Talk:Streetcars in Washington, D.C.

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Former good articleStreetcars in Washington, D.C. was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 23, 2005Good article nomineeListed
February 26, 2010Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

RE: Reorginazation[edit]

The article was starting to get a bit messy, with different standards for one section than the other, so I decided to shake it up, but I'm not married to anything.

I absolutely agree about pulling Virginia. I was thinking of mentioning that, but hadn't gotten around to it.

I'm not sure what you mean about too wordy, but I think there are a lot of times when we describe where the tracks went rather than just showing them on a map. I think maps are better than "It ran south on 7th, west on K etc..."

I like breaking it up by company. I think if we had you're map - which I like - and then a map of each company's system at its peak that would be great. At least until we get to mergers. we could group the companies by how important they were or something.

I agree about the technology categorization. When I was trying to restructure, I found it a bit confining, but I think if we include it in each companies description we can cover it. I'm not sure if we need to explain how every item works since we can just link to "cable car" and such. This is really about the history of the DC system - so unless there's something unique about the technology, I think it can be breezed over.

There are places on the Hill where the tracks are still beneath the surface. Because they heat up and cool down differently than the asphault, they often crack the streets. You can see it on the west side of Lincoln Park where the tracks turned onto East Capital. There are also visible tracks all around P St SE and out to Buzzard's point, but I think those are old rail tracks - not streetcar.

Yeah, the thing about Dupont Circle being the start of taking the system underground is not too reliable. I'm OK with removing it.

Reorganization[edit]

Cranor, I see you've been busy. I was thinking that this article needed some restructuring. I'm not entirely pleased with the way it's going.

First, I think it's time to pull the Virginia stuff out and put it into a separate article. What do you think? The Virginia system was a much more rural system than the DC/Maryland side and was never legally or structually incorporated into the rest. It will be easy to pull out by itself.

I'm also thinking the article is too wordy, at least at the beginning. It needs more pictures. Also, I'm worried that we're giving all the old company names too much prominence. Many of those company names were short lived. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems the most important thing is "Where did the streetcars go?" For that, we need maps. Problem is, the system was never stable. I'm thinking about drawing a map showing every line that ever existed. I'll attach to this talk page a Metro-like diagram I've been working on for the total system. Feel free to let me know what you think. I adapted it from a diagram in one of the books in the references. I'm attempting to make it a little more geographically accurate. I'm also working on a map of the horsecar lines laid out on L'Enfant's original city plan and a diagram of the tracks in the downtown era during the system's height. Kmf164, you mention that you are skilled in mapmaking. Any suggestions? Also, any specialized tools that you have? I'm just working with the basic drawing programs here.

Also, I'm not sure about the first-level sort of Horsecars/Cable Cars/Electric. There was plenty of overlap there, and the cable-car era is practically a footnote. (Although before starting this article, I didn't realize that cable cars had been widely used outside of SF.) I'm wondering if most of that detail ought to be moved down to the Technology section where the electric conduits are discussed.

Also, take a look at this article. In the third paragraph, it mentions visible streetcar tracks on Capitol Hill. Any idea where these are? I thought the Georgetown ones were the only ones still showing.

Also, the comment about Dupont Circle being a test case for moving the system underground. I know there had been talk of moving the downtown lines underground before that. But I thought the Connecticut Avenue tunnel was built just because traffic was bad in Dupont Circle.

I don't have all the books I've listed in the references section. I've tried to track down every book that has anything to say on the subject. I haven't begun looking for newspaper and magazine articles. If you have any other sources, let me know.

SDC 21:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

System diagram[edit]

Proposed future streetcars[edit]

The new streetcars that Metro is planning... I've been thinking about it for quite a while, and I'm not so sure that they belong in this article, which concentrates on the historic pre-Metro streetcar network. The new one would probably be a better fit on Washington Metro. Thoughts? SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't say that I disagree entirely. I'm not sure where it ought to go. Perhaps even its own article. I guess I'm curious to see if they put the lines on the Metrorail map. I agree that there's a problem putting it on this page, but it does deserve a mention here for the following reasons:
  1. The assets of DC Transit were purchased by WMATA. Some old car barns became metrobus barns.
  2. It's no coincidence that the H Street Corridor was chosen as a new streetcar line. The commercial district there exists because of the old streetcar line.
  3. People are also asking whether the old ban on overhead wires will apply to the new H Street line.

For the moment, I wasn't worried about where it was going. These lines sound like they're still very much in the planning stages. I was going to wait until these things are more definite, before I worry about it. I'm still working on this article. I'm just short of time these days. I still need to do a lot of research. I would have no problem pulling the information out, and then refering to the new article where appropriate.

SDC 07:24, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and moved the information about future streetcars to Washington Metro, since that's being done as part of Metro. I'm going to add a disambiguation link to indicate that this article refers to the historic network, not the proposed new streetcars. SchuminWeb (Talk) 01:13, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pertinent Movies[edit]

"+" Consider 1944 "Government Girl" for inclusion in movies. Many very good on street locale shots.

