Talk:Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash

Report

I'm wondering if there is a need to have four quotes from the report into the article and if they could be replaced with paraphrases. See WP:Quotations and MOS:QUOTE. Edgepedia (talk) 17:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

No need at all ("there are seven-and-thirty ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one of them is right") but the quoted guidelines don't actually say paraphrase is preferable to direct quotation. There are five quotes actually; 'methodical young man', the surprisingly low death toll in the Liverpool train, the Inspector's best guess as to what happened, his views on the adequacy of current arrangements, and -nonetheless - his views on a desirable rate of progress with AWS. The rest of the report section is of course paraphrase; of course it is open to anyone who feels some or all of the quotes that remain shouldn't to put in the extra work to come up with additional paraphrases that capture the exact meaning and intent of the official report. The Liverpool train death toll quote was used because it was there, and in retrospect there are some obvious opportunities for a snappier paraphrase. Other than that (hardly a major infraction of guidelines), the other quotes surely have a valid Pareto principle defence. I thought and still think 'methodical young man' pretty unbeatable as a concise summary of the report's view of the driver. The last 3 quotes are central to the report (probably very carefully drafted at these points); quoting them verbatim doesn't give them undue prominence and was easier than casting around for sufficiently accurate paraphrases. But there is very little done by man that can't be further improved upon, if that is thought worth doing Rjccumbria (talk) 21:55, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Title change

this is not a good thing — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.183.218 (talk) 12:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC) I would argue that the title of this article should be changed to Harrow and Wealdstone rail disaster. That would make it consistent with other articles like Quintinshill rail disaster and Armagh rail disaster. Given the scale and magnitude of the crash, and the fact that it is the worst peacetime rail disaster, simply calling it a 'crash' doesn't really convey the magnitude of it in my opinion. What do other people think? G-13114 (talk) 20:21, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Precedents certainly exist but on the other hand A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. or so says the Wikipedia article. It is difficult to see any railway accident qualifying as a disaster against that definition.Rjccumbria (talk) 00:19, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

On the other hand the wiki wiki article on Anthropogenic_hazard states under Rail; A railroad disaster is an occurrence associated with the operation of a passenger train which results in substantial loss of life. . This would certainly fit that description. G-13114 (talk) 16:00, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I apologise for not making it clear that the disaster definition was not the unsupported assertion of a Wikieditor, but reported a definition given by reputable international bodies. For example, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent Societies have a web site, and on that website they have a page entitled What is a Disaster? and they answer that question in exactly the words previously quoted from the Wikipedia disaster article. They do so because that is the definition of 'disaster' given by UNDIS - the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. I feel the specialist definition should be respected so far as reasonably practicable; hence I would deprecate description of rail accidents as 'disasters' unless they indeed caused serious societal disruption. Rjccumbria (talk) 01:26, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

That definition would only seem to apply to natural disasters, very few man-made disasters could meet that definition. And that is not the only definition try this one from the Oxford dictionary, "A sudden accident or a natural catastrophe that causes great damage or loss of life:". Or this one from the Cambridge dictionary "(an event that results in) great harm, damage, or death, or serious difficulty:" This would fall under both of those definitions. G-13114 (talk) 14:01, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

It seems unlikely that the definition applies only to natural disasters, given that the IFRC page referenced notes explicitly (and reasonably prominently): Though often caused by nature, disasters can have human origins

If the UNDIS definition would exclude many man-made events which you would regard as disasters, that can be interpreted three ways (you're right, they're right, or neither of you is right), rather than the single one you favour. Calling a rail crash a rail disaster to convey the magnitude of it (up there with the Great Famine? Equivalent to how many days' road deaths ? The dictionary quotations given only support your position if you believe the meaning they attach to the unquantified qualifier "great" is the same as the meaning you want to give it) only works when there is widespread agreement at what magnitude of consequences a rail crash becomes a rail disaster (That link redirects to the Wikipedia article on train wreck which tells us that "A train wreck or train crash is a type of disaster involving one or more trains" On that definition all rail crashes are disasters and the d-word has become a peacock word devoid of any useful meaning.)

