Template talk:Infobox GB station

Links from Template:stn art lnk

Continuing Andy Mabbett's point above about the links from {{stn art lnk}}, the suggestion to incoporate these links into this infobox was made in the recent deletion discussion about that template (which was an overwhelming vote to keep it).

In that discussion, one point I made was that the existing link from the station code in this template isn't particularly obvious what it links to (or why "Code" should be an external link). I've made this modified version in my user space (see here for an example of its usage). If no-one objects, I'll change the infobox to this version. (My only gripe about it is the external links being in bold: does anyone know how to fix this?)

However, I still think that we should keep {{stn art lnk}} in the external links section, as external links are what it provides, and that is where they properly belong (I also think they're very useful!). --RFBailey 18:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

It certainly gets a thumbs up from me. Makes it much clear for the reader. As per your comments I've changed the links to not bold, hope you don't mind me meddling in your user space. Let me know if that is how you intended it to look.

Regarding {{stn art lnk}}, if there was an easy way to go from the postcodes to coordinates to populate the field in the infobox, I'd say this could be made redundant. I can't see such a way though so still think it's worth keeping for the map links it provides. Adambro 19:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Looks good. I've added the current version to your example page, for ease of comparison. I think, perhaps, "Station information" needs better link text - the whole thing is "Station information"! Suggestions? I've recently been adding some additional location details to station articles (e.g. [[Hamstead railway station), giving road names. I'm beginning to wonder whether we shouldn't give full postal addresses. Come tio think of it, you could save space by not having "code" on a separate line - put it after the station name, or the operating company, or such like/ Andy Mabbett 19:31, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement! The non-bold links are what I intended (although I'd prefer a better separator than –: any more suggestions?). Regarding the "Station information" link: maybe change the line to "Live departures and station information from National Rail". Also, I'd rather leave "code" as a separate line: other people's previous attempts at putting it elsewhere failed miserably. --RFBailey 19:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

"eNdash" is for separating runs ("open 9-5"); try eMdash; but I like your sentence wording more. Better, perhaps if "station information from National Rail" is all part of one link? NRE have the code after the station name, in brackets "Leatherhead (LHD)" The postcode-linked maps, from MultiMap, are awful compared to Streetmap or Google. Andy Mabbett 20:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather not have "station information from National Rail" as one link, as National Rail is the target of both the links. Also, I'm sticking by my comment about where the code should go: putting it after the station name at the top of the infobox (was this your suggestion?) would give it undue prominence, I think. Finally, the merits of the map links from {{stn art lnk}} are probably best discussed on its own talk page, rather than here. --RFBailey 20:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Like it - this will also need to be migrated into the various regional templates (London and Strathclyde - although the Strathclyde one is now gradually moving back, with the introduction of the Glasgow Subway template. Adambro is handling a fair bot of these changes and I would value his view. --Stewart 22:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Adambro is on a wikibreak. Andy Mabbett 09:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

At the very least, we need a bot to copy the station code from {{stn art lnk}} to {{Infobox UK station}} Andy Mabbett 11:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Former companies

What about entries for the building - and subsequent - companies? Perry Barr railway station, for example, went GJR- LNWR - LMS. Andy Mabbett 20:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather this was discussed in the "history" section of an article, rather than summarised in the infobox: it might be quite long for some stations. I'm also concerned about the amount of historical information in some cases of the use of this infobox: see Dorking railway station for a rather extreme example. --RFBailey 20:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not bothered by that (the Dorking example), but what about just "former Big Four allegiance" or some such? Or a small logo indicating the same? Andy Mabbett 21:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

We went this way for Cambuslang and Rutherglen. The latter has now been simplified with information being moved into the text, following message of dissent from a third party. Some of the Scottish Historic Stations have long lists. --Stewart 22:36, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I can't see what you're referring to, on either of those pages. Andy Mabbett 08:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

On reflection, I now think there should be just one or two entries; original owner and big four owner; so for my Perry Barr example we would list GJR and LMS. For Tyseley railway station, just GWR. Andy Mabbett 08:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we should respect that many editors will want to include a some what long list of past station owners, and further consultation would be needed. This will of course depend on the station article, many are stubs, with just infoboxes and rail line/s-line infoboxes, others are really good article where this will be needed. Pickle 12:39, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

My preference would be to keep this as prose in the article text, otherwise, we risk devaluing the infobox by overwhelming the reader with information. Adambro 13:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I do't see how people would be "overwhelmed" by this; but perhaps a compromise is to have the 'opened' date in the infobox say

1838 Opened by Grand Junction Railway

I'll do that on Perry Barr railway station for illustration. Andy Mabbett 13:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

That looks fine, maybe I misunderstood the proposal. I was suggesting that we don't list every company that has owned the station in the infobox to avoid it getting too lengthy. Adambro 13:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought you were on a break?!? ;-) I suggested "just one or two entries; original owner and big four owner", which Id still prefer as discrete taxobox options. Andy Mabbett 14:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Duplicate links

We've now got two links to National Rail in the template, one with the "live departures" link and one above the A-Z index (example: Perry Barr railway station). Andy Mabbett 10:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This is still an issue. Andy Mabbett 20:19, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much of a problem it is myself but I think if we were to remove one it should be the one with the station info links. I suppose it could be unlinked as opposed to completely removed. Adambro 21:01, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the National Rail link on the live departures/station information line. --RFBailey 11:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Disused stations

I tried using this template on Dudley railway station, but it doesn't really fit. Is there an alternative, for disused stations, or should this template be amended to fit them? Andy Mabbett 13:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

There is {{Infobox Scotland disused station}} which looks like it could be expanded to cover the United Kingdom. I've asked the creator about doing this (see User talk:Dreamer84) and they seem to welcome the idea so I'd suggest you participate in the discussion there. As I understand it, there isn't much that would need to be changed. Adambro 13:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Usage notes links

I'm wondering whether we actually need the links to the usage notes for the station usage figures as both years are linked from the source link. Adambro 21:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Recent Template Modifications

Recent changes have introduced features that I do not understand, for example Classes "vcard", "fn", "org" and "label" are used by the hCard microformat. Can I suggest that some user notes are added, for those of us who are not up to speed with this syntax. --Stewart 21:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I've done that; how does it read? Andy Mabbett 10:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Moved documentation

I've moved the documentation to {{Infobox UK station/doc}} and included that in the template itself, as done elsewhere. Andy Mabbett 10:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Co-ordinates

If possible, could the co-ordinates be put in line with the other information, rather than floating to the right of the station name (see Arram for example. – Tivedshambo (talk) 00:51, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed this, though it may be preferable to put it in the places section (at present it floats above the image). I've also added the option of using OSGB grid reference co-ordinates instead of lat-lon. – Tivedshambo (talk) 04:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Co-ordinates and OSGB grid-ref are now both in the Location section of the infobox. Apparently the lat/long co-ordinates should not be replaced (if they already exist) by OSGB in the template, for technical reasons, but there is no reason why they cannot both be used. Presumably like quoting distances in miles, kilometres or both. – Tivedshambo (talk) 11:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I completely understand your changes. Coordinates are by standard located in the top right hand corner of pages, I'd rather we stick with the standard so readers will know where to look for them. Which regard to the OS grid references, I'm don't think including these are necessary. If readers want to know the grid reference, and I doubt many will, they can follow the link from the coords which takes them to a page with the coords in different formats in addition to the different map sources. Adambro 13:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, I believe OSGB references are more useful than lat/long for British locations. Remember that Wikipedia articles may be printed. It is far easier to locate a place on OS maps (by far the most popular type of large scale map in UK) than with its geographical counterpart.

As far as location of the co-ordinates are concerned, what standard are we talking about? I've seen them used in various positions in articles: sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom, and sometimes in-line. – Tivedshambo (talk) 13:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure, good points, I guess OSGB references can be useful to readers. As you say, it is certainly easier to find a point on an OS map using a grid reference than using geographical coordinates.

Regarding a "standard", apologies, I'm certainly not aware of any policies or guidelines on this issue, more that is my perception as to what the conventional location of coordinates in articles is, however, I would agree this does vary a fair amount.

As you've only recently added the field to the template, I expect inclusion of grid references is quite low at the moment. Would you be able to point me in the direction of an article which uses it so I can look at the layout. Cheers. Adambro 13:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Anything on the north side of the Birmingham Cross-City Line, e.g. Erdington. I intend to do other stations in due course. – Tivedshambo (talk) 13:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

There's a de facto standard of putting coordinates at the top of an article to which they relate (as opposed to when there's more than one set on a page). The old coor at templates, and {{coord}}, which replaces them, have the option of displaying coordinates in-line and in the title. I've just updated T's edits to make use of this, which should satisfy everyone. It shouldn't matter where in sequence of infobox mark-up they occur; they can be shown in-line at the point, or not, but always in the title bar. Andy Mabbett 13:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help Tivedshambo, that looks fine. Andy's recent edit seems to provide a good solution. It might be considered duplication but I'd point out that the coords at the top of the page are very small and unobtrusive. Adambro 14:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

(back-tab) - Doesn't appear correctly for me, I'm afraid. I've left a message for you, Andy, as I think it may be due to the skin I'm using (classic). Could other users try looking at it in classic skin and see if it works for them or not. – Tivedshambo (talk) 15:30, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Not just you. I've just tried it using classic and find the same problem. Also, having the coords both inline and at the top right gives me two locations using the Operator extension for Firefox. I think it might be worth going back to just having it in the infobox until the issue can be resolved. Adambro

I'll do some testing with Classic. The double occurrence in Operator is not a bug, though it's something that Operator might fix in the future, by dropping duplicates on one page (which are valid, otherwise). Andy Mabbett 15:53, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I've asked Quarl, who made coord,` to fix it. Andy Mabbett 16:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

It now seems to work in Classic. – Tivedshambo (talk) 05:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Quarl did some magic with it - he's pretty good at responding, quickly to such issues. Andy Mabbett 09:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

For me the coordinates at the top now seem to 'stick' whereever the initially load on the page, eg. if I resize the page after loading, the coordinates disappear off the screen, when before they would move with the infobox. Hope that makes sense. They are also stuck in the article title's 'line' slightly. Using IE7. --Dreamer84 19:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

There also seems to be a problem with Google Earth compatibility. Although the coordinates links on the pages display the same way at the top right of the page as those which use the standard {{coord}} template they aren't picked up by Google Earth. Compare, for example, Meadowhall which uses the infobox with Brightside which uses {{coor title dms|etc}}. Talltim (talk) 20:33, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

S-rail

I see that Geoking66 has added code to the template to allow both "rail line" and "s-rail" navigation boxes to be moved to the infobox.

a) personally style wise i don't like it but the Americans have been doing it for ages so what the hell... I would ask Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Railways first though for a style POV. Especailly considering the the trend on longer article to move the nav box with the "services" part of the article.

b) may i recommend you be very careful in "rolling out" "s-rail" like you have done on Stoke-on-Trent railway station. when it was first rolled out int he UK, place like the tube, dlr, tyne and wear, Manchester metro link, etc all adopted it but UK railways didn't. a certain individual objected significantly resulting in several mini edit wars. after some talk (on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways) consensus was not achieved, thus "rail line" was maintained and s-rail not allowed on to UK railways.... - don't say i didn't warn you.