/vt.... Bel Air, MD 72.85.3.224 15:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GA Re-Review and In-line citations[edit]

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 00:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm already working on it, but it will take me longer than a week. Cranor 22:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article Review[edit]

This article is currently at Good Article Review. LuciferMorgan 16:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Title change[edit]

I was thinking about changing the title of this article. First in needs to be Washington D.C., not just Washington. Also I was debating between Streetcars in Washington, D.C. and Washinton, D.C. Streetcars. The first seems to be more common among other tram related articles. The second is closed to what has been done and requires one less word. Volcycle 22:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I like "Streetcars in Washington, D.C.". It seems to just read better. SchuminWeb (Talk) 10:20, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article way too long[edit]

This article is WAY too long. It's got a lot of great information, but it's really long and takes forever to load. Therefore, I propose we whack it up into a few smaller articles. Thoughts on where to split? SchuminWeb (Talk) 16:43, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The splitting by company that I started (Capital Traction Company) can be continued. --NE2 10:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I had trouble deciding what to leave out and was hoping someone would help. Splitting it up by company is one possibility or you could break it pre and post electricity. Volcycle 06:39, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What if we pulled the remnants out and made that a separate article Volcycle 04:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As a related aside to this discussion, involved editors should be aware of this discussion that I just stumbled across; the suggestion was made there that when an article is significantly split, it should be reassessed as a non-GA/FA class until it can go through the GA/FA process for additional quality review after the split. The best resolution would be to bring all articles that result from the split up to at least GA level, and if the split is done carefully and studiously enough, there shouldn't be too many issues raised in the re-evaluations. Slambo (Speak) 17:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to try to slim this down. I'm going to cover the big important things about each company in this article and then cover each company in greater detail in its own article. Things I plan to cover in this article for each company - incorporated date, start date, where it ran from and to (but not route), major expansion dates, when it changed power modes and when it went out of existence. I also plan to create a separate remnants page. Volcycle 07:38, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Consolidation" section[edit]

It says "Later that year, i bought the" which doesn't seem to make sense... and I wasn't sure how to fix it since removing the 'i' doesn't seem 100% correct. Any thoughts? gren グレン 05:07, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the passage in the context of the rest of the paragraph, I changed it to "it". Someone probably inadvertently deleted the "t" at some point, so I restored it. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:27, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Commons[edit]

I have placed all of the images that can be on the Commons and hopefully the few that don't have good enough sources at the moment will be found and maybe even higher resolution versions like I found for the power plant. I am hoping that this will eventually lead to a good commons category of images of the DC tramway. gren グレン 07:41, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA Reassessment[edit]

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Streetcars in Washington, D.C./GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

Starting GA reassessment as part of the GA Sweeps process. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Checking against GA criteria[edit]

To uphold the quality of Wikipedia:Good articles, all articles listed as Good articles are being reviewed against the GA criteria as part of the GA project quality task force. While all the hard work that has gone into this article is appreciated, unfortunately, as of February 26, 2010, this article fails to satisfy the criteria, as detailed below. For that reason, the article has been delisted from WP:GA. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at WP:GAN. If you feel this decision has been made in error, you may seek remediation at WP:GAR.

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
    The lead is a little unbalanced with an initial sentence, followed by a large paragraph, then a solitary concluding sentence. Better to balance it more evenly. The lead would also benefit from a thorough copy-edit. Phrases such as A bit later.... and Today streetcars, car barns, trackage, stations and right-of way of the system still exists in various states of usage. are poor writing.
    Early transit in Washington: Service ended soon after it began. Why?
    The next attempt at public transit arrived in the spring of 1830,... Arrived? - surely began would be better.
    Metropolitan: The Washington and Georgetown's monopoly didn't last long. Why?
    Horse-drawn chariots and the Herdic Phaeton Company: During this time, streetcars competed with numerous horse-drawn chariot companies. Chariots? Really? This conjures images of Ben Hur style races down the Mall. I think carriage would be better here for a nineteenth century transport system. If they were actually known as chariots at the time then this needs further explanation.
    The switch to electric power: Horsecars, though an improvement over horse drawn wagons, were slow, dirty and inefficient. Horses needed to be housed and fed, created large amounts of waste, had difficulty climbing hills and were difficult to dispose of. Almost as soon as they were instituted, companies began looking for alternatives. This appears to introduce a point of view.
    Red links are Ok, but there seem to be a lot of them. If teh artciles aren't going to be written, then perhaps they should be removed.
    By early 1946, the company would place in service 489 of the streamlined, modern PCC model and, in the early 1950s, become the first in the nation to have an all-PCC fleet.[36] (Here's a General Electric ad about PCC cars in Washington.) Direct links like that to the add should be replaced by external links. Likewise (A map of the system in 1948).
    I think a brief section at the end of the article summarising the DC Streetcar would be appropriate, rather than the hatnote at the top.
    I recommend a thorough copy edit.
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
    I repaired 14 dead links and tagged four more using WP:CHECKLINKS
    reference #1,Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, By Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C.), page numbers are needed for the individual citations rather than the range 24–118
    reference #41 [1] does not adquately support the assertion in the statement The rail of the WB&A become the property of Capital Transit
    There are rather a lot of External Links, can they all be justified?
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
  6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:
    An interesting article, but there is a lot of work to be done. I am putting it on hold, initially for seven days and will inform major contributors and projects. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    No substantive edit have been made in the past seven days and the issues have not been addressed so I am de-listing this. The article can be brought back to WP:GAN when the issue have been addressed. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Pictures of rails discovered under pavement[edit]

So I work for communications and stumbled on some rails on 4th st NE. If anyone is interested I have them saved since we were removing pavement and found them. The job couldn’t be done because of the rails but one of these days we may return to uncover more pavement. 99.203.145.106 (talk) 05:47, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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