years without accidents

Why do we need to put in years that were no notable accidents (i.e. 1959)

24.47.134.240 22:13, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

They don't really have to be there, but since this is a work in progress, there is a strong likelihood that incidents from these years will show up eventually, thus including them now, saves time later--Jackyd101 00:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for move

Going by naming conventions, I believe that this article should be moved to "List of train accidents." --Gurubrahma 16:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The thing with the current title tram and light rail accidents are within scope (I can't remember if there are any or not) rather than just accidents involving trains. Thryduulf 18:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)