Pickle 12:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Issue with the template

Using the new events system, no distinction is made between the PTE section by adding a "History" sub-heading as was the previous case.

See Bescot Stadium railway station to see what I mean. Worley-d 21:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed the problem: 'years' and 'events' must be used for the first event to make the History sub-header appear, rather than 'years1' and 'events1'. --Dreamer84 21:42, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you :) Worley-d 23:30, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Transport for London

User:Mark999 has added tfl and zone fields to the template. There is an existing zone field, which is now resulting in double displays - see Tipton railway station --Stewart ^(talk) 15:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted his changes so that the matter can be discussed: I suspect this is something to do with his rather enigmatic comment here. --RFBailey 15:20, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I am slowly working towards merging the London infobox into this one but will try to ensure that any disruption is kept to a minimum. It is a significant task and not something which can be rushed into. I hope that taking a more considered approach to this is welcomed. Adambro (talk) 22:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Image Width

I have noticed that there are a number of different widths being applied to images. A number of us within WP:TIS have been using 265px as the optimum width that uses the maximum width without rescaling (widdening) the infobox. Recent discussion with User:Nick who had been been setting these to 250px has made me realise that there is not really a standard width. User:Nick has suggested that a width could be hardcoded into the infobox. This would make life easier and all the infoboxes look the same; a medium border - with a 250px width; or a minimum border - with a 265px. Then there is the decision of a suitable width for the few portrait images that exist, and those that are not a standard aspect ratio. Thoughts? --Stewart ^(talk) 22:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hardcoding the width into the infobox is a good idea (although I'm not entirely sure how to go about it, I'm sure there must be more to it that just adding 'width=265px' to the image line). As one of the fellow "265ers" I'd opt for that size. I'd probably suggest that one width be used for everything, the portrait photos aren't too bad, for all the handful that there are. --Dreamer84 (talk) 23:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd be quite happy to go along with the 265px for all the boxes too. I wasn't actually aware there was an agreed upon size for the Scottish stations. We would need a bot (or a few volunteers, which might be the best option) to swap from the present image syntax of image=[[Image:Example.png|265px|blurb]] to something simple like image=Image:Example.png or image=example.png, with the template having the size hard coded in. There's a couple of ways to do this, it should be possible to have the template compatible with both formats of image at the moment, we can gradually swap them over and then when the bulk of the templates are done, simply remove the old code from the template, leaving the new streamlined code to do all of the work. Given that nobody has objected and we're not seeing a mass reversion of image sizes on the template, it looks like the image size of 265px isn't going to upset or annoy anybody, and on that basis, I'll give it a few more days, but will make some changes towards the end of the week. Nick (talk) 23:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

A fixed width is fine (and 265px seems a sensible one), provided that all images used are that width or wider, otherwise the image gets stretched and looks messy. On the off-chance that there is such an image used, perhaps a "narrowimage" field should be implemented to allow for this situation. I think there are templates with such a field, but I can't think of one off the top of my head. --RFBailey (talk) 02:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

265px seems a sensible size but is this such a big problem as to justify changing the template. Every instance where this is used on articles will have to be changed. Seems a load of edits for not a great deal of gain. Whether it's 250px, 265px, 300px, or whatever, I don't think it matters too much. Consistency is great but I'm not sure a few pixels difference here and there really justifies the thousands of edits which would be required. Don't get me wrong, this is a better way of doing things though. Perhaps rather than replacing image= with a new format, add a image_name= option so that this can begin to be used whilst maintaining backwards compatibility until such time as some other changes related to this template are required to justify the large number of edits. Adambro (talk) 18:14, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I have been bold and added a new field, as suggested by Adambro, called 'image_name', hard coded to 265px. It seems to work as seen at Saltcoats railway station. This new code only requires "Imagename.jpg" to work, without any square brackets or the "Image:" prefix. --Dreamer84 (talk) 20:37, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

This is probably a dumb question but will it also work with images that are not .jpg ? Simply south (talk) 20:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep shouldn't be a problem, I just used jpg as an example. ;) --Dreamer84 (talk) 20:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Status

This may be a useful addition. Adding status to the infobox so to show Whther it is open, closed, proposed, being planned, under construction etc. What do others think? Simply south (talk) 16:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, we should only be using this for open stations. There is already {{Infobox Closed London station}} which could perhaps be adapted to provide {{Infobox Closed UK station}} or some such thing. --RFBailey (talk) 23:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There has already been a {{Infobox UK disused station}} infobox for that purpose for some time now. --- Dreamer ⁸⁴ 23:55, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes, I forgot about that one..... --RFBailey (talk) 23:56, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree though that since this template should only be used for open stations, a 'status' field is really redundant. If the template is used for proposed/under construction stations, I think the History section would be the best place to note the station's current status. --- Dreamer ⁸⁴ 00:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, just a thought. Probably events and years will suffice. Simply south (talk) 00:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you could have "|years=2009 |events=Proposed opening date", for instance. --RFBailey (talk) 03:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Regional Transport Partnerships (Scotland)

Should the template also take account of the presence of Regional Transport Partnerships in Scotland, including the readdressing of Strathclyde Partnership for Transport from a PTE to a RTP? Jacqueline2008 (talk) 16:48, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Postcodes

Could a postcode be displayed for railway stations? I know this might be arguably too much information / duplicated on national rail site etc but doesn't seem an unencyclopedic thing to add, particularly because postcodes are arguably more often used by people for navigation than OS grid references (e.g. on a satnav unit, or when searching for locality information on the internet). Just a thought but would be interested whether anyone else could find it useful. 87.113.20.140 (talk) 19:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Providing you can get them accurate! Railway stations are rarely written to (give or take a big regional station where the relevant complaints manager is based) and I suspect many will not be 100% sure of their postcodes. The Royal Mail will not find it difficult to deliver the mail to the station anyway so the wrong post code can easily linger without correction and the problem only discovered when someone tries to get the location on an electronic map. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Too right! I have been trying to get BT to install lines for CCTV at some South Yorkshire stations recently and even National Rail can't get them right (see Goldthorpe http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/goe/details.html, the postcode given is halfway to Mexborough and in fact further away than the next station (Bolton on Dearne), it was only by ringing Northern Rail that I found it was S63 9BS). However that's not a vote against the suggestion Talltim (talk) 22:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

When we used to use {{stn art lnk}} as our way of providing map links on station articles, we used the postcode for this to link to Multimap. On lists such as UK railway stations - A, the postcodes are given for all stations (presumably obtained from the station information pages on www.nationalrail.co.uk, such as [1]). These are usually accurate, as far as I know. So the data is out there.

However, actually including the postcode in the infobox might be adding extra clutter to it: they're full enough as it is. That's the real issue we should be discussing here. --RFBailey (talk) 03:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Live departures

Perhaps it would be more useful to link to live arrivals/departures (e.g. [2]) than to just live departures (e.g. [3]). What do others think? --RFBailey (talk) 11:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I see no problem. Go for it. Simply south (talk) 16:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Seconded, I think that sounds like a very useful improvement. DrFrench (talk) 17:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. --RFBailey (talk) 11:20, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Recent edits

Recently, Thumperward (talk · contribs) made some changed to this template, with the edit summary "overhauling of template code in preparation of migration to {{infobox}}". I'm not sure of the technical aspect of what was going on here, or whether this is part of some more widespread infobox-standardisation scheme, but as far as the reader goes, all it did was to mangle the formatting making it a lot less readable. (See also this discussion.) I've therefore reverted it to the more readable version, until such time that the "overhaul" is actually an improvement to the 2000+ articles that this template appears on. --RFBailey (talk) 21:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that - the formatting should only be minimally different from the previous version now. That was my intention, but I got distracted in real life after making one formatting change. Migration to use the {{infobox}} master template makes it much easier to avoid such formatting hiccups because the template code is preformatted - however, migration in one go from wikitable / HTML code is difficult and going through an intermediary stage of code cleanup is easier. I hope I won't be as unresponsive to changes again. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted to previous version as I do not have the skills to amend the template. The picture caption is only on the left half of the infobox - see Minffordd --Stewart ^(talk) 14:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Just a quick reminder that development work shouldn't be carried out on this template itself, please work on a copy elsewhere. Cheers. Adambro (talk) 15:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Testing edits exhaustively in a sandbox for such a template isn't feasible; it was sandboxed until it appeared to work in the test cases I picked. Regardless, this should now be fixed. Please consider dropping me a line in future for trivial formatting changes like this, as they can generally be rapidly fixed (nine minutes the first time, and I consider that to be pretty slow if I'm actively online). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I've now moved the code fully across to the {{infobox}} syntax. This avoids the need to specify manually the appropriate table cells and formatting and makes it much easier for less experienced editors to get into templates without being plauges with syntax problems. Again, happy to fix any issues ASAP. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

