Talk:Belgian coast by tram

Awesome work

I made a sort of random request for this article just a few days ago. But thanks to the impressive work by @Wauteurz so far, at the speed the article is growing we may have a new FTT candidate before this week is over. Ypsilon (talk) 15:10, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

My pleasure! Frankly, if anything I have found a destination for my break next autumn, so I'm working on this for my own benefit as well. I was aware of the line's existence already, but never really looked into it before, so thank you for giving me the perfect excuse for doing so! -- Wauteurz (talk) 15:26, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, this is really good work. I've known of this tramway for a long time too (possibly since getting my first edition of Metro Maps of the World in 2003), and would also like to visit for a ride. Not sure how many days it would require to do it justice, though the three-day pass that's available might be a clue. Looking forward to seeing this article continue to grow and will chip in where I can if helpful.

In English, the definite article is an optional appendage to "Hook of Holland", but compulsory when talking about "the Hook". I think in Dutch you also say "de Hoek"? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:18, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I've never heard anyone call Hoek van Holland "de Hoek", always either "Hoek" or its full name, but "de Hoek" might well be a local name? Dutch Wikipedia at least seems to back that up. Also, I'm from the east of the country myself, so it might well be that that plays a role in my perception of the name. I don't expect the average Rotterdammer to know what I refer to if I were to speak of Grunn or Eanske.

I'm actually not sure the three-day pass is that fit for purpose. As an example, I currently have a three-day pass for Stockholm, which fits my stay perfectly, but if I were to see everything I'd want to, I'd probably need a two-week pass. I guess it depends a lot on how much you intend to travel each day (and if it's the entire line you want to travel or just a section of it) and how much you want to get off of the tram for to visit or see. Judging by what I've seen for Ostend so far, I can see people spending three days there alone.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 18:35, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I definitely want to ride the whole line, but would have to review this article and the city articles to determine how many times I'd want to get off! The one- and three-day passes are so ridiculously cheap that it would be easy enough to combine them into the number of days you needed.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:01, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Similar attractions in Western Europe?

I put this in a comment in the Go next paragraph, but this is probably a better place to put this. I would like to add a short list of similar services/attractions in Go next, but I'm coming up short. So far, I have two, and two are hardly a list worth listing:

• Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, as suggested by TT!;
• Rijdend Tram Museum ^(NL), a heritage tramway on the Brouwersdam, Zeeland, the Netherlands.

Any and all suggestions are welcome, so long as they're not too far-flung from the Belgian coast.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 15:59, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

You're right, this is a better place.

Also, it just occurred to me that you probably wanted to keep that guide promotion as the most recent edit for longer than 2 minutes. Sorry that I cut in and ruined that. This is a great article, and I agree it could be a star candidate in future.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:49, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

How about the upside down monorail in Wuppertal opened in 1901?

Also, it's a great article and I'm happy to see that the itinerary part too is now completed. --Ypsilon (talk) 17:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both! The guide promotion is an edit I made quite hastily, and I personally don't think too much of it, so don't worry about following that up with another edit, TT! I'd like to see this article reach star status someday, but it's probably better to have a different discussion thread to see what's left to add.

The Wuppertal Schwebebahn is a good call. It might not be coastal, but it does mostly follow the flow of the river Wupper, so there's the wet element at the very least. I've also looked at at few coastal railways, and perhaps @TT! and other Brits can shed some light on whether the following railways would be good inclusions in the list:

• North Wales Coast Line - Chester to Bangor (Wales), which seems to follow the coastline pretty close for a lot of its stretch.
• Mayflower line - Manningtree to Harwich, following the mouth of the river Stour.
• Avocet Line - Exeter to Exmouth, following the mouth of the river Exe, which flows into the Channel at Exmouth.

