Talk:Port Washington Branch

Milage

@DanTD: There are differences in milage figures between the articles and the MTA pages. For instance, the Bayside (LIRR station) article states that it is 12.6 miles from Penn, while the MTA page says that it is 10.8 miles away. Which should be trusted? Thanks.--Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 14:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Kew Gardens 613, I think this would have to do with the "as the crow flies" distance, vs the actual travel distance. That said, the MTA can't possibly be correct since the direct distance from Bayside to Penn is 11.6 miles. The actual travel distance is just over 12.6 miles so the Bayside article is correct. epicgenius (talk) 14:46, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

You know if you change, Bayside, you'll also have to change the other stations as well. When was the last time you were there, and did you see any mile markers nearby that indicated the actual miles? I though the Vincent Seyfreid books might've had something, but so far I didn't find anything on the distances yet. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:49, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

UPDATE FYI, Alansohn was the editor who was truly responsible for creating the list, so maybe you'll have to ask him. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 14:55, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Kew Gardens 613, Epicgenius and DanTD, an archived version of the LIRR station details for Bayside I used in 2006 as my reference for the Bayside article and for the Bayside details here in the Port Washington Branch article says "12.6 miles to Penn Station". The current version of the LIRR station details for Bayside says "Mileage to Penn Station 10.8 miles". I cannot explain the change, especially as I cannot recall any adjustments to the rails to cut out 1.8 miles of travel distance; I probably would have noticed.
Digging deeper, the oldest archived version of the current page (from December 22, 2010) shows the distance as 12.6 miles. The 12.6 distance continues until the June 29, 2016 version of the LIRR Bayside page and then the next archived version from July 31, 2016 shows 10.8 miles, as do all subsequent archived versions of the LIRR page for Bayside.
Could 10.8 miles be as the crow flies and 12.6 be the actual distance traveled? Google Maps measures the distance as the crow flies from the Bayside station to Penn Station to be about 12.2 miles, so I can't figure out what 10.8 miles can possible be. I'm not sure which is more correct and the LIRR never explains how the mileage is measured, but the 10.8 mile distance from Bayside to Penn Station is the value shown in the current source. It would appear that all of the relevant station distances should be updated to match the corresponding sources from the LIRR. Alansohn (talk) 15:37, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Alansohn, DanTD, and Kew Gardens 613: All right. Well, it's obvious that 10.8 miles is far too short for a distance. In fact, all the LIRR station pages seem to under-report the distance to Penn by about 1.8 miles, starting from Woodside. I know for a fact that Penn to Long Island City (or the point where the East River Tunnels is under the LIC station) is about 1.8 miles. Maybe the MTA meant distance from LIC instead of from Penn? That's the only possibility that seems to work here. epicgenius (talk) 15:44, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, as far as I can tell, there's no way you can reach Long Island City from anywhere on the Port Washington Branch, unless you transfer at Woodside and take a main line train. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:00, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I think that we can agree that the distance of 10.8 miles from Bayside station to Penn station is wrong, as the straight-line distance is greater than the distance shown. But for the past nine years, the LIRR has explicitly stated that Bayside station is "Mileage to Penn Station 10.8 miles"; I see no possible other way to interpret that statement other than being the distance between the two stations, not to some other intermediate point.

I'm not sure how we can use that distance knowing that it's flat-out wrong, but we can't just arbitrarily assume that they're measuring to the unreachable Long Island City (or perhaps do they mean Sunnyside Yards) and just add 1.8 miles to "fix" it. The "old" distance of 12.6 miles may be more accurate -- it's certainly more reasonable -- but should we use an archived source that's nearly a decade old? Alansohn (talk) 16:02, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Alansohn and DanTD: I'm aware that there's no way to go from the PW branch to LIC without transferring. I think it must have been a mistake when calculating from the Woodside station, and every other PW station's measurement is now incorrect since they rely on the faulty Woodside measurement. It seems that Main Line stations are also affected, e.g. Queens Village is cited as being 13.2 miles from Penn, but when measuring the route using Google Map Maker's ruler, it's actually 15.0 miles. And Lynbrook on the Montauk Branch is allegedly 17.7 miles from Penn when it's really 19.1 miles. I don't see how else they could have gotten such a wrong measurement, particularly seeing as how the alleged distance from Bayside to Penn is shorter than the straight-line distance between the two stations. epicgenius (talk) 16:13, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I just thought of something; is it possible that the East Side Access project may have had some impact on the distance for Port Washington Branch trains? Perhaps a mile and some yards were shaved to get around the project or something like that? ---------User:DanTD (talk) 16:17, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

We're guessing as to why it's wrong and where they're measuring from, but the source is the source and it says 10.8 miles. Any attempt to "correct" it would be a violation of WP:OR. We could indicate in a reference with a note that the distances appear to be factually incorrect, but that's the number we have in the source we have, and the same for all of the other questionable distances for other stations. What other option do we have? Alansohn (talk) 16:18, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't want to do decide anything on the basis of WP:OR any more than anyone else. But I'd still like to know how and why it was changed before we make any edits. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:00, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Here is an employee timetable that can help.--Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 19:29, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

So that's part of the "answer". The employee timetable shows Distance to LIC, even for the Port Washington Branch. It appears that the numbers were copied over to the website, but erroneously listed as "Mileage to Penn Station". I'm not sure why Distance to LIC is a meaningful number, but we have an explanation. Now what numbers do we show? Alansohn (talk) 21:02, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Alansohn, since Kew Gardens's employee timetable is correct in showing that these are actually the distances from LIC (as was my original guess), that means the updated MTA sites are wrong. We should continue to show the mileage from Penn for now. However, when East Side Access does open, the MTA might update the mileage yet again. epicgenius (talk) 23:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Should we used the archived versions as sources to back up the correct distances to Penn Station? Should we include a note explaining that the current sources are incorrect? Once we correct the distance and update the sources to use the archived LIRR pages, how do we avoid someone going to the Bayside article and "correcting" the distance of 12.6 miles to Penn Station back to 10.8, using the current LIRR page as a source? Alansohn (talk) 01:41, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Alansohn, Yes. I think we should use the archived link and in the citation we mark the current link as |dead-url=unfit. epicgenius (talk) 01:54, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Epicgenius, would you like to be the one to make the changes to the Bayside article as a model for the several dozen other articles that would require similar changes? Alansohn (talk) 21:59, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Alansohn, I can probably get to that when I have a free time. There are over 100 articles that need to be fixed. epicgenius (talk) 01:02, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Alansohn, I actually just saw that on the individual stations pages themselves, many of these don't have the refs for the mileage. It's on the main page for each branch, where a footnote with this text "Station pages linked from LIRR Stations" is at the top of the mileage column of each station listing. epicgenius (talk) 01:05, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

If this was fixed, it became wrong again on all the line pages and some of the station pages. See Talk:Long Island Rail Road#Mileage where we came to a similar conclusion. The fix I'm implementing now is referencing the employee timetable and mentioning Long Island City explicitly. Mackensen (talk) 10:05, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Port Washington Branch Template after East Side Access

I can see that an anonymous unregistered user made some good faith attempts to update the Branch template to reflect the opening of service to Grand Central. However this is not a properly complete template. I tried to fix it and was unable too. Once again I would like to ask if someone who knows how to work on these templates can fix it. --IndustryPlantCooper (talk) 17:49, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Like seriously, can someone fix this? --100.37.252.224 (talk) 04:07, 12 April 2023 (UTC)