A few comments - The sections headings appear to be in a smaller font, and the shading to the headings, that breaks up the box into logical sections has gone. Any chance of putting them back. --Stewart ^(talk) 17:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

In fact, pretty much all the text has shrunk. I agree with the above--I'd also like to see shading of the subheadings brought back. (This whole business does seem to be change for the sake of it: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind.) --RFBailey (talk) 17:51, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Font sizing and shading can easily be overridden (with one line of code rather than thirty, as was the case prior to today) - however, given that the rest of the encyclopedia has gradually been moving towards standardisation of such templates, culminating in {{infobox}}, I'd urge people to consider whether a minor aesthetic kvetch is worth diverging from the norms that those who work most heavily on templates are trying to establish. As for fixing what ain't broken, that depends one what one's definition of "broken" is. To people who do lots of work on templates, infoboxen which require endless sandboxing to fix minor formatting details and a hell of a lot of mental arithmetic to keep track of the curly brackets are significantly more broken than ones which have slightly different fonts than they did yesterday. I'd like to wait for a bit more input before a decision on presentation details is made, given that it's much more future-proof to override them in the new code than to revert to the old wikitable syntax. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

My point is that we should be aiming to try and optimise from the reader's point of view. If one looks at the output of the old version (i.e. what actually appears in an article), there wasn't anything actually wrong with it, even if the code that produced it was less-than-perfect. So, as far as the reader is concerned, it wasn't broken. Any upgrades to the source code shouldn't have a detrimental effect on the output. It's not as if the template was so bug-ridden that it wasn't displaying properly on some browsers (at least, it wasn't as far as I know). And as for the editing of templates, that shouldn't need to happen too often anyway! --RFBailey (talk) 23:44, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree that the infobox should be optimised for readability. However, that rather implies that it should adopt sensible defaults, and that these not be overridden lightly. Furthermore, your claim that text has shrunk is inaccurate: the main body text is the same size as before, and various links have actually increased in size. Only the header was reduced in size, which is advantageous for translusions with longer titles (very common with this template). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:16, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

This template has been developed by those who have regularly used it and the previous (pre-migrated) layout had been reached by mutual collective development. The recent changes have modified the look of the template. The improver of this template has taken it upon himself to change the look without discussion first on this talk page. I can see no improvement whatsoever to the reader and for those who wish to modify the template in the future, this is now more difficult. All in all I believe these changes are to the detriment of those who use what has become a very stable template. I would consider that the template should be reverted to its pre-improved state. Would someone like to be bold and revert it? --Stewart ^(talk) 07:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

As I said above, it is in actual fact vastly easier to edit the code now. I have now re-added the header colour, which required one line of code. This would have been a much more productive conversation if the hostility (the use of third-person to refer to me, the threats of reverts) had been dropped and an attitude of working together had been adopted. Regardless, if there are additional style issues which really need addressed, they can be done using the new code much more easily than with the old. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:16, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Being presented with a done deal with a modified template (that did not look like the previous version) without any initial discusion or announcement of intent did not provide a good start to this revision of the template. That upset me and set us off on the wrong foot. It is always my intention to help things move along, but occaisionally my tone will reflect the precieved attitude I am receiving. I felt I was being told that the new coding was good, but all I saw was change for changes sake - to the detriment of the visible template. Although I try to assume good faith I got more and more fustrated.

The adding of one line of code may have seemed easy to you, however you are familiar with the new layout as it is your coding. For example - I would not have known that the code was headerstyle = background-color: #efefef, and where to put it. If I have attempted to change it I would have tried to add backgound colours to each of the header lines. Without copying the template into a sandbox and experimenting for quite some time (and probably getting it wrong - probably by making an error in the data labelling renumbering).

One change you have made is to put the station name outside the box instead of inside the box as previous. You might like to consider this and help me understand will you feel this change is appropriate. Have you considered the appropriateness of the modifications which have resulted in visible changes.

The other knock-on effect is the compatibility with Template:Infobox UK disused station as these templates used to be similar to cope with stations re-opening and closing (one being derived from the other). When a change was made on one template, it was a simple case of pasting and copying the code into the other template. This can not now be done as the two templates now have different coding standards. --11:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I certainly could have handled things better on my side as well. As for confusion in editing the code in future, I should point out that {{infobox}} has very good documentation and that's what I use. And if other templates which are similar to this are now less similar code-wise, I'm happy to assume the burden of bringing them up to date - and merging them if they're similar enough to warrant it.

Again, sorry about rather forcing the issue here. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(missed one point) the change to place the title text outside the box is simply because {{infobox}} provides a "title" parameter for that purpose. There are quite a few different headers on this infobox (logo, images, alternative name), so I thought I'd make the most of the provided parameters. This could be readily adjusted by using the "above" parameter to contain both name and logo. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(update) I've now moved {{infobox UK disused station}} across to use the same codebase. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:11, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Having the name of the station outside the infobox looks - in my opinion - very odd. Could you please move it back to where it was previously and restore the formatting (size of font in particular)? Lamberhurst (talk) 15:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Done. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I'm still concerned about the text size--if one compares the old version [4] to the new one [5] side-by-side, the text in the new one (e.g. in the "Place", "Local authority" fields) has clearly shrunk when compared to the old one. I'd like this to be fixed, please...... --RFBailey (talk) 17:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Another line of code and the font size for the table headers should now be precisely the same as before. To be honest I might ask for this change to be made globally to the {{infobox}} code, which would mean we could remove this line again. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you also please bring the name of the station within the infobox for Template:Infobox London station? Thanks. Lamberhurst (talk) 23:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer further discussion on that one first. That infobox had a markedly different style in the first place. For what it's worth, the required change is to make the first attribute "above" and not "title". Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:03, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

National(sic) Rail

Why is national rail linked in this template if it is only a regional service? Fasach Nua (talk) 18:29, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Because National Rail is the collective brand name used to describe the former services of the pre-privatisation British Rail, whether they be local, regional or long-distance services. This infobox is designed to be used on articles about the stations used by those services, and thus the link is entirely appropriate. --RFBailey (talk) 19:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The thinking behind the question might be that National Rail only applies to services in Great Britain whereas the name of this template infers it covers stations throughout the whole of the UK. Adambro (talk) 19:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I dont mind the British having there own box, but this should be for the whole of the UK Fasach Nua (talk) 10:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

If you're suggesting that Northern Ireland should have its own box, with a link to Translink, then go ahead and create one. The problem wasn't that this template was deliberatly discriminating against Northern Ireland, more that it was called "UK" instead of "GB" (terms which are commonly regarded as interchangable by a great many people, even though technically they mean two different things). The link to the National Rail wiki page isn't the only National Rail-related link there: the station code field is there to create external links to pages on the National Rail website.

The way to solve this problem was not to remove the link, rather to think how Northern Ireland stations could be dealt with more appropriately. I will therefore reinstate it. --RFBailey (talk) 13:49, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

As RFBailey notes, the focus towards GB of this template goes beyond the National Rail link and the name of this template is probably slightly misleading therefore. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to create another infobox for Ireland as the network is completely separate and rename this to GB or similar. Adambro (talk) 14:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've now created {{Infobox NI station}} and implemented it on Belfast Central railway station. Later on, I'll see about doing an AWB run to put the correct template in place on other NI station articles. --RFBailey (talk) 14:34, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Might it not be more appropriate to have an infobox for Ireland as a whole since my understanding is that the networks of NI and RoI are connected, have services running between them and have probably have many other things in common? Adambro (talk) 14:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've found Template:Infobox Ireland station, perhaps this can be broadened to cover NI and RoI. Adambro (talk) 14:41, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest we continue this discussion at Template talk:Infobox NI station. I'll copy this discussion and post my reply over there. --RFBailey (talk) 17:49, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Page move

User Fasach Nua (talk · contribs) has moved the template to the new name of {{Infobox GB station}} (log entry). This now means that all 2000+ instances will now have to redirect here. Presumably if this needs to be fixed a bot should do it. Also, the documentation subpage wasn't moved (or updated to reflect the new template name): I've now fixed this. --RFBailey (talk) 00:10, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

There's no need to update any of the transclusions so long as the redirect works. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

This move may have jumped the gun. It is probably revertable to the previous title if other feel that the move is inappropriate. --Stewart ^(talk) 05:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I've just moved the three corresponding talk archive pages to keep things in order. -- Trevj (talk) 11:25, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Scope

"This template is intended for currently-open stations that are part of the National Rail network". Is there any reason for this? A lot of stations on preserved lines, private lines etc. use this template, and I cannot find any alternative for them. As this template seems to work perfectly well (other than categorising them into the hidden category UK stations without latest usage statistics) I suggest changing this to "This template is intended for currently-open stations that within Great Britain". Any thoughts? —  Tivedshambo  _(t/c) 18:32, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

As there's no objections, I've updated it. —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 07:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Locale, Borough: meaning of

Where are the correct contents of |locale= and |borough= documented? There is an IP user 90.205.32.99 who is methodically altering values in |borough= to be the county; and in several cases, also altering values in |locale= as well, but in different fashion - I've not yet worked out the basis. I've not reverted any, just in case he's correct. When I do, I'd like to point him at the relevant doc. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:46, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I think all of those have been reverted, only one by myself. Another IP user 90.205.32.108 has been pulling a similar trick, several of the affected stations were the same, and I think all have been reverted. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Infobox oddities and the usage statistics

I stumbled upon the category page Category:UK stations without latest usage statistics and noticed a few things which I think we should sort out. No major rush; just a few things that seem a bit odd. I'm guessing that this category is based on the lack of information in the {{{usage0708}}} or something, from {{Infobox GB station}}. But what about stations at which passenger numbers are not freely available?: for example, stations like Barmouth Ferry; one of those that caught my eye when looking through the category above. Another that did the same was Ballabeg (IoMR) railway station: also a heritage station, but this time one on the Isle of Man (which may be within Great Britain as a mindset, but it is not within the United Kingdom as the category, and template contents suggest). I'm not saying that the IoM should have their own railway station infobox, nor am I asking for support in developing one for UK heritage railway stations; in fact, I'm sure there's probably one out there. Kevin Steinhardt (talk) 11:44, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

There already is one: try {{Infobox UK heritage station}}, as per Wallingford. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:40, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Can we use the template to populate Category:Low usage railway stations in the United Kingdom rather than the current manual method. This would make all it less of a pain to update when usages change (or the criteria for low usage alters). Railwayfan2005 (talk) 19:22, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

British railway stations opened in...