Wauteurz (talk) 19:47, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Striving for stars

I don't think it's a secret that I'd like this to become the fifth star itinerary in the near future, it's just that I don't fully know what it still needs to get to that point. Going through the itinerary status page's demands that I'm not completely certain about:

• "Has a map showing the route of the itinerary" - The maps are definitely there, and it's a question of whether a set of 'offline maps' would be of benefit at all. I personally doubt that;
• "Prose is not only near-perfect grammatically but also tight, effective, and enjoyable" - I don't think that this is an issue, but I am a non-native speaker, even if I've been speaking English for a vast majority of my life. It'd be appreciated if one or multiple people would have a look into prose and grammar actually meeting this requirement;
• "At least one good-quality photo accompanies the article; preferably 2-3 showing famous or important attractions." - This one's a bit hard to verify easily, so I've gone ahead and done so already. Within listings, there's a baker's dozen of quality images (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13), and the article itself shows three (14, 15, 16) as well as a single Wiki Loves Heritage winner (17). All in all, that's over 10% of all images that are distinguished in one way or another.

Some more content for the Go next paragraph is underway, as the discussion above shows. One thing I can see being an issue though, would be the {{Seealso}} link to De Panne, which at present is completely empty aside from a pagebanner. I'm not sure if that really is a problem for reaching star status though? I'm raising this here instead of by doing a star nomination, since I want to filter out any obvious issues before I nominate the article. So, if there's anything else I'm missing, please let me know!
-- Wauteurz (talk) 12:05, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Accessibility, placenames and further feedback response

I'll use this thread to clarify some of the questions you raise, as well as to justify some choices I've made in the past. Pinging ThunderingTyphoons! as a lot of this is in response to his wonderful copy-editing.

What makes this one-of-a-kind?

In short, it's everything in the lead paragraph together. It is, for as far as I have been able to find, the longest coastal tramway, but also one-of-a-kind in that it provides public transport along more than 90% of a single country's coastline. I'll leave it up to you whether this sentence is additive or not.

48 to 146 units

These refer to the Urbos 100 or Zeelijner stock. The current order that is being rolled out at the moment consists of 48 trams, but can be scaled up with another 98 for a total of 146 trams. For as far as I know, De Lijn hasn't yet scaled up this order. This is probably a likely candidate for being up there with things that aren't really of note to the traveller.

Any improvements to accessibility since 2019?

Not that I know of. The Kusttram's own website links this PDF, dated May 2019. It includes some now defunct halts like Duinbergen, Watertoren and omits some of the recent additions like Heist, Willemspark, though I assume the new halts are built with accessibility in mind. I did manage to find this, which is a summary of the friendliest halts when it comes to accessibility, but is sadly only available in Dutch. I plan to integrate it into the Accessibility paragraph soon.

On another note, I can't get the markers for accessible halts to look good with {{Handicap-icon}} or {{rint|wheelchair}} , but still would like to convey this information within the marker. Would it be a problem to simply underline them like the recommended train stations?

Placenames

I wasn't familiar with Bruges-on-Sea being a name that is used. I thought it was up there with the abandoned English names for places in continental Europe (for example, Flushing for Vlissingen and Mechlin for Mechelen). In the #By train paragraph, I did go for the actual placenames used in that region. So, places in Wallonia are listed in French, places in Flanders are listed in Dutch. The NMBS/SNCB uses both French and Dutch placenames, but the British names are nowhere to be found when travelling by train unless they match the French names, and thus aren't very useful in this context. It's the link to the corresponding article that helps in those cases. This to me seems to be the fairest way to deal with Belgium's three languages. It also creates a situation where stations are named things like "Ghent-Sint-Pieters", which makes no sense as it's two parts Dutch, one part English. This is probably why Wikipedia just sticks with "Gent-Sint-Pieters" instead of "Gand-Saint-Pierre" or "Ghent-Saint-Peter".

-- Wauteurz (talk) 22:11, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, this looks fine to me:

Serving these is the halt 1 Wenduine, Harendijke, which also serves two panorama viewpoints.

You could underline the name, but that would then be two uses of underlining in the article with different meanings.

