Talk:Cornwall Railway viaducts

Untitled

I've decided to create an article charting all of the railway viaducts and bridges in the UK. as it is just started it needs heavy expansion etc. I am not sure what to do with individual articles listing railway viducts and bridges etc. See: List of railway viaducts in the United Kingdom. I hope the scope is not too big. Simply south 12:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

This is an important topic. Brunel's timber engineering accomplishments are highly significant. It would obviously be improved by illustrations. Are the "Binding" illustrations ruled out by Copyright problems? What about the National Archive photos? Copyight problems too? If not, we should certainly put a selection of them on here.

Cheers, Dendrotek 17:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Formatting

Something's up with the formatting of this article; if the Contents box is visible there's no text going to the right of it, which results in effectively a blank page. Not good! Graldensblud 17:39, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

How's that? (following intro tweaks...) -- EdJogg 22:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

History section

"The lease precluded the conversion of the broad gauge line to standard gauge, and the Cornwall Railway refused to pay for the widening of the viaducts during rebuilding to accommodate a double line of standard gauge tracks (it had been built as a single-track line)."

I'm confused by this. Replace "standard" with "broad" and it begins to make sense but as it stands it doesn't. I'm not sure enough of the facts to do the edit but here's my reasoning. The line was built as a single-track in broad gauge. The bridges and viaducts needed replacing and the Cornwall Railway wanted to take the opportunity to double the track but didn't want to go to the extra expense of a broad gauge double track, preferring a standard gauge double track, though the lease didn't allow the proposed gauge conversion. Comments? 83.104.249.240 (talk) 02:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Constructional Features section

In the description of the Class D structures there's an incomplete sentence - an incomplete word, even. Has some previous edit gone wrong? 83.104.249.240 (talk) 02:26, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Well spotted! I've put it right now. Geof Sheppard (talk) 08:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Calstock?

Should the Calstock viaduct be on this page? Talskiddy (talk) 22:18, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

No, it is not a Cornwall Railway viaduct; it was built by the Plymouth, Devonport and South Western Junction Railway. Geof Sheppard (talk) 13:50, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I see now. 'Cornwall Railway viaducts' not 'Railway Viaducts of Cornwall'  :) Talskiddy (talk) 21:31, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Typos and references, and scope

This is now a much better article than most of the railway oriented ones, congratulations to the editors hitherto.

There are still a couple of typos which I will deal with tomorrow.

I was startled by reference 12 simply referring to Brian Lewis and a page number and date. Presumably this refers to his excellent book Brunel's Timber Bridges and Viaducts? If so, oughtn't we to say so? And in fact doesn't he deserve to be in "Further Reading"?

Finally, unless I've missed something all the viaducts here happen to be timber. Didn't the CR build any masonry viaduct at all, anywhere? If not, for the benefit of a less-informed reader, we ought to say so, and if they did we should say that the scope of this article is confined to timber viaducts. (In view of the query about Calstock, I wonder if the scope should be spelt out more explicitly anyway .... ?)

I'll delay blundering into edit mode for a couple of days in case any wiser heads than mine are watching this and can steer me.Afterbrunel (talk) 11:20, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

The first paragraph is a bit cumbersome; the "however" clasue isn't really justified. I propose to rewrite the intorduction, keeping all the logic but (I hope) improving comprehension. I'm still worried about whether this page covers all the CR viaducts or just the timber ones (plus that large metal one across the Tamar). I'll try to rationalise that too. Afterbrunel (talk) 15:59, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

The article is inended to cover the viaducts built (and rebuilt) by the Cornwall Railway Company, that is between Plymouth and Falmouth but not Truro to Penzance or elsewhere. It does cover non-timber structures such as Par. The structure at Saltash is technically the Royal Albert Bridge and so I think is outside of scope - anyway, it already has its own article.

The reference to Lewis is expalined in what is currently cite-note 50 (relating to Lostwithiel being reconstructed at an unknown date). WP style doesn't need a cited work repeated as "further reading".

Any help to make this all clearer is always welcome. Shout if there's anything that doesn't make sense. Geof Sheppard (talk) 12:48, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

This is an excellent article; I am going to try to build on it, enhancing the introductio nfor the general reader who might find this a biut daunting. For the same reason I am going to see if I can do an overview map ... not sure if it will be feasible without being impossibly complicated ... I'll see.Afterbrunel (talk) 10:45, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Gangers

I see that someone has reverted my edit about gangers. Could he help me to understand why?

I don't know if this comes from Mike Holgate's book -- the citations have all gone haywire at present -- but it is a common fallacy to equate "ganger" with "member of a gang". It is nothing of the sort, it means "working leader of gang of workers". Obviously it is possible that there were two actual gangers on the bridge when the fatalkties took place ... Mike Holgate seems to write sensational accounts of hair-raising events, and his understanding of the subtleties of railway work may, or may not, be complete.

Happy to have this clarified, and I hope to see a response in a few days time, but if not I shall re-revert it. Afterbrunel (talk) 17:59, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I have found some original reports from the newspaper archive; I will edit the page so as to avoid any conflict about "gangers". Afterbrunel (talk) 19:36, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

You replaced the correct term "ganger" with "gang [member]". A ganger is effectively the foreman of the gang, not merely a member of it. For safety matters like this, it would have been that foreman who carried the responsibility (even if it hadn't been their mistake, it was their responsibility to check it). So this was specifically a criticism of the gangers in charge, not the general gang navvies. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:33, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Not exactly; I agree "ganger" means "person in charge of gang" -- that was the point I was making in the first place. I have used the original text from the Times -- Holgate's book is just a lurid version based on that -- which said that the [single] ganger and the supervisor were culpable. That is the edit I made. Afterbrunel (talk) 18:11, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Citations gone wrong

Nearly all the citations have gone haywire at present, with red error reports everywhere. None of the cited books has a title. (I always find the Harvard citation system jolly hard work anyway.) I tried going back to earlier versions from months ago in case someone had inadvertently done this, but no joy. It may self rectify tomorrow ... but if not, has anyone any suggestions? Afterbrunel (talk) 18:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

The following day: this is still a problem; I don't know how it has happened. If iut doesn't rectify soon I will try to retrieve the proper references.Afterbrunel (talk) 08:47, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone got a solution to this (short of reconstructing them all one by one)? Afterbrunel (talk) 18:12, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Mr Dingley Afterbrunel (talk) 20:44, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

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