My recent changes in this are intended to handle errors which may occur when the data in the fields doesn't correctly parse as a date and an error is generated. Without error handling, this produces a nasty notice at the top of these articles. Now, the template will add any such articles to a temporary maintenance category, Category:British railway stations opened in Invalid Time. Examples of when errors can occur is when the field includes a reference for the opening date as in Honley railway station.

My intention would be to leave it a few days for this category to be populated as the server updates and then assess how big an issue this might be. An option could be to move the refs from the infobox field to within the article text though I think it is wise to leave it a few days before changing anything. Adambro (talk) 14:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Please explain why Hanborough railway station is in Category:British railway stations opened in Invalid Time when there are no references in the infobox - is it (a) because there is both a |years=1853/|events=Opened pair as well as a |start=4 June 1853, or is it that one is a year only and the other a full date? --Redrose64 (talk) 14:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That could well be because I've made a mistake. I'm looking in to it. Adambro (talk) 14:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be another error, in that stations with invalid times seem to be ending up in Category:British railway stations opened in 2010 not Category:British railway stations opened in Invalid Time. (e.g. Bradford-on-Avon railway station). I woudl guess this is due to the 'time' parser function, which takes the current time/date (and hence a year of 2010) if not value is given. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tompw (talk • contribs) 15:00, 31 January 2010

Not quite sure what is being intended here. I looked at some of the stations that are going into the category - for example Ardrossan South Beach railway station. The opening date is showing in events and it has the opening date category. Paisley Canal railway station is also there - and has two opening dates in the infobox and two opening categories (and the closing date and category). A brief explanation of what the error handling is looking for would be helpful. Thanks. --Stewart ^{(talk | edits)} 14:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Paisley Canal railway station is in the category because the time function cannot handle the field having a ref within it. Ardrossan South Beach railway station is no longer in that category, that was due to a mistake on my part. I'm aware of the additional 2010 error and am investigating. The category is only temporary and will be deleted once the issues are resolved. Adambro (talk) 15:05, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I think I've found where the 2010 problem comes from. In the case of Hanborough railway station, in years the year is specified as "1853". The time function {{#time:Y|{{{years}}}}} treats that as hours and changes it to 2010. (See here). I'm coming to the conclusion that it might be easier to add categories to the relevent articles directly rather than via the template. The problem is that the years and start fields may contain more than just a year or a full date, citations for example, and that means that the template would need to try to format the parameter as a year and not add the category if that fails. However, in the case of the year field, the value cannot be checked by trying to format it as a year because of how the time function treats four digit numbers so potentially the page could be categorised very strangely in a non-existent category depending on what is in the years field. Does any of this make sense to anyone? Adambro (talk) 15:45, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense to me... this seems seems to be a bug/feature of the time function. So, I have a proposal: use the {{{start}}} (and {{{starting}}}) parameter purely to specify the year opened. The category thing also works off this alone, and nothing is displayed in the infobox from this parameter. Actual details (and references) should be done using {{{event1}}} and {{{year1}}}. I know this eans updateing a load of articles, but with AWB, I can work through things quite quickly. What do people think? Tompw (talk) (review) 17:05, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That would work yes but I think it would be much more straightforward to just add the relevant category directly. Already as it stands we'll have many articles in a "British railway stations opened in..." category via this template that are also in a "Railway stations opened in..." which should be removed due to over-categorisation so we'd probably need to change the direct categories of many articles anyway. My suggestion would be that we remove this from the template and then add the "British railway stations opened in..." or "Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in..." as below directly whilst at the same time removing the parent category "Railway stations opened in...". I'd be able to write a bot fairly quickly and easily to do that which would extract the opening year in any of the infobox fields, as well as create any new "Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in..." categories as required. Adambro (talk) 18:19, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It would also make sense to have a companion category for "Railway stations in the United Kingdom closed in...". Also, the "invalid" category mentioned above could be used to pick up stations which don't have opening/closing dates. Lamberhurst (talk) 18:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that (re)categorising by bot would be the best way forward, especially with a category to catch those without defined opening dates and do the same thing for closure dates. Once the question of the category names has been agreed (below), then Iam all for that. Tompw (talk) (review) 21:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, well I'll begin designing the bot, it won't take very long but I'll wait a little while for any further input regarding the category naming before running it. If I recall correctly, there are about 2000 stations on the GB network so there'll be at least that number potentially to edit so it will probably merit a bot request to get approval for the task. I'll have a think about it, but I might consider generating a list stations not categorised by opening dates rather than add them to a category. Adambro (talk) 21:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

For completeness, the bot could also check there are opening and closing date categories on the articles for closed stations, many of which will have {{Infobox UK disused station}}. I think that Beeching closed well over 2000, and a good number had been closed before then, so 5 or 6 thousand altogether? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:49, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree... for the recors, there are 8,661 artciles listed in Category:Railway stations by year of establishment. Of oucrse, not all of these are British, but it gives an upper limit. Tompw (talk) (review) 03:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

One thing to watch out for are stations with multiple opening and closing dates. A lot of apparent "new" stations of recent years were in fact re-openings, such as Islip and Bicester Town. Then there are stations which were re-opened, but closed again, such as Counter Drain; which could happen multiple times: Wapping is currently awaiting its third opening (second re-opening). This reminds me that there are also stations with {{Infobox London station}}, {{Infobox Closed London station}} and {{Infobox UK heritage station}} to consider. A challenge - which station holds the record for most re-openings? --Redrose64 (talk) 10:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

For the 2010 category I've temporarily sorted the problem by reverting to a version in August. Feel free to rollback\revert me if you have solved the problem. Simply south (talk) 23:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Move to Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in (year)?

From my talk page:

On a related issue regarding Category:British railway stations opened in 1829 as an example, it might be better to use the format Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in 1829 for consistency with Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom. British railway stations is a bit awkward and doesn't really fit nicely within the existing category structure. In the fomat Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in 1829, each category could go in a new Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom by year of establishment (for consistency with Category:Railway stations by year of establishment) and Category:Railway stations opened in 1829. I would welcome your thoughts on this, and I'd be happy to work with you to change this if you agreed. Adambro (talk) 14:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

This sounds liek a good idea to me, but I wanted to see what other people thought before moving 150 categories. Tompw (talk) (review) 14:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I reckon you need a 'bot... but it's a good idea. Railwayfan2005 (talk) 19:24, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll sort out a bot to do this when I get chance then. Adambro (talk) 19:27, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Documentation

I've removed three parameters from the documentation which are unrecognised by the template as it stands; these are |years9=, |events9= and |tfl=.

I've also added a (nearly) complete blank template for copy-and-paste purposes. I say nearly, because the template recognises five parameters which are undocumented; it may be that these are still in development. These five are: |logo=, |services=, |style=, |style2= and |noclear=. The last three are ignored unless |services= is also specified. Should these five be documented? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:48, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

History subsections

As currently implemented, it is possible for up to three separate "History" headers to appear in this infobox, depending on which parameters are supplied. Shouldn't they be merged into a single section?

In any case, I feel that if you choose to use the multiple "events" and "years" parameters, it's better to specify the opening as one of the events instead of using the "start" parameter. The layout looks more consistent. So could the "start" and "starting" parameters be reformatted to look cosmetically like any other event?

Finally, any changes here should also be reflected in {{Infobox UK disused station}} and {{Infobox NI station}}. -- Dr Greg  talk  16:01, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Three similar templates

It occurs to me that this template, {{Infobox NI station}} and {{Infobox UK disused station}} have a lot of similarities between them. Would it be technically possible to make all three use a common, shared sub-template to handle those elements that exist within all three infoboxes? This would make template maintenance easier, as for many changes only one sub-template will need changing instead of all three main templates. -- Dr Greg  talk  16:06, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

NLC's

Would it be worth adding NLC's to this template? CrossHouses (talk) 07:40, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

NLC's? Non Linear Controls? WatcherZero (talk) 09:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

National Location Codes, each station has a unique 4-digit code (e.g. 1127 Birmingham New Street; 1243 Crewe; 1444 London Euston; 1823 Derby). CrossHouses (talk) 12:26, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

They also have unique three-letter codes, which we place in the |code= parameter. These codes are useful because they may be used to construct the Live arrivals/departures and station information links. In what way would the NLCs be useful? --Redrose64 (talk) 15:42, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

NLC's can be used when using telephone booking services, purchasing from ticket offices/online, checking engineering works etc. CrossHouses (talk) 16:29, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Railway station category

I came across an article on United Kingdom railway station categories on the categorisation of railway stations by the DfT. It gives the opportunity to identify the many unstaffed stations which I think would be useful. This could be achieved by a new optional heading under Operations - DfT Category. The heading would be a link back to the article and the category(sub-category) could be left as is or translated to the description. What do others think?Bill Oversixty (talk) 11:10, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Having had time to look more closely at these categories it is apparent that there are some problems. Usage figures are used in determining the category and there are a large number of inconsistencies. Similarly with staffing. It may be best to leave things as they are.Bill Oversixty (talk) 18:47, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed; the usage figures are known to be unreliable, for several reasons: these include variation in the method of data collection, the existence of season tickets/passes which are valid between more than two stations (the London Travelcard is best example) and the plurality of stations in certain areas. Consider Liverpool: tickets are sold as to/from Liverpool, and take no account of whether the station be Central, James Street, Lime Street or Moorfields. Consider Wakefield: the suspiciously low figures for Wakefield Kirkgate between 2004 and 2007 may be due to the real figures being misattributed to Wakefield Westgate. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:15, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

History item header

I've just added some years/events pairs to Grantham railway station (rather a lot like the example on the documentation page) - it already had a 'start' entry - and we have ended up with two 'history' headers. What's occuring? Have I done something wrong? or is it a bug?--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 08:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

There are, in fact, three independent "History" headers, although if you see all three, that means that you've filled in an improper combination of parameters. One is given prior to |start=, as you mention; the second is before |starting=, and the third is given if any one of |years=, |original=, |pregroup= or |postgroup= is present.