I see no problem with using the English city names that readers will be familiar with but with the station name in the local language. After all, we say Paris Nord or Paris Gare du Nord, not Paris North (not the best example in writing; you'll have to imagine me saying "PA-riss", and not "pa-RHEE"); the French say Londres-St Pancras, not Londres-Saint-Pancrace. Also, I noticed the Brussels stations were already rendered entirely in English, so it wasn't very consistent.

AFAIK, Bruges-on-Sea has never been used. That was a tongue-in-cheek comment on my part.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:25, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

There's just one problem with that way of labelling halts: The icon doesn't get included in the marker itself. My problem with it is mostly that it doesn't look appealing to have a larger icon between a smaller icon and smaller text,  Like  so. I could instead make a small change to {{handicap-icon}} that allows us to scale the icon down from the default 20px to something more fitting in this context. The line height in the average paragraph is only about 14px after all.

There's indeed a good case to make for everything ideally being in the same language, though I must say there's exceptions to the English placename, local station name. Almost every non-Dutch speaker in the Netherlands calls our main railway stations "Central" (Amsterdam Central, Utrecht Central, etc.), and I have heard Dutch people refer to London's Saint Pancras as Londen Sint Pancras (though Pancratius is the Dutch name of the saint). The reason I wrote Brussels' stations in English is because it, unlike Flanders and Wallonia, does not have a single official language, so one would have to find some way of combining "Brussel Zuid" and "Bruxelles-Midi" into one. English is just much simpler in that case. So long as the name isn't a far deviation from what it might be labelled as on trains, I don't really mind making all stations English that much. Thankfully the more confusing city names are majority French, so we won't have to fuss about Doornik or Rijsel.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 22:48, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Go ahead and make a smaller wheelchair symbol if you'd prefer. The benefit of integrating smaller symbols into the listings will be for them to display on the dynamic map, which is better for accessibility.

I ran dummy searches on the English version of the Belgian Rail website and the English names for cities yielded results. That would also adhere to our naming conventions.

On the other hand, the British National Rail journey planner doesn't support international searches except to Ireland, but the live arrivals and departures board for St Pancras does include Eurostar. Their solution to foreign-language station names seems kind of random: among tonight's departures, I can see "Paris Nord", "Bruxelles Midi" and "Amsterdam C.S."--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added {{handicap-icon}} wherever I could.

National Rail's approach doesn't seem that random to me. Paris Nord and Bruxelles Midi are those stations' names in the most-spoken language of that place. The only thing I can't wrap my head around is the "C.S." suffix for Amsterdam. It's an antiquated way of indicating "Centraal Station". Nowadays, the dots are omitted when written down, and the stations' own name signs just write out "Centraal".

To resolve the topic of station names, I think it's just best to leave places in English, and stations in whatever names are used locally. That then only leaves Brussels-South, for which I would suggest using "Brussels Zuid/Midi".
-- Wauteurz (talk) 18:44, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Excellent job on the new wheelchair symbol! Yep, I can get behind "Brussels Zuid/Midi".--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:03, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Done.

I also changed "Zaventem Airport" to "Brussels Airport", as that's the official name and one most likely to be used by international travellers.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:13, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Also, how about adding the logo to tram stops with NMBS connection? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Star nom

It's taken two months to get this article from a request to a guide article, which is currently nominated for Featured Travel Topic, ideally to be featured in an upcomming summer. Since my request for improvements to be made has yet to yield any suggestions, and since feedback on the DOTM-nomination has been very positive thus far, I reckon I should just nominate it for a star sooner rather than later. I have made some remarks on the talk page request linked above about the state of the article right now, but I'd be surprised if any of it is a huge issue.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 16:05, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

• Support. A few redlinks need to be fixed, and some small formatting changes to the table, for example, need to be made, but as these are easily fixed, they do not deter me from supporting a star article nomination. This article is one of the few "complete" articles on Wikivoyage because it has been written by a dedicated editor to cover every detail as a complete travel guide. This makes it a great example of what a "star" article should be. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 16:19, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you for the kind words, @SelfieCity. They're much appreciated!

