Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Illinois Northern Railroad

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was speedy deleted as a blatant hoax that should never have moved into mainspace in the first place. Mackensen (talk) 12:48, 8 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Illinois Northern Railroad[edit]

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"Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed" Moon Joon (talk) 13:51, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Transportation and Illinois. Shellwood (talk) 13:55, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have looked and can not find any RS that this railroad has ever existed. The reference first used ("See American Shortline railway Guide (break) Greenburg Pub, May 1996 ISBN-10: 0890242909", later improved including an ISBN-13) was printed in 1996 and the company was formed in 1998 according to the article. It can tell background on mergers and spinning off shortlines, what locos shortlines liked, and some operations, but none can relate directly to this railroad.

The outside link "www(dot)inrail(dot)com/" is now a Russian WordPress site, who knows what it was back then? WordPress itself is a blog site and you would have to go at least one level lower to get any RS.

There is no reporting mark "INRR" as stated in the first line. Googling "Illinois Northern Railroad" gets hits for a switching line in SW Chicago associated with International Harvester. The only hit to this railroad is its article. Google images show no photos of any of its locos and railfans take pictures and talk about anything.

A "trains" person may know/care: Does the EJ&E line from Plainfield SSW match the description? Could this be mixed up with the Illinois Railway? Could this be a paper company or a plan that never happened? How could the B&OCT fit in?

At the time of the creator's (notified) last edit the article had no RS for any fact of this railroad. All edits after may be GF efforts to fix the article's form without checking its accuracy. Thank you. Moon Joon (talk) 14:16, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(edit added disclosure: I created Illinois Northern Railroad (1901-1975) Moon Joon (talk) 14:58, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Railway buff here, I'm not showing they exist on a map from the Illinois Dept of Transportation, circa 2018 [1]. A former railroad with the same name DID exist, but they went out of business. Google doesn't show much else... I'm thinking they might have been trying to restart the RR when the article was created? Who knows. I found a facebook group post about it, a new company leased part of the line (which was only two or three miles to begin with), so there might have been some attempt to note that as an article here.[ https://www.facebook.com/groups/ILLRRHISTORYBUFFS/permalink/3279368642289279/] Oaktree b (talk) 14:48, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The Illinois Northern Railroad (1901-1975) was an entirely different line 30 miles to the east. Moon Joon (talk) 15:04, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
An alternative hypothesis is that the article creator got the dates wrong, but checking the book I'm not finding any evidence that it supports the existence of any such railway company at any date. Everything that I find elsewhere comes back to the nominator's Illinois Northern Railroad (1901-1975) instead. This is not verifiable from the sources cited and not verifiable from any source that I can find. Uncle G (talk) 15:15, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as an apparent hoax. Absolutely nothing about this article is verifiable; "Lincolnville, Illinois" doesn't exist, and the supposed website was an unrelated company. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:45, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per above. I've had a look through the history of the Inrail website on archive.org and it has always been a website design company specialising in railroad-related websites. Neither the earliest (August 2000) nor latest (March 2005) captures of the links page to sites they have designed mention anything in Illinois Thryduulf (talk) 22:28, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete For what it's worth, I own the Edward A. Lewis book that's in the references, so I took a look in it and there's no mention of this supposed railroad. Railserve's very extensive reporting marks list [2] lists no entry under INRR, which the article claims is assigned to the subject of the article. This is a clear hoax. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:32, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Does not meet notability. Gusfriend (talk) 07:08, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This article fails our hoax guidlines. There isn't a place called "Lincolnville" in Illinois, trust me, I have been in Illinois and no such place exists. Also the railroad, as far as I know, this is just a hoax to fool people.Felicia (talk) 00:21, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.