I've never liked that multiple-heading effect myself, and when it occurs I simply remove the |start= parameter and move its date into the years/events group. Strictly speaking, when doing this it should be contained within a {{start date}} in order to emit the same metadata that |start= emits. That is,

|start=1 August 1852

becomes

|years={{start date|1 August 1852}}

|events=Station opened

The first line could be

|years={{start date|1852|08|01|df=yes}}

which is technically superior (the visual appearance is identical but the emitted metadata meets ISO 8601), although it is less intuitive.

That said, it wouldn't be difficult to amend {{Infobox GB station}} so that only one "History" header is given. If people agree, I'll take it on. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Usage statistics

The use of multiple annual ORR station usage statistics in this template, together with indications as to whether the figures are up or down on the previous year, implies that these figures are comparable with each other over time. This is misleading, as the method used to calculate these figures changes year-on-year. For example, looking at the infobox for Birmingham New Street railway station, you would think that the usage of the station dramatically increased between 2007/08 (17.007 million entries and exits) and 2008/09 (25.192 million). In fact, if you read page 21 of the document explaining this year's figures, you can see that 08-09 was the first year that the report included passengers travelling on tickets sold by the PTE, a huge proportion of the daily commuters using the station. In fact the two years' figures are completely incomparable. On the basis that misleading information is worse than no information, would this template be better just showing the most recent year's figures, and not trying to show trends over time? JimmyGuano (talk) 14:23, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

This doesn't apply to all stations though, so I'd say for the time being it should be kept as is. Sgreen93 (talk) 20:42, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Rail symbol

The Rail symbol, added by the symbol parameter, works as a link to Transport in London. While this is fine for London stations, it doesnt make sense for Dalmeny railway station, where I noticed it. Can the symbol be made to link to British Railways or rail transport in Great Britain, or something more appropriate instead? Thanks, Jonathan Oldenbuck (talk) 15:37, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Can the use of this parameter be explained in the documentation? The only place it is mentioned is in the blank template with no explanation of what it is or what it is used for. Keith D (talk) 18:00, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

But why have it at all. It adds no value to the article, and the edit to add to every article simply clutters up watchlists with this trivial addition. --Stewart ^{(talk | edits)} 22:05, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

considering this further, I think this should be removed. All the station have (should have) succssion box(es) which have the symbol at the top - National Rail, Overground, Underground, etc. This additional symbol just does not do anything for the article. I suggest either remove it, or if it goes anywhere it can go in the infobox where the link to National Rail info is provided. --Stewart ^{(talk | edits)} 11:19, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I think it's best to point out that the symbol has been added in two different ways. When it has been added as |symbol=rail, the link is to National Rail and is relatively harmless: the link goes somewhere suitable, and at worst it fouls WP:ICONDECORATION. However, it has sometimes been added by tailing extra code to the |name= parameter, something like

|name=Dartford <big>{{rail-interchange|london|rail}}</big>

see here, and in such cases the link is to Transport in London which is wrong in almost 100% of cases (stations within the TfL area should be using {{Infobox London station}}, not {{Infobox GB station}}). Those matching the latter format should be either amended to the first form (like this) or removed entirely. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:37, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

NaPTAN refs

Would it be helpful if this template were to be modified to facilitate the (optional) inclusion of a NaPTAN reference? There could be some encyclopedic benefit in doing so. Is sSuch information appears to be[6] publicly available andbut could it be included without being contested as original research for each station? Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 11:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I just tried to access that page and it wants me to log in. So it's not immediately available to me.

Is a NaPTAN reference useful in the construction of links, in the same way that rail station codes like DID may be used to build links like http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/index.html?a=findStation&station_query=DID

See also #NLC's above. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:46, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Are these codes in the templates for airports, bus stations etc? If so, and as Redrose has posed do they have a public use, then perhaps for consistency they ought to be in this template. But if it's just another piece of limited use information we can add just because we can then the value of doing so becomes nugatory. I'd also like to know are these codes historical? If so how far back do they go? And once allocated are they permanent or can they change for a particular location? NtheP (talk) 16:32, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

ADDENDUM - the data does appear to freely available here (data.gov.uk) - caveat, I didn't download the 22mb file just to find out - but there seems to be some discussion about attribution. NtheP (talk) 16:37, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

As we already have the 3 letter codes that are unique IDs (and clearly this doesn't have any historical utility) then I have to question the point/utility - however since it sounds like this will also apply to ports, airports, busstops(??) etc - maybe it could be useful - however that is beyond the scope of this page - I'd suggest moving the discussion up one level to the "UK geography project" or wherever - however this really seems a thing for traffic management planners and the like, and far too obscure (ie no use) to people using an encyclopedia - can anyone think of a potential (real world use) for the average individual ?Mddkpp (talk) 17:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

If a use arises it may be simpler to have a clickable link that performs a query using the station name to get the naptan code.. - rather than trying to type them all in. - given that the 3 letter codes already exist there should be a translation tool somewhere.Mddkpp (talk) 18:01, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, The information supplied in the Link here (data.gov.uk) would just add work and confusion, there is no similarity between London Gatwick Airport Code(LGW) Which appears to have 3 stops (9200LGW0, 9200LGW1, 9200LGW2) and Gatwick Airport Rail Station(GTW) with its 1 stop (9100GTWK). It's possible a government database or similar could link the information together but as already pointed out is there a public need to know this information, probably not. Anyone with an actual need for the information probably would have already found the information. LongRobin79(talk) 19:50, 7 February 2012

I'd rather we did publish NaPTAN and NLC codes, as much as anything to make more people aware that such coding schemes exist. They are, for me, encyclopaedic in that they're de facto standards, in the NaPTANs case ones employed by the largest UK funder of public transport. I don't think the availability of web services associated with the codes should be a key determinant for their inclusion. As to an immediate use case, I hazard the view that a user who works with either coding system might at some point find it useful that wikipedia carries the codes; sure, that's a very minority use, but we have enough time and space to cater for these. Per Mddkpp's test if we are aiming solely at the average user, we should set about dumbing down much of wikipedia since it clearly contains much that the average user will not wish for. That's not a test I can support. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

That's my reasoning: I wasn't aware of this coding scheme until I overheard it mentioned. By providing its (optional) inclusion, editors can add the data if they wish. There's no real need to retrospectively trawl through every station manually and ensure it's added. If its inclusion is adopted here, I'd suggest that many of the major stations could have the data incorporated within a relatively short space of time. A bot could potentially be created to add it to other stations too. -- Trevj (talk) 09:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

As an optional element I don't have a problem with it being added but I would still like answers to my earlier questions about how old this data set is; and how permanent the code is i.e. a bit like airport codes can (has?) the same code have been used for more than one station? If the codes have been portable we need to be able to robustly identify historical use and current use of a code. NtheP (talk) 15:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

NaPTANs is more than 7 years old [7]. Codes are desgined to be permanent and not reused, so no issues of history. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:07, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not personally fussed about including them and consensus will prevail. But their inclusion would help allowing readers to deepen their understanding of a topic by conveniently accessing other articles, per WP:BUILD. Of course, there may well be all sorts of other extraneous information which could also be proposed for inclusion. If this isn't going to be of value, then never mind. -- Trevj (talk) 18:03, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Support. The more we add such widely-used unique identifiers (UIDs), the better. See {{Authority control}} for an equivalent for people & more. UIDs improve access to our content for machines, and people, and disambiguate ambiguous items. for example, OpenStreetMap also uses NaPTAN codes to identify railway station (and tram stops, bus station,, etc), and so someone would be able to verify that we and OSM are referring to the same thing. Similarly, UK government open data for public transport uses them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:28, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

The unique identifier here link appear to be the "AtcoCode" which when obtained from the necessary file can be x-ref'd in the stops.csv file to give an exact location. The "AtcoCode can be upto 12 characters long(possibly longer?) This would as Andy Mabbett points out allow OpenStreetMap users to know we/they are referring to the same thing However it is possible for 1 stop to have in excess of 3 AtcoCodes. Whilst I suppose the intoduction of this code would stop/reduce duplicate articles, I feel it would add little more. LongRobin79(talk) 21:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

It did occur to me, on the train north this evening, that we might think about providing NaPTANs redirects to our articles, so as to make wikipedia UK station articles accessible by third party NaPTANs systems. I don't know if we do this for other things - we do have a lot of articles which have UIDs associated with them. Have we ever thought about the utility using the UIDs as redirects to the articles? --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:09, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

In the form of [[Natptan:Foo]], do you mean? Excellent idea. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:51, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

That could be useful. Again, I think a bot could be used to partially automate this. -- Trevj (talk) 09:44, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Merger, and removal of navbox-like links

It has been suggested in this merger proposal that the navbox-like links should be removed. Users of this template may wish to be aware of the proposal. - David Biddulph (talk) 14:32, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

usage/lowusage parameters

The parameters usage* and lowusage* aren't defined in the documentation. An important point to discuss include at what number lowusage* becomes usage*: we currently have articles such as March railway station where the 2007/8 statistics are expressed in millions but the larger 2008/9 statistics are expressed in plain numbers. Kevin Steinhardt (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I use as a rule of thumb anything under 100,000 lowusage and above usage so an example 99,524 would be (99,524) and 112,954 would be (0.113 Million). Mark999 (talk) 00:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Also it is only a rough guide, there is a link to the exact numbers if people wish to look it up, I think for numbers over 100,000 usage is appropriate. Mark999 (talk) 00:39, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

int and lowint aren't defined, either. At a guess, I'd say they refer to the "YEAR interchanges" field, but I don't recall this ever being used, even for a station like Thorpe-le-Soken, which is mostly used to change train. Does anyone actually know, though? Aoeuidhtns (talk) 20:26, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

|intxxyy= and |lowintxxyy= are for interchange passengers. This probably includes several counts, such as the number of passengers changing from one train to another on the same system, and the number of passengers changing from one system to another, for example between National Rail and London Underground. I expect this includes the "Plusbus" scheme, because otherwise I can't explain why King's Lynn, Penzance or Uckfield (non-junction terminal stations with no nearby light rail) are shown as having 52, 22 and 7562 interchanges in 2010-11. Much more puzzling is Altrincham, a National Rail station which is also a terminus of the Manchester tram system, which shows just 10 interchanges. The many with zero should probably be interpreted as "information not available". --Redrose64 (talk) 17:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

"Simplified" template.