  I've gone ahead and removed all unnecessary redlinks excluding one to Veurne, which I plan to add in the near future. Other than that, the links to De Panne are redlinks in all but name, but in fairness, it was only created last August. Anywho, the table has also been reformatted to hopefully be a bit less intrusive, but let me know if you had other problems with it.
  -- Wauteurz (talk) 18:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

  No, I'm really happy with this article. It's great to see its star potential! --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 18:55, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

• Close. No doubt this will become a star article, though I do have a few points to raise (mostly concerning the Wikivoyage:Image policy).
  • There is a gallery-like set of images in § Running stock. Should this be an exception to the Wikivoyage:Image policy?
  • Likewise, there are some left-aligned images.
  • Sometimes some images leave a lot of unnecessary white space. Should these be reorganised?

Otherwise, it's looking really good. It's practically "complete", and it's nice to have our star article from Belgium. Nicely done, Wauteurz. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 23:06, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!

The gallery-like template is {{multiplemaps}}, once known as {{multiple image}}. It's used site-wide for mostly listing maps side-by-side, but also sees some use for displaying multiple images together for comparison, which is the main purpose in this particular use case. The way I see it, it's better than listing rolling stock in images above and below each other, as that quickly gives the impression that it's a technical page about what kind of trams you'll encounter, which it definitely isn't. It's just nice to be able to identify the trams you'll be using, so you know what you can expect in the ways of provisions and accessibility. I essentially took the 'format' from Rail travel in the Netherlands and made it work here. Rest assured though, within a few years that template will only list two, or will possibly just be a single image, as the BN's are being replaced with the Zeelijner, and the HermeLijn stock might be retired from coastal duties.

About alignment, {{panorama}} is centre-aligned. I don't think I have influence over that. Making it a normal image would take up a lot of width, which doesn't work well across different monitors. The only other left-aligned image is aligned as such to not push other images, which are equally additive to the article, too far down from their corresponding paragraphs. It's necessity more than looks that prompted that choice.

Your third point I don't think I can answer to, since I'm not quite sure what you mean by it? An example or two would definitely help, and I'll see if it's something I can mend tomorrow :)
-- Wauteurz (talk) 23:51, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

The white space problem usually appears at specific browser window widths, or widths above or below some threshold. You could check by changing widths on a wide enough monitor. For my standard width, the only problematic place was at the top, caused by the nomination templates. I moved them up above the lead image, which fixed the problem – and that's where they should be. I also moved down the lead image to Understand, which is the standard placement, not to interfere with the banner. In a wide window, the lead is now too short; is there some sentence in Understand that could be copied here, or something else to be added? (We try to have a bit more substantial leads anyway.) –LPfi (talk) 06:48, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Opening this again, I'd love to be able to put a star on this article before the end of the year. I believe the points above have all been dealt with, aside from the 'gallery' template, to which there isn't much of a good alternative. Is there anything else that needs mending, or are we all content with upgrading the article status here?
-- Wauteurz (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Comment - A few months ago, while the prose was good, it certainly wasn't perfect. I was going through the whole article, section by section, probably got about half of the way down the article as-was, but life got in the way. I'd like to be able to check it again.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:23, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Of course! Take your time. Before the end of the year would be nice, but I'm well-aware that 12 days is short notice. Before the article's time as FTT next summer is the actual deadline for when I think this should be wrapped up, so there's plenty of time still.

