Talk:West Baltimore station

Seeley

User:Sebwite reverted to a version with several factual inaccuracies or other problems, some arguably BLP violations:

• The source does not say he was "planning to assassinate President George W. Bush." It says "Law enforcement sources told 11 News that Seeley made statements to transit authority police that he was going to shoot the president." There's a significant difference there, both in the fact that it's reported as hearsay, not as established fact, and that it does not mention Bush by name. And of course, it later became clear that that the law enforcement source was incorrect, misunderstood, or just plain made something up. At most, we can say something like "Law enforcement sources were initially reported to have claimed that Seeley stated he was going to shoot the president, but this was later determined to be incorrect."
• The source says "the cab driver told them Seeley wanted a ride to his home in Washington, D.C., and mentioned the White House", not that he asked for a ride to the White House.
• Seeley's full name is never given.
• The second link is dead. I replaced it with a working link with the same headline, but it was reverted. Why?

Jfire (talk) 05:30, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Section removed

With this edit I removed the entire section on the arrest situation. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Asa Seeley was closed as requiring a merge of material to this article, but only four editors commented there and only one suggested merging material here (one supported keeping, two were in favor of deletion, closing admin did not explain why "merge to West Baltimore (MARC station)" was the consensus). To be blunt, mentioning a one-off arrest of a guy with a gun who supposedly was going to try to kill the president—but then it turns out he wasn't, i.e. the reports were false—in an article on a stop on a commuter rail line is completely bizarre. Obviously like anything it's up for discussion but I think someone would need to provide a pretty good explanation for why that completely non-notable material belongs in this article (incidentally, WP:BLP is not a minor concern here since we are randomly reporting on someone's criminal activity, which would never itself be notable, solely because they were wrongly accused of something else far more dramatic—that's a problem). For the record, I became aware of this matter when reading through a proposed section of a guideline at WP:BREAKING as it existed at the time of this comment. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 05:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement. It was an event that does not merit encyclopedic coverage. Jfire (talk) 07:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I also agree. --Jfruh (talk) 14:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I just reverted its re-addition. Suomi Finland 2009, please discuss the rationale for including it here. Also, I find it kind of odd that you're claiming to be acting on the behest of an admin -- why can't he do the edit himself? Finally, I'm pretty sure that being an administrator doesn't give you final say an article, and particularly doesn't give you authority to have other editors do your bidding. --Jfruh (talk) 22:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I changed to link in WP:BREAKING to link to the older version of this, since it appears consensus now is to take this out, yet this event is used there as an example. Sebwite (talk) 17:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Compromise version? Much shorter, also.

On November 19, 2008, the station was in spotlight after a man was arrested there carrying a rifle after having been refused transportation to Washington, DC by a taxi driver who saw that he was carrying a rifle. Asa Seeley was charged with weapons offenses. It was reported that the man was going to shoot President George W. Bush but prosecutors' charging documents reported that "he was going to Washington to shoot the people that shot him."

Note: none of the sources say whether the presidential assassination report was false. Maybe it was true but not enough evidence. Or maybe inaccurate.

Any other information about the station? Fatal accident there? Zoning fights? Things near the station? Come on, we can do much more with this article! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 16:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

My problem with including the material at all is that it's at best peripherally related to the actual subject of the article, which is the train station. If Seeley had been arrested up the street, would you attempt to include this information on the Wikipedia article on the street where he was arrested?

As for the station itself, it's just a small, unstaffed commuter rail station -- there really isn't much of interest about it. Are you trying to add the material on Seeley because you think it's important in and of itself or because you think the article should be longer? If the latter, there is other research to be done -- the station's history, for instance, would be interesting to know about. If the Baltimore Red Line light rail is built, it will stop here, so that will be something to discuss. I believer there is talk of doing some sort of transit-oriented development around the station, so perhaps some references to that too can be scraped up. --Jfruh (talk) 20:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I once was at a place that had been the location of a minor James Bond film scene. Someone mentioned it. I later watched the film and confirmed it. Wikipedia had no mention of it nor did the paper guidebook. If it had, I might have watched the film first then enjoyed the site. This may be the same way. If we mention someone interesting, then the reader may later visit here and think "it happened here" (not necessarily Mr. Seely, but something else).

If we ban peripherally related material, then many Wikipedia articles will have parts chopped out of them. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 01:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Related RFD discussion

Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#Asa Seeley. Also, if someone recalls the WQA, AN, or ANI thread that spun off from this, I'd appreciate a pointer to it; can't seem to find it in my contributions, tho I'm sure I commented somewhere. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

new info

The Maryland Transit Administration plans to add around 400 new parking spaces at the West Baltimore MARC station.

Two new commuter lots, slated for east of Pulaski Street, will cost about $9 million to build and would double the station’s parking. The new lots are temporary until a planned redevelopment around the station begins by 2013.

From: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2009/02/23/daily53.html Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 22:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

The area around the station is supposed to be high crime and not much development according to a blog. More objective description and references available? Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 01:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Edgewood (MARC station) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:16, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

History

The history section is a bit of a mess. Conrail took over the Penn Central's commuter trains on what is now called the Penn Line in 1976. In 1979 that service stood at four round trips. It was subsidized by the state of Maryland through the State Railroad Administration, a forerunner of the Maryland Transit Administration. Separately, Amtrak ran the Chesapeake between Washington and Philadelphia, making local stops, including this one. It was subsidized by Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Northeast Rail Services Act of 1981 gets Conrail out of the commuter service for good on January 1, 1983. The Penn Line falls under something called AMDOT (Amtrak Maryland Department of Transportation), which I assume is Amtrak operating the Penn Line under contract to the Maryland Department of Transportation. The Chesapeake, separate from all of this, ends in October 1983. We're lacking documentation on why. All of these services went to Edmondson Avenue, the current station's predecessor. Mackensen (talk) 13:52, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I've added a bit to MARC Train#History, which I still need to take the time to finish. I've also completely rewritten the history here, hopefully with sufficient clarification. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:23, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

@Pi.1415926535:. Thanks; looks good. I tweaked a little, and added relevant categories to the Edmondson Avenue station redirect. Mackensen (talk) 01:48, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

How sure are we about "Edmondson Avenue" vs "Edmondson"? My Official Guides list it as the latter, but do refer to "Frederick Road" and not "Frederick". Conrail timetables also use "Edmondson". Mackensen (talk) 02:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

The NRHP nomination also drops Avenue, but most other sources seem to have it. The former Calverton and [West] Lafayette stations seem to be the reverse - some sources use the street names, but most don't. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:18, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

If we're relying on Shappell for this, via Baer, I think he's simply wrong. The PRR documents I'm looking at don't use "Avenue". McCord doesn't capitalize "avenue" in the newspaper article about its closure, which I think means he's speaking generally (he also incorrectly refers to "Frederick avenue" instead of "Frederick Road"). I've a Penn Central employee timetable from 1971 which lists "Edmondson" and "Frederick Road", and also refers explicitly to "Edmondson Station." Amtrak calls it "Edmondson Ave" in the Chesapeake timetable, but in a context where every other listed stop is a city. No formal station names are used. Mackensen (talk) 13:28, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I will trust your judgement on this. Any change you can get that PC ETT (or at least that page) scanned on Commons? Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:14, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

It's posted publicly: [1]. Mackensen (talk) 21:26, 1 April 2018 (UTC)