Talk:Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Dying (talk) 14:42, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that after chasing away surveyors for a previous railroad with guns, residents of Wickford, Rhode Island, eventually changed their minds and built their own railroad? Source: "Wickford Wants Reduced Fares". Manufacturers and Farmers Journal. Providence, Rhode Island. July 16, 1906. p. 12. [1]
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Frelinghuysen University
  • Comment: Will complete QPQ soon. QPQ done.

Created by Trainsandotherthings (talk). Self-nominated at 19:33, 14 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Trainsandotherthings: Good article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 18:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Mileage

From the Interstate Commerce Commission's Fourteenth Annual Report of the Statistics of Railways in the United States for the year ending June 30, 1901: the Newport and Wickford Railroad Company owned 3.4 miles of railroad line. This can be found on page 142, and it also says the same railroad operates 3.4 miles of railroad line, which implies no trackage rights. It also says there was no change from the previous year. Poor's 1894 Manual of Railroads, on page 26, says 3.4 miles for the year ended June 30, 1893. TwoScars (talk) 16:03, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

As someone who worked in the railroad industry for over 30 years, I can say with confidence that both of these sources are very good. The Interstate Commerce Commission was the economic regulator of the railroad industry. Railroads were required to report their road and track milage to the ICC in addition to financial data. Eventually, those requirements were limited to only Class I railroads—but that was not the case for the first 100 years. The second source, Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States, is a predecessor of Standard & Poor's. S&P is one of the biggest names in statistical data used by investors. TwoScars (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Newport and Wickford Railroad and Steamboat Company/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Trainsandotherthings (talk · contribs) 00:36, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: LunaEatsTuna (talk · contribs) 04:48, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I will review this. Template:LunaEatsTunaSig (talk), posted at 04:48, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Done; over to you! Template:LunaEatsTunaSig (talk), posted at 15:56, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh, also, I just noticed a user left a message on this article's talk page regarding new sources they found. :) Template:LunaEatsTunaSig (talk), posted at 15:59, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, there was a discussion on my user talk page about the source, where I stated my belief that the clear majority of sources agree on 3.5 miles, so I did not feel comfortable changing the number based on just one source.

Ah I see – thank you for clearing that up. @Trainsandotherthings: are you finished with the editing? (I forgot to ask you to ping me once you finished). :3 ❧ LunaEatsTuna (talk), writing gibberish since 2017 – posted at 20:34, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I am done editing for the moment @LunaEatsTuna:, do let me know if you have any further comments or suggestions or want to follow up on any existing review items. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:52, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the wait – it looks great now! I really love the image additions, BTW. Pass. ❧ LunaEatsTuna (talk), staying at Hotel Wikipedia since 2017 – posted at 05:39, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Da review:

Formation and construction

• "chased out of town" – should probably be changed per WP:IDIOM, unless they were chased out of the actual town surrounding Wickford, in which case specify North Kingstown.

  The source says "Wickford turned out and fought it literally, the surveyors having been driven out of town by farmers armed with guns". I don't think the writing here is an idiom, I was paraphrasing the source.

• "ship to Newport from west of" – should it not be "the west of"?

  I think this is grammatically correct as written - by west of Rhode Island I meant travelers predominantly from NYC.

• "An all-rail trip meant traveling via" – I would reword this to avoid repetition with the prior sentence's "meant traveling".

  I decided to reword the previous sentence instead, replacing traveling with sailing.

• I would combine the third and fourth paragraphs since they are both short but also definitely related enough.

  Sure, combined.

Independent operations

• "In addition to passenger service, the railroad also provided freight service to Wickford's sole mill and several others along its route, plus mail to and from Newport" – try and reword "several others" since it sounds awkward in this sentence (like it might be referring to other mills, although it says Wickford only has one).
• "included a grand total" > "included a total" – adding grand is not really necessary.

  Fair enough. Done.

Takeover by the New Haven and abandonment

• "its fares to match its competition" – pedantic but I would do "its fares to match the competition" here since it sounds better than using its in such close succession.

  That's reasonable, changed as suggested.

• I normally dislike doing this but I would start the second paragraph with "However, the Newport and Wickford's financial issues continued ..." to better connect it to the previous paragraph's final sentence.

  I'm not sure this connects with that sentence, as the end of the paragraph states the company entered receivership, which is a negative event.

• "at the last minute" – I presume this is idiomatic which, if so, I would rephrase since it could be interpreted as having been at the actual last minute (unless it was? In which case maybe rephrase it to avoid confusion with the idiom).

  This is a figure of speech, yes. I rewrote the sentence and added a bit more information.

• How about something like "The tracks to the dock at Wickford Landing were subsequently abandoned in 1938, with the remainder of the line retained as a freight branch serving local industries" in order to improve the flow?

  That works for me. Changed.

• Probably subjective, but I would recommend "still visible as of 2012" to be a bit more specific.

  I added some specifics and mention of a train car from the railroad that has been preserved at a museum in Connecticut.

Station listing

• In the wikitable, the Comments row leaves a lot of whitespace; how about a footnote next to Newport instead?

  I'd prefer not to remove the comments or move them elsewhere; I did add a comment to the table so it's more populated now.

Spotcheck

• All good, passes checks I did on refs 1, 2, 8, 13 and 17.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.