I'm not a native English speaker and I never will be, so I don't doubt that prose can be improved. I'll keep an eye on the changes to the article, so feel free to use the edit summaries should you need some specific input from me :)
-- Wauteurz (talk) 16:48, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I'll do my best, but can't guarantee it will be done in 12 days. Others may also find that my version is not perfect either or has its own issues, so it's not as though I'll have the final say on upgrading the article!--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:09, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but each tram stop should ideally have a marker (obviously use a distinct colour from POIs and railway stations).--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:11, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Spotted two issues:

• Several listings or markers are nothing more than names with no context; they need qualitative information. Sea Life is a well-known aquarium brand, but what makes this one worth visiting? I can guess that Hubertmolen is some sort of mill, but only by virtue of knowing a bit of Dutch (een muis in een molen in Mooi Amsterdam!); there surely has to more to write about than the fact it dates from 1880. What's a Duinbos? This sentence, where half the words are untranslated Dutch, is particularly perplexing: "Next is 2 De Haan, Vosseslag, which is the access point to the 1 Kijkuit, the third and final of the Duinbossen around De Haan en Wenduine." I've just added some context to the equally-mystifying Noordzeebad listing.
• The map and photo combo at the top of Nieuwpoort-Bad — De Panne has somehow squeezed the subheading (Groenedijk and Oostduinkerke) and 'see also' into oblivion on my screen. I can't see the same issue on any of the other section headers. I am using the new skin (which I dislike, but it's what most of our readers will see) on desktop Google Chrome. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:16, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I've hopefully amended those listings to where things are more understandable. I'd translate Kijkuit to Lookout as well if it weren't the name of that small nature preserve. If there's more of them to add onto, let me know. It's way too easy for me as a native Dutch speaker to read over those things :)

The heading-squeezing was mostly because Vector 2022 has a narrower area for the article's content. The layout worked fine in old Vector (at 16:9 screens at least), but if the 2022 version is the future, it's probably better to cater to that. I've moved the image of those dunes over to the right, which also resolves one of the problematic image placements brought up a few months ago. There'll be a few too many images on the right for some screen lay-outs now, but it is what it is.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 17:05, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Great. There's probably more to say about that windmill, but I'll look into that.

Yes, I meant vector, not skin. I'm on 2022 only because it's the default for logged-out and new users, and it's important to view WV as they'll see it.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:03, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

• Comment - I think I've finished my proofreading (at long last), but it might be worth someone else going over it with fresh eyes.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:56, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

  Regardless of the time it's taken, what matters is that it's done. Dankjewel, TT!! I think it's fair to say that we're probably both blind to any possible remaining mistakes in the article, so if a third person could have a look-over (perhaps we'll come full circle with Ypsilon doing that final check?), then we can probably head towards a star consensus before the article gets featured this summer.
  ― Wauteurz (talk) 19:54, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Alstjeblieft. Very kind way of saying "better late than never". The only thing keeping me from supporting the star nom is the blindness you mentioned.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 20:48, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Hopefully I'll have enough uninterrupted time tomorrow to go through it, at a quick glance it looks good but there's one redlink to Atlantikwall. Ypsilon (talk) 16:56, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

...and another redlink in Go next - are they something hindering Star status? I don't know much about Star nominations and their requirements because I haven't had much interest in them. That said, I don't find anything wrong with the article. --Ypsilon (talk) 18:19, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

SelfieCity brought up redlinks before, and at the time I deleted what wasn't essential and amended the rest. I do want to write articles on the Atlantikwall and Veurne respectively sometime in the future, but I can't guarantee that they'll be live before, say, the end of the year. I've gone ahead and removed both redlinks for that reason - the article looks better without them.

I'll ping previous commenters SHB2000, SelfieCity and LPfi in: The points you brought up in October should be ironed out at this point. How do you stand on this article now? Do we have your support to go ahead and promote it to a star? ― Wauteurz (talk) 19:19, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Looks good to me now. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:34, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't have the time to check the article carefully now, but I don't remember having seen any problems with it when I did. My comment above was about the lead length, which seems unproblematic now. I am a bit worried about the view that redlinks are ugly, but that doesn't affect the nomination; it should probably be discussed elsewhere. –LPfi (talk) 06:39, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

• Comment – Since there doesn't seem to be any opposition any more, I'm leaving this for the weekend should anyone still want to address anything. If there's none, I'll upgrade the article come next Monday.
  ― Wauteurz (talk) 14:28, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Outcome – Upgraded. ― Wauteurz (talk) 09:56, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Yayyy! --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)