Talk:Rocky Mountaineer

A 2011-2012 labour dispute which was affecting this train since July 2011, August 2011 with replacement of locked-out workers with scabs appears to have ended September 2012. K7L (talk) 23:27, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Merge with Rail travel in Canada?

I'm thinking this article is a good candidate to be merged with Rail travel in Canada. Our guidelines for what is an article specifically say no articles about companies, although an exception is noted for tourist trains "that travellers ride for their own sakes". The example though, the Trans-Siberian Railway, is an itinerary, as is the Orient Express guide. My own thoughts are it isn't anywhere near as iconic as those two railways (or VIA Rail's The Canadian, which is covered in Across Canada by train), and its service doesn't lend itself to an itinerary very well -- the routes are just two days long and passengers can only get off at the arrival point, the departure point and the overnight stop. Before I plunge forward and merge though, I just want to make sure I'm not missing something. -Shaundd (talk) 22:09, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

While I tend to agree with your points, we do have a general article on tourist trains and there are articles on individual Amtrak routes. In any case I am a bit weary of a consensus consisting of a single person prior to merging and/or redirecting pages, but apparently vfd is not the place for such discussions and I can't think of another one besides this talk page so we will have to live with the possibility of this discussion being overlooked. Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:21, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Out of curiousity, what articles are there on individual Amtrak routes? I see the general guide to Rail travel in the United States but no links to WV guides about specific routes. -Shaundd (talk) 22:36, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

California Zephyr, among others. Also this discussion may be relevant insofar as it touches on the related topic of private resort islands... Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

California Zephyr is an itinerary, which is an option for this article. I just don't think it's a good one (see above). -Shaundd (talk) 23:38, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you on that point, but I wanted to point that out. Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:46, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

No worries. It's good to have other articles as reference. -Shaundd (talk) 00:09, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Why is it a bad idea to turn this into an itinerary? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:28, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know if it's a bad idea, my thought is more that it's not very useful. The train is a tourist train not a passenger rail service, so you (1) get on at Jasper or Banff, (2) disembark at Kamloops at the end of day to stay in the hotel, (3) re-board the train in the morning, and (4) disembark in Vancouver (or vice-versa if leaving from Vancouver). It's similar for the Vancouver-Whistler-Jasper service except the overnight stop is in Quesnel. I'm sure we could write an itinerary, but there isn't a lot to write about and I'm not sure how much value it's going to add over above the info you get on the company's website.

Another possibility is to write a travel topic about seeing the Canadian Rocky Mountains by train and mention both Via's service and the Rocky Mountaineer, as well as options for flying to/from Jasper-Vancouver if you want to train one way and plane the other. That seems more potentially useful to me. -Shaundd (talk) 02:25, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

(starting at the left again) And there is also the "minor" issue of this being essentially an article about a single private company... Hobbitschuster (talk) 16:35, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I like Shaundd's thinking, but I don't see why an article about a private railway is inherently less valid than one about a public railway. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:24, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Not inherently no. But articles like rail travel in Germany cannot avoid being about one company mostly. That does not mean we should create an article about Deutsche Bahn (even though de-WV did precisely that), but we can tolerate an article that is wholly or mostly about a state owned (quasi) monopoly. I am not so sure whether we can say the same about marginal private companies, though. I fear that our policies on this issue are murky at best if you get really down to. Or if there is a policy (wiaa would indicate no private company gets an article) it is not strictly enforced for various reasons, some of which do actually make sense... Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:03, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ikan, which part of my thinking do you like -- the merge the article part, or the turn it into a Rocky-Mountains-by-rails travel topic? (I'm not sure based on your comment) -Shaundd (talk) 23:22, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Turning it into a "Rocky-Mountains-by-rails" travel topic. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:06, 15 January 2016 (UTC)