Talk:London Paddington station

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

I don't think the 'tube split' described above makes any kind of sense. You either need to treat Paddington as a single transport interchange (1 article) or as a national rail station plus two quite separate tube stations (3 articles). Lets see what the consensus is. -- Chris j wood 20:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the consensus at present seems to be in favour of going back to one article, but the move is blocked, I'm requesting admin assistance for the move. -- Chris j wood 12:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Paddington railway station → Paddington station – In order to revert previous split of article Paddington station into Paddington railway station and Paddington tube station without losing article history and in line with consensus developed on talk page. Three steps needed (1) This move (2) Revert moved article to revision id 74213323 (3) Revert the tube station article to revision id 16040944. -- Chris j wood 12:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indicate which option you support followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

1. The three stations (mainline, Bakerloo/Circle/District, and Hammersmith&City) are so interwined it makes better sense to cover them as a single entity. After all, interchange between the two tube stations involves walking the length of the mainline station's platform 8, and the H&C station's platforms are even numbered in the same series as the mainline station. -- Chris j wood 20:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
2. I'd have to agree that it would be better to have them all as one, being so entwined. The stations are so closely related to each other anyway that it might seem odd for any other reason to have them separate, unless they were actually physically apart. A visitor to the station, or general person searching Wikipedia for information about the station, would not usually consider them separate, and having them together saves navigating via a disambiguation page. I believe the entrance is also marked with both the National Rail logo and the Underground roundel, as at London Bridge. Perhaps if each section were so extensive that the page was overly long, it would be justified, but I think the split should wait until that time, rather than encouraging expansion of each article by splitting them now. Willkm 22:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
3. One artice for both tube and national rail. Jt spratt 21:51, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
4. This station probably more than all the other complex stations is better served by one article, given the H&C is integrated with the main station and totally disconnected from the Bakerloo station. The current split is a bad idea. MRSC 17:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
5. One article makes sense, given the interlinking. If we have too much information about one part we can split that off to a separate article with a main article link from a summary-section here. Thryduulf 11:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
6. This option makes the most sense. As stated by Chris j wood above, Paddington station is a single transport interchange. There are various methods of transport available at the station, but it would be almost like having a separate article for each bus number at a bus stop... Robwingfield ^(talk) 15:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• The request for page move succeeded. I see Chris j wood requested some reverting to be done also, but I reckon you don't need admin priviledges for that and I don't want to revert to wrong version, so please somebody do the revert. --Dijxtra 10:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus for the moves. --PBS (talk) 18:05, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are 12 London stations that for some purposes are prefixed "London" [1] and for other purposes are not. [2] Our article naming has used "London X" on five articles and "X" on seven articles. The articles text explains that two alternative names exist and give these sources. Both names are present in the infoboxes. These articles should share a common naming convention. This proposal concerns only the prefix "London". The article name suffixes (-station, -railway station) form a convention that is followed. MRSC (talk) 08:28, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• London Paddington station → Paddington station
• London King's Cross railway station → King's Cross railway station
• London Waterloo station → Waterloo station
• London Waterloo East railway station → Waterloo East railway station
• London Victoria station → Victoria station (London)

This would bring them into line with these articles:

• Cannon Street station
• Charing Cross railway station
• Euston railway station
• Fenchurch Street railway station
• Liverpool Street station
• Marylebone station
• St Pancras railway station

For Victoria the "London X" naming was used for disambiguation with others outside London. However, there is another format currently used for this purpose and it should be moved to match:

• Kew Gardens station (London)
• Kingston railway station (London)
• Reedham railway station (London)
• Richmond station (London)
• Sutton railway station (London)
• Sydenham railway station (London)

