Talk:History of rail transport in Germany

Railway Reforms

I think this page could do to go into more depth on the transportation reforms that Wilhelm II enacted before the World War erupted. As I recall, before his reign there were two practically separate railway systems for East prussia and Germany Proper, and the railways were a confusing maze of throughways and loops. With his appointed ministers and the railway comittees, he began to try and reform and modernize them by consolidating as many rail lines as possible and beginning construction on a series of canals to lighten the load on the system, but the war began before it could be finished. Can someone who has some more "legitimate" sources find them and figure out how to implement them?

I've been reading his memoirs, which are a fantastic read, by the way, and there are a lot of things he did that havent been reported on in any wiki pages, perhaps because they were simply many many minor changes, but he did enact plenty of reforms aimed at trying to improve Germany's already powerful and fast-growing industry and commerce, and also made a lot of progress in trying to push aside the bureaucracy and efficiently improve as many things as possible, the new post offices built in nearly every city during his reign are a good example of this. It seems most of the time people are trying to make him out as an incompetent or a devilish warmonger instead of realizing he was as fine a ruler as any, definitely more capable than Nicholas II of Russia, and more ableminded and bodied than the ailing Franz Joseph, no disrespect meant. Overall, I just think there is more to be said about a lot of parts of imperial Germany's (unfortunately) short but very bright and explosive history, and the rail systems are an important part of it.207.5.159.199 (talk) 03:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

kpev

Truth is: a "K.P.E.V." has never existed, is only a fake created by railway modelling fans in the 1970ies in Germany. Only a few railways in Prussia have (1848 and 1871) originally been built by the state, i.e. with its money. The Preußische Staatseisenbahnen (see de.Wikipedia) resembled themselves merely of numerous smaller and larger railway enterprises which mostly since 1880 was bought by the Prussian state. Nevertheless they operated furthermore on their own and was only administrated by the Ministry of public performances ("Ministerium für öffentliche Arbeiten").

The "Preußische und Großherzoglich Hessische Staatseisenbahn" was later in 1897 confounded.

Greetings from Germany inside!

• http://de.wiki.x.io/wiki/Preußische_Staatsbahn

Or see the truth in English at KPEV ! --Bermicourt (talk) 16:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

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Epochs

It looks as though the epoch based section headings are not quite right - being terms invented for model railways, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Trains#redirects_History_of_rail_transport_in_germany for some details.

Specifically, http://de.wiki.x.io/wiki/Epoche_(Modelleisenbahn) shows the true origins of the "epoche" term.

As such I think the article needs re-formatting. Please comment etc below.FengRail (talk) 13:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The archived link Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Trains/Archive:_2009,_1#redirects_History_of_rail_transport_in_germany

I note that we are now actually in Epoch VI eg de:Epoche_(Modelleisenbahn)#Epoche_VI - it looks like the section headings might be wrong. Either way probably needs updating.Imgaril (talk) 22:47, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I can confirm that the epoch system is used by the railway modelling industry as a convenient way of expressing the different periods and their locomotive and wagon numbering schemes throughout German (Austrian and Swiss) railway history. Epoch I is the state railway era to 1920, epoch II the Reichsbahn era to 1950, epoch III the early Cold War era of the DR and DB to 1970 (roughly the end of the steam era), epoch IV the later Cold War period to 1990, epoch V the reunified DB era and epoch VI the modern era coinciding with the introduction of new UIC numbering. There is no need for this article to follow that, although it could be referred to in a separate "Modelling" or "See also" section. Perhaps we should restructure and expand the article based on its de.wiki counterpart that doesn't use epochs and create a separate article for the latter. Views? --Bermicourt (talk) 14:46, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Haulage

"By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling 43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight, and pulled ahead of France" - This means that each locomotive pulls less than 5 passengers and 3 tons of freight. Is this per day or per year? In any case the figures seem wrong.--Nis Hoff (talk) 07:27, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

you have a sharp eye for detail! I fixed to read By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives each annually pulling 43,000 passengers or 30,000 tons of freight, and forged ahead of France. and cited the source = Michael George Mulhall (1884). Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics. p. 293. Rjensen (talk) 07:46, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the fix. Now the figures make at lot more sense. --Nis Hoff (talk) 22:22, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Use of connexions

Bermicourt reverted an edit which changed "connexions" to "connections". Both are technically correct in British English, but connections is more commonly used and connexions is generally advised against, e.g. here, and here. Connexion is not used in American English. Furthermore, using connexions rather than connections doesn't seem to add anything to the article. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 18:04, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for that fairly worded comment. However, not only is "connexion" technically correct, but it is a recognised alternate spelling in the Oxford Dictionary of English. It's use in everyday language is, to be fair, occasional, but that is what Wikipedia should reflect, not least for educational reasons. Otherwise it could look like we are just applying an American English convention everywhere which would be contrary to WP:ENGVAR. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

PS from an etymological perspective, "connexion" is more accurate since it derives from the Latin connexio. But like many other words, I suspect it has become a casualty of universal education and the low level of grammar taught in schools, a combination that results in widespreading spelling and grammatical errors (e.g. "weaved" for "wove"). I thought American English was better at retaining the original spelling and grammar (like "dove" for "dived") but I may be wrong. ☺ --Bermicourt (talk) 20:26, 7 August 2016 (UTC)