Talk:Air-line railroad

Satire? What about Relevance?

It boggles my mind why the section "Satire" is even in the article. If someone is using WP to find out about the subject, what good does it do them to read a 150 year old article written to satirize the concept? I was satisfied with the quality of the article as helped me understand the concept, and then I reach the section in question and I'm bogged down with, and I'm not kidding here,

"... pass through a country... whose bowels have been laboring in vain with untold and unknown wealth of minerals, including coal and oysters, since the creation of the world."

...what the--? Are they serious? Why would anyone see fit to include this? It's arcane, irrelevant and unnecessary to the article. I have to get rid of this section. Chat me up if you really take issue with my removal of the section. Thanks. Srwalden (talk) 12:22, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree with your removal of the section and I've reverted it, but cut out the lines you cite above.

The relevance is that it shows something important about the history and cultural context of the concept--specifically, it had reached the point of becoming some kind of investment or promotional fad, to the point of being the subject of jokes (like "dot-bomb companies"). The checkered history of railroads like the New York-Chicago Air Line suggests that the newspaper was not wrong in suggesting that many proposed air-line railroads were sketchy, dubious, verging on fraudulent.

The problem with Wikipedia is that it quite properly limits us to stating simple facts (this newspaper published this story), which sometimes makes it difficult to explain the relevance without including our own opinions. Just because you don't personally see the (unstated) relevance is not a reason to delete an established part of the article, that has been viewed by people for seven years without anyone else seeing a problem with it.

The excerpt may be excessively long to make the point, but Wikipedia is not paper. I'd suggest that the main reason it looks long is that apart from the list of air-line railroads, the article itself is regrettably lacking in any other content. However, I've cut it down as per your remarks above.

Dpbsmith (talk) 21:28, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I have to agree with keeping it. The road I just added (Eastern and Western Air Line) is well characterized by the article.

Snile (talk) 02:41, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Since I see that the section has been a bit contentious over the years, I'll comment here as well: I changed the name from "Satire" to "Public reaction" and added an anecdote from the SAL article to help put the situation into historical context as suggested by Dpbsmith above. 97.102.30.205 (talk) 13:31, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Duplicates in the list

I've noticed at least a few duplicate entries in the list. There's at least 3 entries all referring to the same railroad line Boston and New York Air-Line Railroad, and there are likely others as well. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:09, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Explanation is ambiguous

The meaning of "a shorter route over an easier route" is not obvious. I presume "easier" refers to construction, but I am far from certain, and the first "air-line" I looked up talked about a route that had steep gradients and sharp curves, which seems to be in opposition to the spirit of the concept as I understand it. Is it possible that this was originally an engineering term, but "true" high speed lines were rare in reality, and as the satires above show, it just became a marketing buzzword that lacked any real substance? 82.22.50.11 (talk) 22:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)