Thanks. MRSC (talk) 08:28, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I think that I Support most of these, except probably the "London Victoria station" article. I'll need to vet eash individually before saying that I support all of the others, though.
  — V = I * R (talk) 09:26, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Slightly above average oppose^{(see below)}, we've tried a few of these formats over time, It has turned out easier to slip London King's Cross railway station into a flowing paragraph of text than it has been to include a line about Victoria station (London) across the other side of the city. In short, the prefixing of London X Y Z has turned out to be a very effective way of solving the disambiguation issue that exists between these London railway stations and the latter ones in other countries. There is not a net benefit achieved by switching from something that works, to something (with parentheses) requiring frequent piped links for clarity (WP:EGG). The need to disambiguate is not ideal, but what we have, appears already to be preferable and has proven itself to work in practice. —Sladen (talk) 10:11, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For clarity, those not supporting the move please indicate if they have a preference for the status quo of random/mixed article naming or if they would prefer to see Cannon Street, Charing Cross, Euston, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street etc. moved to the "London X" format. MRSC (talk) 10:56, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My recollection is/was that the naming was on the basis of:

1. Generally mainline stations are called Something railway station. Often Metro stations are Something metro station and Tramway stations are Something tram stop
2. When a station (eg. Euston, or Victoria) is a combined major interchange, it tends to have become Something station because it's multi-modal.
3. When a station has multiple possibilities (eg. Kings Cross railway stations in Sydney and in London) then the choices are Something railway station, London or London Something railway station and with the choice between two bad options, the latter was deemed preferable.
4. Where a station has multiple possibly names (St Pancras ...Lowlevel/Domestic/International/Thameslink/Midland Road) the common-name/shortest is chosen, so St Pancras railway station—as it is not a tube station!

Would it just be a case of more-formally codifying this? —Sladen (talk) 11:17, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I should have made it clearer, this proposal concerns only the prefix "London" applied to five articles. The use of suffixes (-station, -railway station) have been followed as you described and this proposal does not seek to change that. It only concerns five stations that we have added "London" to the start of, despite there being twelve stations where this is sometimes done in practice. Of these five stations only one (Victoria) has the prefix "London" for disambiguation. The other four (Paddington, King's Cross, Waterloo, Waterloo East) it has been applied randomly. MRSC (talk) 11:28, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an actual MoS which deals specifically with this topic, somewhere?
— V = I * R (talk) 11:38, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The naming was agreed years ago by WP:London, but didn't deal specifically with the "London" prefix, it was only concerned with the suffixes which relate to the transport modes at the station. MRSC (talk) 13:28, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, going through them again:

