# Talk:Railway surgery

I saw an interesting report about todays use of a hospital train in remote parts of Russia. In Moscow I saw many unusual converted passenger cars, which I believe were hospital cars. Unfortunately, I did not take a photograph, because the commuter train, in which I sat, was travelling too fast. I guess there should be suitable photographs somewhere. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 05:16, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

I saw on a documentary that a doctor with an office is carried on the trans-Siberian railway.  I'm convinced also, that they must have employed railway surgeons during its construction at least.  But I could not find anything usable in sources to add to the article. SpinningSpark 15:46, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I am baffled at how this got GA article status. It is extremely US-focused, which wouldn’t be a problem if railway surgeons were presented as the localised phenomenon they appear to have been. Instead it drags in medical consultants hired by European railways despite their different roles, and spends far too much times talking about accident rates when hospital distribution is the more likely cause of their particular rise and fall in the US. --Eldomtom2 (talk) 00:12, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

The sources make it very clear that accident rates were exceptionally high in the US due to low safety standards (fencing, track quality, train spacing procedures etc) which in turn led to the special development of railway surgery in the US.  Better hospital availability is not going to change accident rates.  It might improve outcomes, but it won't stop accidents from happening. SpinningSpark 17:35, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
You are completely missing the point. Accident rates alone would not necessitate railway surgeons if the regular medical system could handle them. It is clear that what necessiated the employment of railway surgeons in the US was that many workers were injured in highly remote places. Railway surgeons never became necessary in Europe not because they were more safe (though they usually were) but because workers were never too far from a hospital. --Eldomtom2 (talk) 21:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
If that point has a source, then I am more than happy for it to be discussed in the article.  I've taken criticism for this page before on failure to include other countries (you seem to have the opposite view however) but the bottom line on Wikipedia is that we can only include what is in reliable sources.  Criticisms without sources are really not meaningful, or at least, not actionable.  On the other hand, if you want to point out a source and ask why it has not been included – then we can talk.  I have looked very hard for sources on these questions but have turned up very little.
I agree, you are probably right about hospital density for many west European countries.  But I would question whether that applied to the vast expanses of the Russian empire for instance.  There is also a difference between operational accidents (which were undoubtedtly low in Europe) and construction accidents which were always high until the modern era of health and safety at work.  I know it's not a railway, but it serves to illustrate the point; the first thing that was built during the construction of the Grand Union Canal was nothing to do with the canal itself, but a chain of hospitals to service the large numbers of expected casualties. SpinningSpark 15:11, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
Whispyhistory, can you offer anything here? Are there railway surgeons in India, for example? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:13, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64:.... I may not be much help here, but had a brief look. You could have title "Railway surgery in the US" or individually search out other countries with expansive railways, and piece together. I can see a short section on India in there. I will keep a look out. Africa: Advert for railway surgery[1]. Railway guards (1866) in Sweden required to have some knowledge on railway surgery [2]. China[3]. Whispyhistory (talk) 17:51, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
-Spinningspark You have misread reliable sources, and produced utter nonsense such as "In Europe, the majority of injuries were due to collisions, hence passengers rather than employees formed the bulk of the injured". I am looking at Aldrich's comparison tables in Death Rode the Rails and while British railways were significantly safer than American railroads for workers, it is not anywhere near to the extent required to explain why one country developed a system of company-provided healthcare and the other didn't. Re: Grand Union Canal - I cannot find an online source for this, but in any case temporary hospitals built to service the shantytowns that the transient navvies lived in are definitely nowhere near the same thing as what happened in America.
-Whispyhistory I would be wary of taking that much from a two-sentence article. Knowledge of first aid seems more plausible a requirement, especially as this was for guards, not dedicated surgeons. --Eldomtom2 (talk) 19:56, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

There are still nonsensical claims such as "In Europe, the majority of injuries were due to collisions, hence passengers rather than employees formed the bulk of the injured" in the article. Eldomtom2 (talk) 18:32, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

@Eldomtom2: It's not the fact that the article had a GAR that means it can't be tagged, of course, but then I never said that.  It's the arguments in the GAR that are relevant.  All tags need to be fixable, and there's no indication your tag is fixable, because you're demanding possibly (probably?) non-existent sources that say what you want.  SpinningSpark is dead now but he coherently argued that the lines about injuries in fact did reflect the sources, and also that your desired sources on European railway surgery do not exist because it was very different and off-topic.  You can't just say "nuh uh."  If you think the other sources exist, go find them.  If you don't want to bother, that's cool, but then stop asking volunteers to do your work for you.  SnowFire (talk) 13:44, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
They didn't reflect the sources. This was shown in the GA review. Also read WP:SOMEONEELSEFIXIT.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 14:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
A rarely cited and wrong essay.  You didn't show it in the GA review, you just asserted it.  As you did again here.  SpinningSpark cogently argued that the current article did reflect the sources.
Look, ignore this article for a moment.  Say there's some article, editor X puts a cleanup tag, editor Y contests.  If editor X can present some sources that are currently not consulted, but are clearly relevant, fine.  If editor X merely hypothesizes they exist, that's not good enough.  Otherwise, the result would be an unfixable tag if editor X is wrong, since the sources never existed at all to find to satisfy the tag.  Editor X, personally, needs to find the damn sources, or to drop it, so that there isn't a tag in perpetuity demanding something potentially impossible.  This is true even if editor X is actually correct, because how else are we supposed to distinguish asking for the nonexistent vs. asking for something real?  SnowFire (talk) 17:24, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Did you read what Caeciliusinhorto said?--Eldomtom2 (talk) 17:13, 29 June 2024 (UTC)