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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Waddesdon Road railway station/archive1

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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 22:23, 19 June 2010 [1].

Waddesdon Road railway station edit

Waddesdon Road railway station (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s):  – iridescent 12:38, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Whilst Blake Hall tube station, with its six passengers per day, is generally listed as the least-used subway station in history, Waddesdon Road at the very least runs it close. As with Blake Hall, this was effectively built to serve a single country house, and as with Blake Hall it wasn't even conveniently sited for the house it was intended to serve; with 281 passengers per year using the station, the sale of its platform for scrap after closure raised almost twice as much as it generated each year in ticket revenues.

This is another short(ish) one, but as far as I'm aware covers everything that's ever been published on the topic and in my opinion says all that can reasonably be said. The Brill Tramway is one of the more obscure pieces of transport history and Waddesdon Road was arguably the single most obscure part of the Brill Tramway, but the chain of cause-and-effect that began with the Duke of Buckingham trying to make life easier for the horses hauling goods around his country estate and ultimately led to a piece of empty countryside 40 miles from the City of London briefly becoming a part of the London Underground is still an interesting piece of history. – iridescent 12:38, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources: All sources look good, no issues here. Brianboulton (talk) 16:09, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Obscurity upon obscurity, you certainly know how to draw in the punters(!) As expected from such an experienced author working within one of his fields of expertise, my comments below are, I hope, seeking merely to polish the gilding on the icing on the lily, or something like that.

  • Second para of lead has three "London Undergrounds" in quick succession; perhaps In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken into public ownership, and despite its rural setting Waddesdon Road station became a part of the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground.
    • Reworded to avoid repetition. – iridescent 18:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Third para of lead: "but aside from that saw little use". I want to say it's wrong and ought to be but apart from that, but I can't really explain why "aside" feels wrong even though it's not. It might just be my personal preference, so feel free to ignore this even more than my other musings. (I see you've used "aside" in the "Services" section, so I can't complain about inconsistency!)
    • I'm fairly certain "aside" is a correct usage here. Consider "besides foo, there was also bar", which is unquestionably correct, and beside/aside in this context are synonymous. – iridescent 18:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, I'm happy that it's not wrong; it's more a matter of preference, so I'll defer to you.
  • Brill Tramway, third para: the first sentence here is rather long and stuffed with information; Brill railway station#Extension to Brill approaches it using shorter sentences. I'm not saying you have to use the same wording for each article in the series, but perhaps breaking this sentence down would help.
    • Split into two sentences. There are six of these in total, plus the parent Brill Tramway article to come, and trying to convey the same thing without repeating is difficult. (Each article has to have enough background to stand alone without confusing people, without boring people reading the whole series.) – iridescent 18:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Services (and elsewhere): {{inflation}} only goes up to 2009 at present ({{Inflation/UK/dataset}}); the documentation at {{inflation}} suggests saying "in present day terms" rather than giving an actual end year. Someone pointed this out to me at an FLC; I wouldn't have thought to check this otherwise!
    • To be honest, I'm not worried about it. Prices in Britain are stagnant and any minor inflation/deflation over the last 12 months is easily swamped by the degree of rounding I'm using. The CPI figures are rough anyway; it's just to give an idea of what the ticket prices etc would have bought in today's terms. – iridescent 18:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Fair enough.
  • Closure: "of the by now almost dormant" is a long stuffing of words before the company's name; would it would better as of the control of the Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad Company, which at that time was almost dormant? Actually, out of interest, if it had no funds or rolling stock, what was stopping it being actually dormant?!
    • "Dormancy" is a technical term; it means the company does nothing except pay statutory registration fees. Because the O&AT was still doing something, even though all it did was collect the lease revenue from London Transport and distribute it amongst the Duke's descendants, it wasn't completely dormant. – iridescent 18:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sufficiently qualified to check images; I note in passing that all have alt text apart from Waddesdon Manor, not that alt-text is a requirement.
    • I acquired that photo from the Waddesdon Manor article. I don't see the point of alt text that reads "big house", personally; I can certainly add it if anyone wants it. – iridescent 18:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Don't worry about it for my sake; as you had it for the others, I was just noting it in case it was an oversight on your part.
        • Added now. It doesn't do any harm and might be useful to someone. – iridescent 16:54, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • No dablinks, no external links (therefore none broken).
  • Length / structure / detail / citation formatting etc all look fine. Overall, a very interesting read on a little-known part of London's railway history. BencherliteTalk 17:38, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support on all matters but images, which are outside my competence. Remaining quibbles are matters of taste only, I think. Subject to anything major cropping up in subsequent reviews (I hate being the first detailed reviewer, but someone has to be...), I think that this is ready for the star. BencherliteTalk 18:13, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Small but perfectly formed. --DavidCane (talk) 20:56, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I love these obscure stations Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:13, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have any of the images been checked yet? Karanacs (talk) 17:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll try an image review for you, despite my previous comments about lack of expertise!
Someone want might want to double-check, but I can't see any problems with the images. BencherliteTalk 18:57, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]


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