Unless there is some such widespead agreement the title should remain a factual description of the event, not a record of one editor's views on the event. Rjccumbria (talk) 16:45, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Of course it isn't comparable to the Great Famine what a ridiculous argument! It is however very significant by the standards of rail accidents, being the worst peacetime rail accident in UK history, and the second worst UK accident ever. More so that the Armagh rail disaster, which is strangely a disaster but this somehow wasn't according to you! The Cambridge dictionary specifically gives the example of An inquiry was ordered into the recent rail disaster (= a serious train accident). under its definition. This was by any standards a serious train accident. Furthermore look at List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll#Rail_accidents_and_disasters and see how many of them are described as disasters. G-13114 (talk) 17:11, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

If I may assist you slightly:

If you read what I have actually written adequately carefully you will see that I give no endorsement of the UNDIS definition. However it is clear that many ‘rail disasters’ would not be ‘disasters’ as far as the UNDIS definition (which is the definition given by the Wikipedia article on disaster) is concerned. For Wikipedia to use article titles ending in ‘rail disaster’ for such events would be to be unnecessarily controversial, especially given that other non-controversial descriptions (‘rail accident’, ‘rail crash’) are readily available.

I had thought it was common ground that despite this many articles on high death-toll accidents have a title including the word disaster, and my responses have been given in full knowledge of that, so there is no need to draw my attention to the fact. Similarly I am well aware that colloquial usage (which modern dictionaries aim to reflect non-judgementally) uses ‘disaster’ in the context of serious rail accidents: a quick Google will however show that it also uses the word in the context of both David Moyes’ time as Manchester United manager and his subsequent sacking. But the sheer number of accident entries entitled [[….. railway disaster]] is an argument against any further proliferation - the phrase has lost any real sense of distinction.

From an encyclopaedic point of view, ‘disaster’ (a ‘what to think about it’ word as shown most clearly in the Moyes examples above) is less useful in article titles than a ‘what happened’ word like ‘crash’ or explosion’. Even if we went against basic Wiki-principles and tried to tell people what to think, there is no point instituting a one-man policy that Wikiarticles about high death-toll accidents should have a title including the word 'disaster' unless there is some widely-understood threshold below which accidents can no longer be described as a [[..... disaster]] in their article title, and there is someone prepared to devote time to policing that policy. A trawl of Wikipedia has shown that disaster gives a definition that you reject, and rail disaster one which I (certainly) and you (I hope) reject; so there is currently no agreed threshold to work to. Indeed, looking at other transportation accidents, a particularly famous air crash at the old Munich airport in 1958 is – of course – the Munich air disaster with a death toll of 23. A subsequent crash in 1960 which killed 52 people is however the 1960 Munich C-131 crash.

I would prefer to have uniformity in article titles and regard 'rail crash' as more informative and less potentially controversial than’ rail disaster'. On that basis, my personal preference would be for 'Armagh rail crash' as the article title, whether or not the event qualifies as a 'disaster'. However, my policy (which I would urge on you) is to respect existing titles of articles I work on, unless there are very good reasons to change; and that is what I worked to on Armagh rail disaster.

I did note that it was difficult to see a rail accident satisfying the UNDIS definition, but did not say it was impossible (nor did I say that I endorsed that definition). I most certainly did not - as you assert( with added !) - say that the Armagh event was not a disaster. I had not, as far as I am aware, even considered the matter explicitly. Doing so now: on census figures for 1881 (Census of Ireland, 1881. Preliminary report; Abstract of enumerators' summaries BPP 1881 XCVI [C.2931] 16), the parliamentary borough of Armagh had a population of under 9,000. Hence the 940 passengers on the train were over 10% of the population of Armagh and the 80 deaths were just under 1% of the total population. I am not sure whether UNDIS would regard that as a disaster, but I rather think I would. (One thing that would nudge me that way is the reflection that it normally takes a disaster before the (UK) government does anything drastic – the response to Armagh was to do something drastic)

(For comparison, no more than 80 fatalities in the Harrow and Wealdstone crash were locals and the 1951 census gives Harrow a population of 220,000. The Harrow and Wealdstone crash therefore surely caused much less societal disruption than Armagh, nor did it significantly affect rail safety policy in the way that Armagh did.) Rjccumbria (talk) 16:57, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

If I may assist you further –

You would stand a better chance of bringing me round to your point of view if you actually addressed mine, rather than attributing to me statements I have never made, topping them off with an exclamation mark to show how silly you think they are! Which might, of course, be why I never made them …. Regards Rjccumbria (talk) 16:57, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

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