Talk:History of the railway track

message: The rail track page contains a number of mistakes and needed enhancing. It is mostly north American oriented and some comments against this have been made, so I have provided this page. There needs to be a lot more written here which I will try to provide over the next couple of weeks. Any comments meantime are welcome. When this page is respectable I will link it from the rail track page and remove the British references from there. Afterbrunel 16:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've done a few cleanups on this page, but it is still full of unexplained jargon.  BRIANTIST  (talk) 10:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Content Bias

message: I noticed that you have called these switches and crossings. Is this now current British usage? When did this change to the American terms? In Australia it is a mix of terms due to historical developments. A good example is in South Australia, on the tram system they are called points and on the railways switches (they were called points up until the 1930s). Ozdaren 22:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I am aware, they are still officially known as points (UK), switches (US), or turnouts (modelling - both locales) regards, Lynbarn 18:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: although looking for something else, I have coincidentally just found a reference to "switch" in an Ordnance Survey surveying manual of 1905, so maybe the terms were more interchangable than I had imagined! [OS Website] Lynbarn 20:39, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Nearly all these terminology issues are minefields, with no "official" naming, and within the UK different usages apply according to geographical location, and also between engineering departments (track maintainers and control systems maintainers).
Most track engineers in the UK currently use the term "s&c" to describe, er, s&c in general and a set of points is usually called "a switch". Many railway enthusiasts in the UK derive their terminology from model railway manufacturers' catalogues. The term "frog" for example is never used professionally in the UK, the term "crossing" being preferred.
The system has put a tag on the page complaining that it refers mainly to British practice. This was exactly my intention earlier, so as not to bog down the other (railway tracks) page with explanations of the difference between UK and US practice and temrinology. I am not quite sure how to progress this now. --86.9.94.39 (talk) 15:02, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

text: It is useful to the rest of us if you make a point of signing in: then, we know who you are.  WP is a global encyclopaedia, and thus requires the usages of all countries (at least English-speaking ones) to be covered.  This can probably be done by explaining the variations in terminology at the beginning of a section and then sticking to one of them.  Peterkingiron (talk) 18:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Points and crossings 

message: I have reverted to remove the following section, because it is not about development, but about a reversion to the system in use in the mid 18th century.  It is irrelevant here, but may have a place somewhere:
Another alternative borne of scarcity was a 30-mile wooden railway linking Walla Walla, Washington to the Columbia River in 1875. Lacking the steel required to create a more conventional railway, locals used timber floated from the Yakima Valley. The timber was cut into 16 foot long wooden rails, and these were covered with 2-inch-wide strap iron to prevent the rails from wearing out.http://historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=7679
Peterkingiron (talk) 14:18, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Walla Walla 

message: I've created a redirect from "fish bellied rail" to here, if this is not the right target please correct. Thanks. I couldn't find an article.Sf5xeplus (talk) 04:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Fish bellied rail]]

message: ok. So sorry to be a pain for pointing this out but sections such as Permanent_way_(history)#Twentieth_century_and_beyond is just about the UK, it's not just bias , ie it's written for an article on UK railways. Europe + North America please, and references as well.! Sf5xeplus (talk) 04:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: UK centric

message: Allen's "day job" included checking new rails bought for the LNER. Is this sufficient to give him a paragraph to himself in this history of the permanent way? --Old Moonraker (talk) 14:17, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contribution of [[Cecil J. Allen]] 

message: I should mention that I did notice that wikt:slew#Verb specifically includes a railroad-specific meaning of moving a railway line sideways, so it was actually correct as written, but I think that specialized usage is worth avoiding in a general-purpose encyclopedia.  "Shifting" is clearer to a lay audience IMHO. 209.209.238.149 (talk) 22:35, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Slewing"