I've created a template called Template:Infobox_GB_station_simple. It's a wrapper around this one intended to make it easier to add annual passenger counts with a consistent format.

Rather than writing (say)

|usage0506 = {{increase}} 0.291

on a page, you could write

|usage0506 = 291054

.

The template works out whether the total has gone up or down based on the previous year's figures (it doesn't show a change if the previous year's total is missing). The choice of whether to display the total as 291,054 or 0.291 million is based on a flag called 'million' (there's a million_int one for interchanges, if you're counting those).

I haven't provided a means to have some years shown as millions and some not, but I think the trends are clearer if each year uses the same format.

One thing I don't quite understand is why the image size property doesn't work quite as I intended. At first, I had

| imagesize    = {{{imagesize|}}}

but it didn't pick the default size up from this template, but rather showed the image at full size. Changing it to

| imagesize    = {{{imagesize|265px}}}

worked, but I don't know why I need it.

I couldn't change the existing template to work like this immediately, as the data isn't in this format. I have changed Bury St Edmunds railway station to use this template, however, largely because there were no arrows on its display. What does anyone think? Aoeuidhtns (talk) 01:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why another station infobox template is required. We already have five infoboxes for British stations - there are some at WP:TFD who want to eliminate at least two of these, and possibly all five. This new template appears to have a similar purpose to the existing {{Infobox GB station}}, which has only recently survived a TFD; and that was a close call. Creating yet another as has been done with {{Infobox GB station simple}} will provide more material for those who would wish deletion upon all station infoboxes. A compromise was reached: please, let's not jeopardise it. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:23, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I tend to agree that we don't need another station template, but I like the idea of the automatic {{increase}}/{{decrease}}. Could this be incorporated into this template? (It would need a bot to remove the existing tags.)  An optimist on the run! 11:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it would great to incorporate this into the existing template Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 18:00, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Template deletion that may affect this template

{{Infobox NI station}} and {{Infobox Ireland station}} have both been nominated for deletion. One of the suggestions is that both be merged to this template, which would likely result in this template being moved back to {{Infobox UK station}}. Comments on any aspect of the nomination would be appreciated. Both deleion discussions may be found here. --AussieLegend (✉) 07:55, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Usage section

Hi, is it worth considering some wizardry to collapse all of the usage statistics with the exception of the most recent, or the two most recent at most? Including all of this data makes the infobox extremely long and overwhelming, and it's only going to get worse each year! Jeni ^(talk) 16:13, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Seems sensible, I do not think we want to loose the data. May be someone could work-up a possible model in the sandbox for people to look at. Keith D (talk) 18:11, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

That would be sensible. Many articles comment out anything more than 5 years. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:23, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

We used to have it so that it only displayed the last five but then people kept adding older data back. WatcherZero (talk) 00:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I cannot find a version of this template that only displayed the last five. AFAICT it has always been done on an article by article basis, normally by commenting out the parameters for the earlier dates, like this. The main reason for not showing only one figure is that it is useless for year-on-year comparison - the inclusion of the little triangle indicates an increase or decrease, but you can't tell if numbers are significantly different or only slightly changed. Even if two were shown, one of the two might be an abnormality; so, we show a minimum of five, which helps to show trends. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:57, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Way it used to be done was stats would come out, people would be manually adding them here and there then after a few weeks someone would get around to writing a proper bot alteration of every single article page from the source table which would at the same time delete >5 year old entries. However individuals would then add back in the older deleted data here and there. Other attempts to stop the proliferation have been deleting the template field calls so that the older data remained on the page but wasn't called by the template but again people started adding the older field calls back. WatcherZero (talk) 00:11, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you're misinterpreting what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting we completely hide all but one or two figures, just collapse all but one or two - they'd still be accessible by clicking a [show] link or similar.

Bear in mind that infoboxes are there to summarise what's actually in the body of the article, the current trend of putting usage stats only in the infobox stretches this somewhat. Jeni ^(talk) 09:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

When viewing on a smartphone, all this pettifogging detail is displayed before any 'real' content (rather than as the 'margin note' seen when viewed on a desktop or tablet), so it is a) frustrating and/or b) a turn off. All that can be compressed really does should be. In all honesty I can't see a convincing reason for any of this data to be displayed routinely, for any display. This is a trend seen now in many articles with tables of historic data. It is enough to be able to see that the data exist and can be displayed in request. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:05, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

2014-15 statistics are out today. Crookesmoor (talk) 10:36, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I've also fixed the infobox so the statistics will now show. Simply south ...... time, deparment skies for just 9 years 14:42, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

[Reset indent] So I believe that we are agreed that [at least the historical] usage stats should be collapsed with a 'show' button - no-one has objected. Would someone who speaks templateish (looking at User:Simply south, for example), please do the needful? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:01, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the historical usage should be collapsed (>5 years) Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 18:01, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

5 is too many. Remember this is an infobox, not a data table! Jeni ^(talk) 19:06, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, way too many. IMO, one is enough but I'd accept two. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:10, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Five is fine for me. G-13114 (talk) 18:40, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@G-13114: - Five goes against MOS:INFOBOX:

When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content.

If we were to play this by the book, the infobox should only contain one field, which would be the most recent statistic, with historical usage in a table in the main article. My suggestion of one or two fields visible, with the rest collapsed is a compromise on that Wikipedia policy. Jeni ^(talk) 19:16, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

In fact, thinking about this, we *should* do this by the book. We need to move all of the usage statistics into the main body of articles, with only the most recent in the infobox. This saves all the hassle of recoding the infobox to collapse content. We can replace all of the current statistics fields with a single usage parameter, which will always be updated with the most recent available. Jeni ^(talk) 19:18, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

That proposal was discussed ages ago at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject UK Railways/Archive 26#Overlong infobox and no consensus was reached on it. G-13114 (talk) 21:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Ages ago, I doubt there were 12 lines of this obsessive detail as there are now. [Obsessive?: have you ever actually looked at a GB station article on a mobile? You have to plough through multiple screens of very restricted interest before you even get to to a ToC!]. I like Jeni's idea (of taking it out of the infobox completely) but I suspect it fails on the sheer grunt work of recasting hundreds of articles by hand.

More realistically, it does seem clear to me that we already have a clear consensensus for collapsing the display of that material and furthermore MoS:infobox says that we should have done it already and to one line. Could someone who speaks templateish please wp:be bold and just do it.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:10, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Er, I don't think you can simply ignore the result of the last time this topic was discussed in detail. I've asked for more comment on this on the relevant project page, so lets wait and see. G-13114 (talk) 22:56, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is seriously proposing that option (moving from template to body) - not at this stage, anyway. Please don't let it divert attention from the current live proposal which is to hide most of the usage stats by default. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:26, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Charts would be nice actually, though they might fail WP:OR/WP:SYN. I'm thinking for each station you could have a chart showing year-on-year change, with comparisons to national totals and local authority totals. If we can come up with a consistent template format for showing usage information that would be good. -mattbuck (Talk) 01:20, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I would favour showing the last two years by default with a drop down that showed a further three. WatcherZero (talk) 11:07, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I dont suppose it would be possible to make an infobox that would not show the collapsed data on a mobile? Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 14:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal to hide older data, my first preference would be to show three years by default but I'm not going to be at all upset about showing only 2. I'd really prefer showing more than just the most recent though. Moving more than the last three to a section of the article body (provided there was a link to it) would be fine by me - it would be good place to note any sourced commentary on the figures or other sourced observation that may be relevant to a significant increase or decrease (e.g. gates installed, new service, closed for engineering works for 6 weeks, etc). I don't understand why there would be OR concerns with graphing the data though? Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I suppose making a chart might imply that the data is comparable, when it is often not due to methodological changes. While this is still true for presenting the data in the infobox, it makes it less used for comparisons and looking for trends. Personally I don't think there is a problem as long as it is done sensibly, and if there is a big jump then editors look at whether there was a methodological change before making a chart, and if so then noting that. For example Southend Victoria has just had a massive drop in numbers but this is purely due to methodological changes redistributing the numbers to other stations. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 13:24, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

My main concern with making a chart on every page is that it could overpower the articles on smaller and more rural stations which don't tend to have a lot of prose. You could see a paragraph of text and then an equal or longer table of statistics or graph which goes against the Wiki ethos that articles should be encyclopedic not a database. Cant speak to the mobile appearance, drives me nuts that wikipedia navigation boxes don't display on mobile devices so I don't use them for reading. WatcherZero (talk) 03:09, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

It appears that there is a consensus in favour of hiding the older data (> 2 or 3 years) so if anyone knows how to edit infobox templates then they can use Template:Collapsed infobox section begin to collapse the section. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 10:10, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I would agree with User:WatcherZero. The chart idea is most likely unworkable in practice. I'm not against putting the old data in a collapsible infobox mind. But I have no idea how that would be implemented. Is the gain of a slightly smaller infobox really worth the amount of work involved? I don't know the answer to this. G-13114 (talk) 14:47, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I've collapsed all but the must recent two years at Template:Infobox GB station/sandbox and you can see the results at Template:Infobox GB station/testcases. There's a couple of things it now throws up for me;

• Should we change the order of display to show most recent figures first and oldest last? To me it looks wring to have a collapsed table and then show data belonging to the same series.
• I'm not too sure of the coding to make the last two being automatic. Otherwise it's just a case of having to edit the template each year to move the collapsed section finish.