In addition, I'd be interesting in recommendations for getting rid of the awkward "Richmond (London)" naming—although these are of significantly lower visibilty/importance. —Sladen (talk) 12:03, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I can see the logic (and a pattern we can stick to) if the "London" prefix is only used for central London stations that require disambiguation. MRSC (talk) 13:36, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to WP:DAB, we shouldn't disambiguate unless absolutely required to do so anyway.
— V = I * R (talk) 21:26, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. That would tie in to our policies and would work in practice. MRSC (talk) 06:23, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• My strong opinion is that in encyclopedic articles official names should be used for names of articles. WP List of London railway stations has a reference to an NR list of official names (although at the moment the article needs to be changed to reflect NR's more recent distinguishing St P (Dom) from St P (Int). Table tennis is mainly in Table Tennis and not in Ping Pong. Although the rule of WP is "Do as you fancy" this sort of unpublicised "poll" with a serve-chosen electorate in no way improves the encyclpedia. WP is meant for information not for the indulgence of fancies. Disambiguating seems to be not particularly relevant for even with say "London Wloo" as the article, an minor article to guide the seeker after truth would be needed to get to London stations and not Liverpool or closed one way Welsh ones--SilasW (talk) 21:38, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  We're decidedly not supposed to "Do as you fancy". Official naming policies, however, are quite often controversial (not so much in Europe or North America, but the rest of the world) and replying on them would violate WP:PRIMARY anyway. Regardless, see WP:COMMONNAME for our guidelines oh how we are supposed to primarily resolve naming disputes (hint: it's all about the third party references).
  — V = I * R (talk) 22:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  OK, the Shield of Irony has not kept me from crying "Touché". Most railway articles fail the reference test because even "A is between B and C" is unsourced. Some strong reason needs to be adduced for not following the reference given above.--SilasW (talk) 14:03, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  I should point out that I'm very willing to bend. All I'm attempting to do here is state what I see is the position we should follow based on current policy/guidelines (If I'm missing something though, please point it out to me!). I can clearly see your point, and even personally agree with it, but until and unless it is actually crafted as a guideline (either into the existing guidelines or as something new) then we shouldn't be performing "one-off" page moves that will seem inconsistent to the wider project. I think that what you articulated there, a narrow exception which would specifically recognize official names of railroad stations, has a very good chance of being adopted; it simply needs to be done. If and when it is done, this then should become an uncontroversial move.
  — V = I * R (talk) 14:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would note there are actually two published sources for the station names. National Rail use "London" [3] and Network Rail (the owners of the stations) do not. [4] MRSC (talk) 15:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The station signage adds another layer of complexity as "London" is not applied to agree with either source. With this, the notion of an "official name" becomes harder to grasp hold of. MRSC (talk) 15:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Annnnd... there's the other excellent reason not to rely on "official names". It would be nice if this were easier, wouldn't it? I personally tend to dislike multiple movereq's, because I've noticed that they invariably tend to turn into quagmires like this. My suggestion is to de-list this, and either re-list some of these individually gather an interested group together and modify the requites guidelines in some appropriate fashion. The articles aren't going anywhere, so my suggestion is to go with the discuss and modify guidelines route, but that's just me.
— V = I * R (talk) 15:44, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We've already had preliminary talk at WikiProject London Transport, but that brought us here to get wider discussion. So rather than go round in circles, I suggest we delist the group nomination and relist only Paddington, Waterloo and Waterloo East separately. There appears to be some support for continuing London Victoria and London Kings Cross as they require disambiguation and that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Can you do the de-/re-listing? I am not that familiar with WP:RM admin. MRSC (talk) 16:09, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This afternoon I noticed that the displays in the SWTrain I was on showed "London Waterloo".--SilasW (talk) 17:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see he conversation you occurred at WT:LT#London station article naming, now. The best move is to update your Manual of style, and then add an exception to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#United Kingdom by pointing to the section on the MOS. If you do that, then this can be re-listed with a simpler "rename in order to comply with WP:NCGN" statement. Much less controversy or questions, that way. I could certainly re-list this, but I'd rather just wait for the changes and then change my !vote. There no real rush, since the movereq has 6 days to run befomre being in the backlog.
— V = I * R (talk) 23:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. This is updated now. MRSC (talk) 07:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose. A better solution would be to rename St Pancras railway station as London St Pancras station. Have you any idea how many railway stations in Europe are called Waterloo? The answer is eleven. The railway time table site I use is [www.die-bahn.de] always requires disambiguation on this question. If there is going to be an article entitled Waterloo Station, it should be about the one south of Brussels. If you use the die-bahn.de website, you will understand the logic behind this.--Toddy1 (talk) 17:59, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(FWIW station is used for multi-modal, railway station is used for mainline railway only and STP is not a tube station). —Sladen (talk) 07:46, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. My opinion has always been that we should go by the platform signs - which gives us, according to MRSC's list above, "Fenchurch Street", "St Pancras International", and "London [name]" for the other terminii. Victoria will always need disambiguation (as long as Manchester Victoria is open, at least), and I can't believe that the abomination "Victoria station (London)" is preferable to "London Victoria station". So, we're stuck with "London Victoria", which agrees with the platform signs; if we're implacably opposed to platform signs and consistency is more important, this would suggest that "London" should be added rather than removed. Tevildo (talk) 15:54, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just to clarify - if global consistency is required, I would support "London Fenchurch St" and "London St Pancras" as against the status quo. Tevildo (talk) 17:33, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following is a closed discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

After four months, proposal has been overwhelmingly opposed, result is not merged. Rossonwy (talk) 05:37, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see that this has been mooted before - see Talk:London_Paddington_station#Requested_move_(1). However, I want to get this discussion going again because having three different articles covering much of the same content makes no logical sense. I am thus proposing the merge of Paddington_tube_station_(Bakerloo,_Circle_and_District_lines) and Paddington_tube_station_(Circle_and_Hammersmith_&_City_lines) into the London Paddington station article. I think it would be sensible to follow the structure above for this discussion - so please write your opinion under the relevant heading with Strong oppose, Oppose, Support or Strong support with your reasoning if you wish - and remember to use the 4 tildes (~~~~)!Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 18:04, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Chris j wood, Willkm, Jt spratt, MRSC, Thryduulf, and Robwingfield:

• Comment — The two tube stations are quite separate having no common gateline, and have different histories (as I'm sure most involved editors are aware, historically they were not the same station, Bishop's Road vs. Praed Street), so the current set-up does make some sense. By a similar token we could merge Edgware Road (Bakerloo) and Edgware Road (Circle), which I don't think people would be for. Shadowssettle _{Need a word?} 20:38, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose As far as I see, these are three pretty much distinct stations which happen to share a name. Merging them would only make the resulting article more cramped and would not present readers with information in a clearer way. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:06, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose any merge, support keeping the articles split - The two tube stations are distinct both from each other and from the mainline railway station. The only difference is that they happen to share a name and are near the same station. And that situation frankly is not uncommon - a similar issue comes up with Hammersmith tube station (District and Piccadilly lines) and Hammersmith tube station (Circle and Hammersmith & City lines). If you want to look across the pond for a very similar example, the NYC Subway's 34th Street–Penn Station (IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line) and 34th Street–Penn Station (IND Eighth Avenue Line) stops both serve Pennsylvania Station (New York City), but the two subway stations have distinct gatelines and are only indirectly connected by Pennsylvania Station. And NYC has a lot more similarly named stations than London does.
  The tube station articles do not seem to cover the same content, either. The District/Circle/Bakerloo station was built by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway and by the Metropolitan Railway. The Circle/H&C station was also built by the Metropolitan Railway but on a completely separate branch. If the two MR stations had been named, say, Praed Street and Bishop's Road, then I highly doubt there would even be a merge proposal right now. The railway station is also a separate subject altogether. It just so happens to be served by two tube stations. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:25, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually, I just realized that some other stations (e.g. London Bridge station, Liverpool Street station) have the opposite problem, where the railway and tube stations are given one article when two would be more appropriate. �� Epicgenius (talk) 23:31, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Agreed, splitting those station articles would be a good idea! I would oppose any merge for many of the reasons detailed above. Turini2 (talk) 08:00, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose merge. I agree with the excellent points made by Epicgenius. Also, as alluded to by RandomCanadian, all three articles are plenty long as it is. Merging three longish articles into one very long article isn't great for the reader, unless there's so much overlapping content that the end result would be clearer. I don't think that would be the case here. Mackensen (talk) 12:40, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose Aren't they seperate stations? If so, then it would make sense to keep the articles seperate/ NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 16:17, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  @NightWolf1223, they are indeed separate. However, the issue is made complicated by a couple of things.

• The stations are displayed on the Tube map in a really weird way. The map displays the Circle/H&C line station as being in between the Bakerloo and District/Circle platforms. This may give the mistaken impression that the three sets of Tube platforms are connected to each other within the same gateline, which they aren't. And of course, the mainline railway station is separate from the tube station.
• The Elizabeth line platforms towards Heathrow/Reading and towards Abbey Wood don't even seem to be connected within the same gateline, at least for the time being. The new platforms of the Elizabeth line (currently only serving trains to and from Abbey Wood) seem to be within the same gateline as the Bakerloo line platforms, and by extension the District/Circle line platforms. The trains to and from Heathrow and Reading call at the mainline platforms, which aren't connected. I'm a little less sure of this, and someone more knowledgeable can correct me.

– Epicgenius (talk) 21:41, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per WP:SIZE - the history of stations with "Paddington" in the name is complicated, but in common use, the mainline station serves a different purpose than the two tube stations, although the Elizabeth line has put a bit of a spanner in the works. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:27, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Oppose as author of both articles. Although TfL currently shows them as linked on the tube map and combines their user statistics, the two stations are physically separate and treated separately in TfL's count of stations.--DavidCane (talk) 12:19, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per most above. There are four physically separate stations in close proximity that happen to share a name - (1) the mainline station, (2) the H&C station, (3) the Circle, District line and Bakerloo line stations, (4) the Elizabeth line station. They were built at different times by different organisations, have separate histories, and are operationally separate. There is no advantage to a merger but plenty of disadvantages. Thryduulf (talk) 09:31, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]