Talk:NZR RM class (88 seater)

First Draft

This is my first Wiki article about a class close to my heart, the Fiats. Although I believe all the information is accurate I do not have access to my library (I'm based in the UK) and the story can be considerably fleshed out, especially with more details regarding the introduction to service and with dates for withdrawals of service. Bevanjlewis 14:01, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

If you're still around ... any idea at what point the derating happened? Is that when the Fiat engineers came and rebuilt the engines, maybe adjusting them to have a lower power (or, more importantly for the crankcases' sakes, lower *torque*... so possibly they would have ended up running at higher rpm more of the time despite producing less useful power...?) in exchange for overheating less often and lasting longer between catastrophic failures and overhauls? What kind of slowdown would it have caused? 370hp, never mind 420hp is quite a high power output for an 11-tonne train, or even 22-tonne if a full payload doubled its gross weight, after all, probably better than many cars of the time - heck, my own first car from 1990 would at least be equivalent to the higher rating when fully packed out with cargo and a roof-rack, and it managed some pretty steep hills at 30~40mph in that condition on a couple occasions, even though that meant grinding along in 2nd gear (in a 4-speed car good for 90mph) - surely they would have ended up suffering climbing / standing-start adhesion problems moreso than motive power? 46.208.118.226 (talk) 22:13, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Cover Photo Location?

As a Feilding boy, I always notice when the town's name pops up. And as a boy I spent way too much time at the Feilding Yard and Station, and I can't see how that photo could be taken at Feilding - it has a curving track too close to the platform and looks like a second main passing the platform, whereas Feilding was set on straight track, on the main. Could it have been taken at Marton or even Palmy station, where there are main lines bypassing the station? Doyletr (talk) 22:19, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

• The original Flickr caption says it's Feilding, but I agree, it's a straight track, but so is PN, so unlikely to be either of those and it's too rural for Marton. Is it preferable to delete the location until someone recognises where it is? The stations it called at were Wellington, Porirua, Paraparaumu, Otaki, Levin, Palmerston N, Feilding, Marton, Aramoho, Waverley, Patea, Hawera, Eltham, Stratford, Inglewood, New Plymouth. Johnragla (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

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Primary sources

I am very concerned about primary sources cited in this article, both their use and the frankly appalling quality of the citations.

Footnotes 2 through to 12 (i.e. all but two of the citations) are from unpublished primary sources in Archives New Zealand's collection of NZ Railways files. The article probably violates WP:NOR and represents somebody's interpretation of the documents (the editor who added them was not logged in). Worse, the citations are almost impossible to follow. They state "National Archives", a name that Archives NZ has not had for literally twenty years, they give the street where it is currently located for some ineffable reason, and they do not provide a skerrick of information sufficient to find the records containing these letters. Only one (one!) footnote actually gives a file number, "file twin set railcars 1955 34/280 A". If you put 34/280 A into the advanced search on Archway, all you get is "Sorry, there are no results for this search. Please try again." If you put in "twin set railcars", you do actually get a bunch of files, but none with the right call number. One footnote misidentifies Alan Gandell as "G.T. Gandell"; another is so flimsy as to only say "CME J.Black", which is of no use to anyone!

Luckily, I actually know what is going on here because I am writing a history of New Zealand's passenger rail network. I've not only used these letters, I have photographed all (or nearly all) of those cited here. It turns out that record number above is very close to correct: it should be 34/280A, no space; likewise, its name is "twinset railcars", only one space. The thing is, 34/280A has 39 parts, so even if this were appropriate to cite, whoever wrote this needed to state which part so that it's findable. It also appears whoever wrote it only used 34/280A and was unaware of other series on these railcars, including ADQD 1904/833/60, which is far more useful for the general history of the Fiats. 34/280A is the very technical files of the chief mechanical engineer chock-full of minutiae that is mostly only appropriate for a focused railway history, not an encyclopaedia.

I'm not sure what to do here. Besides the fact I'm fairly inactive on Wikipedia nowadays, I don't think I'm in a position to edit this on account of my own forthcoming publication. Perhaps once the book is out, another editor can make use of it if they think it useful. I don't think the primary sources are used in a misleading or inaccurate fashion here, but I think cleaning up this article to cite and use these sources better would violate WP:NOR. But deleting the content would lose valuable information that should mostly be verifiable in secondary published sources.

Anyway, I invite comment and maybe some more active editors can clean up this, uh, trainwreck. Axver (talk) 02:58, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Axver, I've been working on a major tidy-up of referencing on NZ rail transport articles for the past year or so, and this has been an issue at the back of my mind. Basically I've assumed good faith that the references are correct, albeit sparse. --LJ Holden 03:39, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Cheers. Yeah I would assume good faith too. I just twigged that the citation of "CME J.Black" is another error—the chief mechanical engineer at the time was R.F. Black (and, for the citations from 1966, I think it was H.Z. Purchase but would need to check). Also, the paragraph that currently ends with footnote 7 has some content issues. It doesn't contextualise the 1952 royal commission, and somewhat misrepresents its recommendations. Really, lots of work to be done on this article, both in sourcing and improving the content. Axver (talk) 04:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@Axver: I've found a good secondary source(s) that cover most of the original research - a series of articles from the NZ Railfan published 2007 - 2008. --LJ Holden 03:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Intro section, engine issues

Just casually noticed the following lines read as

"The crankcases were not strong enough to absorb the power of the diesel engines that drove the railcars.[18] These issues were considered so serious that NZR called a meeting with Drewry and Fiat in March 1957.[19] Ten of the railcars had wrecked crankcases and blown motors.[19] Following the meeting, a number of replacement motors and crankcases were ordered in late 1957.[19]"

Does anyone have the Railfan article this references handy? ("Perfect, Colin (March 2008). "The Drewery Articulated 'Twin-Set' Railcars – Part 2". Railfan" pages 45 and 46)

The wording of this section implies that the crankcases are a separate part of the railcar to the engines, when actually a crankcase is an integral part of an engine. I do not know if transmissions is what is meant instead, or what. A engine can be definitely blown if it had a wrecked crankcase however. Clarification required. User:LJ Holden are you able to help with that by any chance?

Thanks

Yak52fan (talk) 02:23, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Yep I have that magazine - will look it up to verify. I'll also check Dr Andre Brett's book as well. --LJ Holden 08:04, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

How was that going? XD I forgot too. Yak52fan (talk) 03:39, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh sorry - yes got distracted. Will see if I can find it --LJ Holden 09:26, 7 June 2023 (UTC)