Nthep (talk) 15:57, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Just show the very latest to make it easier. Also there's an interchange showing on the right hand one. I also wonder think "Usage 2002–2013" should be renamed, as it's not always 02-13. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I like it, except, it might be better to put something like Show earlier data rather than Usage 2002–2013. G-13114 (talk) 17:29, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that looks a lot better. I would agree with just showing the latest one and saying "Show earlier data". Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 19:00, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to Nthep for doing that and especially for the test cases sandbox. Round of applause. Right now, losing 10 lines may not seem the effort but it is only going to get worse. I agree that the hidden section should read 'show earlier data' since not all articles have a full history. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:21, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Just to pick-up here - I think it should show the last 2 populated rows, not the latest 2 rows which may not be filled in, in the last of the test cases there should be 2 rows showing rather than none. Keith D (talk) 22:49, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Ok so now I've redone the template to show the most recent two years first and then the rest of the data is collapsed. It also reads from newest to oldest. What I haven't worked out are

1. How to show the most two recent populated years as per Keith D above
2. How the interchanges should show as I haven't actually found a station article that uses the interchange figures.

You can see how it looks at Template:Infobox GB station/testcases without sorting #1 out it does give odd results for places like Norton Bridge where there is no recent usage. Nthep (talk) 15:23, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Chinley railway station has an example of interchange statistics usage. May be you could ask at WP:VPT for someone with more knowledge of templates that could look at the template to see if it can do the recent populated fields. Though I expect a call to a module may be required. Keith D (talk) 16:57, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Interchange statistics

Here is the discussion from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways - what are everyone's thoughts? Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 18:17, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:MULTI, don't have two discussions; you may link to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Interchange statistics from here, but discuss it there only. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:55, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Architect

It would be useful to have some additional fields to record the architect and construction company for each station. Could this be considered? Andrewrabbott (talk) 07:24, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Accessiblity

I've noticed that the infobox for London Underground stations contains a header (if such is the correct term, have not had much experience editing here) named "Accessible" often with a note for restrictions (e.g. in the case of Waterloo underground station); this is not present in this template. The information to cite this is available from National Rail, and some train operators who produce detailed enough documents.

I'm thinking it would be useful for this to be included here; accessibility of non London Underground stations is not consistent, in the same manner as such is not consistent for those stations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inequalaccess (talk • contribs) 21:02, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Inequalaccess: Wikipedia terminology sometimes coincides with HTML terminology, sometimes not. Cutting out a lengthy description of infoboxes (which are tables), the word "Accessible" is what we call a "label" (although it's actually in a HTML header cell), and the stuff after it is the data (in the case of Waterloo tube station, it's "Yes (Jubilee line and southbound Bakerloo line only)"). On pages using {{Infobox London station}}, this data is passed in through two parameters, |access= and |access_note=. If |access= is non-blank, the word "Yes" is displayed in the data cell; if |access_note= is non-blank, its value is displayed in the data cell. Either may be omitted. If both are blank, the label "Accessible" is not displayed, and so the row is absent.

I see no technical reason why this feature cannot be added to {{Infobox GB station}} - indeed, I've made the appropriate edit to the sandbox. But before putting it live, perhaps it should be discussed. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:04, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

15/16 stats

The 15/16 usage statistics are now out, can someone add the parameters to this template (and the London station templates) please? Ideally if they could also add a 16/17 usage parameter then that would avoid us having this problem next year as well... Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 09:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

 Half done Just the 2015-16 ones, both {{Infobox GB station}} and {{Infobox London station}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:08, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Great thanks, I noticed these had come out and will update as many as possible over the next few days Horizon22 (talk) 12:04, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Interchange statistics, 2018

To restart an old discussion, @Redrose64: has said that there is generally a convention to include interchange statistics for all years. The particular station was Carnforth, which has around 10,000 interchanges a year. The infobox there is pretty messy and frankly unreadable. In the previous discussion, it was suggested to include the interchange statistics only in a collapsible form, and not by default, but no one knew how to do this and the discussion petered out. If we can't find anyone to do this, should we keep all the interchange stats or only the last year's? Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 19:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I've never been very keen on the way the interchange statistics are included in the infoboxes tbh with them interwoven with the main usage stats. I think it looks messy and confusing, and bloats the infobox. Also many of the stations only have tiny interchange figures sometimes of just a few hundred, I normally remove these if I see them. There's also a lot of inconsistency, with some articles including them and some not. I would welcome any change to the current arrangements. I think a better arrangement would be to include them in a separate collapsible section, or if that's not possible only including the most recent figures, to prevent infobox bloat. G-13114 (talk) 19:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

We have several figures (as opposed to the single most recent figure) in order to allow for a year-by-year comparison - a single figure is useless for that. They're indented in order to readily distinguish them from the entry/exit figures.

The interchange figures do not need to be interleaved with the entry/exit figures, they could easily form a separate group of rows. It's also quite easy to make such a group collapsible, as is done for the "Traits" and "Classification / standards" sections of {{Infobox dog breed}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:37, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

If you are able to do this, could you make it collapsible please? There seems to be a consensus in favour of that on this discussion and the previous discussion. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 21:22, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm still seeing interlaced interchange figures. G-13114 (talk) 22:27, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

One, I did not say that I had de-interlaced them, merely that it was possible. Two, I'm not going to do it on the say-so of just two people - has either of you posted a brief and neutral message (in accordance with WP:APPNOTE) on pages like WT:UKRAIL and WT:STATIONS informing them of the discussion here? Three, this edit was in bad form, being a unilateral decision that makes the presumption that it would not be challenged. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:41, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Not bad form at all, there seems to be widespread agreement that it is bad practice in every discussion I've seen. Unless you really believe that the fact that 3,000 people in a year changed trains at a station is worth cluttering an infobox with I'm removing them. G-13114 (talk) 00:20, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

There is indeed widespread agreement that it is bad practice to revert a second time after you have been reverted - you did that immediately after you posted above, so per WP:BRD it was even more bad form. You should also not take unilateral action to remove figures without at least inviting the opinion of the people who are adding figures, such as 1857a (talk · contribs); Absolutelypuremilk (talk · contribs); Blootle456 (talk · contribs); Doktorbuk (talk · contribs); Euanacameron (talk · contribs); FracaWicro (talk · contribs); Fulfo (talk · contribs); Gasheadsteve (talk · contribs); Hogyn Lleol (talk · contribs); Johnlp (talk · contribs); Kianaviation (talk · contribs); Marky7890 (talk · contribs); Merlinhst7 (talk · contribs); MonMan (talk · contribs); Steinsky (talk · contribs); TBM10 (talk · contribs); The joy of all things (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:43, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Myself, I have no issues with the interchange stats being included and I don't think they make the infobox look messy and bloated. I have inserted them where they have existed previously but have not inputted them where they have been published by the ORR but are not yet in the stations' infobox. Happy for this to be resolved, but arbitrary removal without consensus is not to my liking and I would prefer a definitive consensus as I am sure that there are many stations that need to be updated. The joy of all things (talk) 13:40, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I see value in having interchange figures displayed for the same number of years that entry and exit figures are displayed for. Especially for stations were a significant proportion of passengers interchange (e.g. Clapham Junction railway station, Dovey Junction railway station, Newark North Gate railway station, etc) not including them would be misleading. I think interleaving is slightly preferable to having a separate group as it keeps the figures which relate to the same period together. Thryduulf (talk) 13:45, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I have noticed over the past few days of editing usage figures that inclusion of interchange numbers seems sporadic. I can't see why some stations are missed out (for example Preston). If they're going to be included at all, we need to agree which stations should have them, maybe based on an agreed-upon minimum figures or something like that. At the moment we are very good at adding the usage figures within three weeks or so, but the hit and miss attitude towards interchange figures seems to be a matter of inconsistency we could do to resolve. doktorb _words^deeds 18:32, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I suggest a compromise, where stations with fewer than (say) 10,000 interchanges do not have the figures listed, stations with between 10,000 and 100,000 only have the last year listed and those with more than 100,000 interchanges have the full figures listed (ideally as a collapsible or separate list). Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 19:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I strongly oppose that. Arbitrary thresholds are arbitrary, but if we absolutely must have them then (and I don't think we should) they should be a minimum proportion of entries/exists. Having only a single year is not useful for exactly the same reasons we don't have only a single year's figures for entries/exits so any threshold should be a single one of include or don't include. As noted above I think the interchanges should be kept with the entries/exits for the same year. If we're collapsing anything it should be the entire usage statistics section not arbitrary parts of it. Thryduulf (talk) 21:33, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I would generally agree with what Absolutelypuremilk has proposed, I think a good reason for having a cut off is that there is arguably only much point in including interchange figures when the station is a notable interchange station, and the figures are a significant proportion of the overall usage. There's little value in knowing that say 800 people changed trains at a station which has 250,000 yearly entries and exits. I would propose a variation which would be a 10% rule (or maybe higher or lower), that is we would only include the interchange figures if they are equivalent to at least 10% of the overall entries/exits figure. So a station with say 250,000 entries/exits would need to have at least 25,000 interchanges. That would keep the notable exchange stations but cut out the pointlessly tiny ones. Also, I'm never going to be a fan of the interlacing, it is often badly rendered and disjointed on a number of screen settings and looks a complete mess, and is confusing to the reader at best. G-13114 (talk) 23:16, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I would be happy with a 10% cut off if that's what others would prefer. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 23:20, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

1857a (talk · contribs); Blootle456 (talk · contribs); Doktorbuk (talk · contribs); Euanacameron (talk · contribs); FracaWicro (talk · contribs); Fulfo (talk · contribs); Gasheadsteve (talk · contribs); Hogyn Lleol (talk · contribs); Johnlp (talk · contribs); Kianaviation (talk · contribs); Marky7890 (talk · contribs); Merlinhst7 (talk · contribs); MonMan (talk · contribs); Steinsky (talk · contribs); TBM10 (talk · contribs); Redrose64 (talk · contribs); The joy of all things (talk · contribs) what do you think of a 10% cut off below which we would not include interchanges? While it is a bit arbitrary, the alternative to an arbitrary cut-off is having a discussion on hundreds of talk pages on whether one particular station deserves to have the figures included. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 22:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I am happy with a 10% cut off. doktorb _words^deeds 23:44, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I would also be fine with the 10% cut off. Marky7890 (talk) 08:49, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. --TBM10 (talk) 20:47, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

How would we calculate the 10%?

