Talk:NZR RM class (Midland)

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We would like to add a photo. But all the photos we know of are still within copyright, and the railcar has not been preserved so we can't take our own to show on this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vogel Era (talk • contribs) 08:43, 18 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Railcar vs rail-car, vs. rail cas vs rail motor vs rail-motor vs railmotor[edit]

Looking through contemporaneous newspaper listings at this archive, I can see little support for the idea that "rail motor" was unused and that the vehicles were always referred to as railcars both in service and in all published literature. Railmotor and its variants appear to be seen as an old-fashioned usage as time goes by, but the ratio of cites is about one-to-two. Anmccaff (talk) 14:45, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question is what name was given to the vehicles by NZR, by the newspapers of the day, and by the general public when the vehicles were in service. The main terms initially were "rail-car" and railcar", before the literature settled on the non-hyphenated "railcar". I consider "rail-car" and "railcar" to be essentially identical, just typological convention that took a while to settle. In support of "railcar" we have:

articles on the proposed new types of vehicles in NZ Railways Magazine in 1935 and 36
many articles in newspapers in 1935 and 36 on the new types of vehicles proposed or in development
statements by the general manager of NZR before similar cars were built, when they were doing promotional tours, when they were in service, and when writers were looking back at that general manager's career.
articles in newspapers quoting statements by NZR engineers.
many articles in newspapers announcing the new railcar service.
term used in NZR working timetable for the service provided by RM 20 and 21 (unpublished, unfortunately)
all articles in newspapers describing events that happened to the railcars.
article in NZ Railways Staff Bulletin in 1955.
term used in all reviews of railcar development in NZ published 1940s-present day.

As may be appreciated, I have spent many hours in libraries (Wellington library and National Library of NZ) and archives (NZRLS and Alexander Turnbull Library - mostly an unpublished archive) to accumulate this overall picture.

In support of "rail motor" or "rail-motor" we have:

Captions in some photographs in the ATL that use the term (most photo captions use "rail-car/railcar")
A few newspaper articles around the time of introduction that use the term (perhaps quoting NZR staff involved in construction)

Overall, I have found "rail-motor" to be confined to very few items. For the Wikipedia Article, I consider there is no merit in using "rail-motor" ahead of "railcar". Vogel Era (talk) 06:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Beginning of service[edit]

The start of revenue service has been changed, using a cite which does not detail this. Anmccaff (talk) 15:02, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The reference (No 9 currently) indicates the start of revenue service for RM20 by the date of the paper issue. There was a lot of advertising that the railcar would start service on Monday 3 August, both in The Press (the paper subsidising the service) and in other papers (I cite two Press articles (Nos 10 and 11 currently) in support of this). Then, in the Press article of Wednesday 5 August is says that the car ran for the first time "today." The "today", of course is the 5th. NZ Parliamentary records (published) that I have seen cited (in published literature), also give a date of 5 August for revenue service beginning. (I haven't located any reason for the delay in published or unpublished literature.) I considered that three references was adequate support for this detail. Vogel Era (talk) 05:59, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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