Talk:Calhan station

Sources disagree

According to the NRHP nom form, the Calhan depot is the only Rock Island depot remaining on its original site. According to the El Paso County page linked in the article, "[i]t is one of only three surviving depots of the Rock Island Railroad in Colorado remaining on their original sites". The El Paso Co. page postdates the nom form, so presumably has more recent information. If we can't reconcile these two sources, or find strong evidence that one is incorrect, we should weaken our statement about the uniqueness of the Calhan depot so that it agrees with both sources. Ammodramus (talk) 02:20, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Yep, you've got a great point. I remember a difference - and a reason why the Nomination Form was more reliable - but I forget what it was. I'm surprised that I didn't add a note of the differences and word this more appropriately.

I'm in the midst of cleaning up an article. How about if I finish that first, but I'll come back to this tonight. To start, I should create a note {{#tag:ref||group="nb"|name=""}} describing the differences -- and I will go back to researching this more thoroughly.--CaroleHenson (talk) 02:40, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll hold off on the WikiProject NRHP assessment until you've finished up.

For what it's worth, I've run into situations where I've had to put in a footnote like "Sources disagree..."; in one case (homested-era photographer Solomon Butcher), I found three different versions of the subject's middle name, and had to stick in a footnote to that effect. Sometimes we just have to live with conflicting sources... Ammodramus (talk) 03:33, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! I can ping you with a TB when I finish up.--CaroleHenson (talk) 03:47, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Sure. No hurry; I've got about 60 unassessed NRHP articles to go through, and it'll take me at least three days to get through them. I'll let the Calhan depot wait until I hear back from you. Meanwhile, I'll keep it on my watchlist. Good luck with the researching! Ammodramus (talk) 03:57, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Here's what I found: 1) There's no more helpful information in the 205 page nomination form from History Colorado. 2) The NRHP nomination form provides detail about what stations are intact, and then where they are. So, when they say that it's the only one in tact on its original site, I can see their thought process. Colorado doesn't provide their thought process, but they may have known about some additional depots that weren't part in the NRHP's pervue.

I tried searching on the web, and there's a Waymarking page for the depot here, but it seems to have pulled some info from NRHP and some from CO. I'm not sure why they say one of three, but it's possible that whoever entered that info was a railroad buff had more information, too, about other depots.

Is the current note worded satisfactorily (i.e., there's a difference but no conclusive opinion about which is right)? Thanks for pointing this out.--CaroleHenson (talk) 08:43, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Looks good: we've put the information out there so that the reader can decide. I did a little tweaking (moved the note to the sentence about original location, made it clear that we were talking about RI depots in Colorado (and not nationwide), and tried to make a little clearer what was coming from the nom form.

I also had to pull the photo of the RI engine. It's a really nice photo, and with its orientation wants to go on the left; but MOS:IMAGELOCATION discourages placing photos so that text gets sandwiched between them and infoboxes, as happened here. I'd definitely favor restoring the photo if the article were long enough to make room for it. Ammodramus (talk) 14:34, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good, good catches!--CaroleHenson (talk) 16:23, 24 December 2013 (UTC)