Would we take each year individually and include or exclude interchange figures based purely on whether they exceeded 10% of the entries/exits for that particular year? If this is done, it would lead to odd situations at stations like Newton where the percentages for the five years from 2013/14 to 2017/18 are approximately 10.4%, 11.3%, 10.8%, 9.9%, 9.3% on which basis the most recent figures would be excluded. Instead of showing only three interchange figures, we could either show none, because the most recent is under 10%; or show all five because the majority exceed 10%.

Alternatively, we could add up the five entries/exits (2981656), add up the five interchange (306584), divide the latter by the former (0.103) and so calculate the average percentage (10.3%). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:31, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok, so looks like most people are happy with interchange stats under 10% of passenger numbers to not be included. I'll start removing some of the stats which fall into this category (for all years). If some years are and some aren't, I'm happy for them all to be included if the majority are over 10%. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 23:23, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

You didn't answer my last question. What will you do with Newton? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:16, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

If some years are and some aren't, I'm happy for all the years to be included if the majority are over 10%, such as for Newton. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 21:35, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Yea, I don't want to find that an agreement falls because of what I might call "the Newton exception" or the "Newtonian question". As each new or unexpected case reveals itself, we may find that some stations have interchange stats which come and go as the figures dictate. Such is the consequence of our decision. Of course I would like to see the same stats across the project, only realistically that can't always be the case. Wiki cannot replicate each and every number generated by the ORR and the original source material will always be available to view "off site". doktorb _words^deeds 01:55, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

UK stations without latest usage statistics

@Redrose64:, you managed to create the page Category:UK stations without latest usage statistics 1718 which was very useful for seeing which stations still needed updated usage statistics. However, the remaining articles in that list are all either proposed stations or user talk pages or other articles which don't actually require updated usage statistics. Is it possible to have a category defined by stations without usage stats for 17/18, but which do have stats for 16/17? This would then give a list of only those stations which needed to be updated. Of course, as far as I can see, there are none left to update, so this would only be useful next year. Merry Christmas by the way! Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 22:26, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

It's not a category, but a search like this should work. Just the one false positive so far! Certes (talk) 22:48, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

You can also use WP:PetScan: this query should work.

Some of the pages that are presently in Category:UK stations without latest usage statistics 1718 are stations under construction, I'm thinking of creating a special value for the usage params that will indicate that the station was not open in that statistical year. It would display nothing, but would primarily keep the page out of the appropriate year's UK stations without latest usage statistics cat. Other than those, there are some that are in User: or Template: space, we can easily put in a namespace check for that; and there are some that should not be in the cats because they are using the wrong infobox, these need checking and amending. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:16, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Looking at the page linked by RedRose I think that all existing railway stations have statistics added. The article linked is full of proposed stations and closed stations. doktorb _words^deeds 06:59, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Collapsible usage stats

After seeing this edit I found my way to WikiProject UK Railways and then to this talk page in the hope of starting a discussion about the practice of commenting out old station usage figures. I can see from further up that the topic has come up before. The issue is that as station usage figures are released each year and added to infoboxes, these infoboxes grow ever longer. We can comment out all but the last few years but this seems an odd thing to do: it makes the figures totally invisible to readers, as if we have changed our minds about them being encyclopaedic, but leaves them in for editors, as if we are not quite convinced we should get rid of them. Surely the answer is a collapsible [show] link in the infobox. It looks like this was proposed but never implemented. Is there a way it could be implemented now? Beorhtwulf (talk) 20:53, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

If you examine the section #Interchange statistics, 2018 above, you will see that this has already been suggested. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:23, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, and I'm suggesting it again. That discussion seemed to mainly concern interchange statistics, but regardless of what is done about those, is it not possible to make the part of the infobox with usage statistics (interchange or otherwise) collapsible? Beorhtwulf (talk) 17:40, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

it is possible but really needs a Lua version to make the collapse point dynamic e.g. show the most recent x years data held an collapse anything older. Nthep (talk) 17:48, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I would support a collapsible list, say three or four years by default and ten on the full list. Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 17:56, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, that's helpful to know. While a dynamic template might be optimal, would it be possible to have the collapse point set manually and thereby avoid having to work something up in Lua? At the moment the end of the markup comment is being set manually. If we decide it's desirable to show x years, it seems to me this could either be implemented through automation of the template, or just as a matter of policy. Beorhtwulf (talk) 18:13, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Reason for slash instead of dash in year range?

MOS:YEARRANGE specifies the use of a dash between years in a range (e.g. 1993–94), but this template uses a slash (e.g. 1993/94). Is there a reason that a slash is used here instead of following MOS? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:51, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

MOS:DATERANGE does allow for the slash range e.g. 2017/18 for fiscal years or other periods backed by reliable sources. As the DfT data used in the figures uses (last time I looked) slash rather than ndash I guess that is why slashes are used in this template. If there was a proposal to change I wouldn't be opposing but I wouldn't be seeking the change either. Nthep (talk) 11:11, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Because it is not a year range in the conventional sense. It is precisely the second 'half' of the initial year plus the first 'half' of the second year, beginning and ending on specific dates. Plus it is the notation used in the source, and one widely used in the UK for financial and academic years. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:18, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I completely missed the small note about slashes in the section that I linked. My mistake. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:40, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Unexplained changes with loss of functionality

A change on 28 September has apparently deleted some of the functionality, such as the links to "Live arrivals/departures, station information and onward connections from National Rail Enquiries". The change doesn't seem to have been discussed here, so I'll revert yesterday's change until it is explained or corrected. --David Biddulph (talk) 08:53, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, and I'm quite annoyed with that. I'm still waiting for ProcrastinatingReader (talk · contribs) to reply to this question at Template talk:Infobox station#Cleaning up GB station. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:40, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Redrose64, you could've pinged me. Will respond. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:29, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

One, I did - in this edit: the {{user|ProcrastinatingReader}} makes a link to a user page, and since it was in a new post that I also signed, it also sent a notification. Two, my question was placed directly below a comment made by yourself, and since you were the principal contributor to that whole section I naturally assumed that you were watching that page and no notification on that page should have been necessary. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:37, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

What is happening here - where are all the station infobox footers and when are they going to be restored? May be a revert to last clean version is appropriate if there is no action on this. Keith D (talk) 22:58, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

@Keith D: I would both revert and protect, because I too, am extremely frustrated about what is going on here, but I can't because it might seem like overreaction. Decisions about this template are being wrested from those who actually use it, see Template talk:Infobox station#UK stations merge (but also some of the other threads on that page), it's been going on for months. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:53, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

If you really desire the footers, we can discuss them even further, but it's a bit of a "why weren't you there the first discussion we had on it" kinda thing. Community time was expended on the discussion of that feature, on whether to retain or not, and a consensus was reached; if people missed that, it feels a slight waste of time to just keep revisiting the same points. Do I get to reopen every RfC/discussion in the past that I wasn't around to attend and don't like the outcome of? They're not infobox material anyway, in my eyes. Have you never questioned why no large-scale infobox gives A-Z navigation on a topic? It's about readers, not writers, and there's zero evidence any reader benefits from that.

The discussion is now at 105,000 characters and counting. It will likely be 150,000 characters or more by the time we are finished. Reverting because you don't like the removal of functionality removed in process would be inappropriate. If it's undiscussed, unintentional losses of functionality, that's something completely different, but it would certainly be more collaborative to raise it in the discussion first for resolution.ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:26, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Please give specific link to agreement to remove the footer information from the template. Keith D (talk) 23:14, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, there have been discussed losses of functionality since your implementation of the wrapper, some of which I fixed for you, and one of which (image sizes) currently appears to still be broken. Your hasty conversion of this template into a wrapper continues to cause problems in live encyclopedia articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:36, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I presume you meant undiscussed, Jonesey95. Well, yes, but if you look at those three issues it appears less worse than how you put it. Those three are/were: unknown parameter tracking cats, region GB in GeoHack (which, really, is a region.php GeoHack bug), and now upright images being too large because image_upright wasn't previously used. Only the 3rd still remains, and we'll get it fixed. Sooner so if we focus on what the neatest way to fix it is. Keith, I'll reply to your message later this afternoon. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:11, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

New tracking category for missing locale/borough

The new wrapper version of this template displays "United Kingdom" as part of the location, which I think is helpful, but it does so only if one or both of |locale= or |borough= are populated. Since this template is only for stations in the UK, I don't know that there should be an if statement that governs that country name display. Someone who knows more about the edge case uses of this template may be able to determine whether the infobox should simply show "United Kingdom" in all articles.

In any event, given this new de facto requirement, I have added a tracking category, Category:UK stations with missing location, for articles with neither |locale= nor |borough= defined. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:56, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

This tracking is a good idea. I added that if statement because adding in the country also shows the location header, then it all looks too weird and messed up on those articles if another location field (ie locale/borough) isn't defined. It's visually neatest to just add the locale into the pages that show up in the cat, I thought. In any case, I don't mind if we want to remove the if. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:13, 26 October 2020 (UTC)