Talk:Thameslink and Great Northern

Article Coverage

Govia have indicated that the former First Capital Connect part of the Thameslink Southern & Great Northern franchise will be rebranded as Thameslink, with the Southern and Gatwick Express parts of the franchise to retain their separate identities.

Thus think this article should focus on that part of the franchise, in much the same way as the two parts of the current Southern franchise retain separate articles. D47817 (talk) 04:18, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Article title

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Railways#Thameslink_move -mattbuck (Talk) 07:47, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Move this to Govia Thameslink. The current article title is convoluted to say the least. MRSC (talk) 17:39, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

{{subst:RMtalk|Thameslink (train operating company)|Article name was in use for a company that traded between 1997 and 2006. A new company will commence using the same name in September 2014. It was agreed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Thameslink move that the new company should take the existing article name and the existing article be renamed Thameslink (train operating company 1997-2006) and all of the existing wikilinks be redirected, this has been actioned.}}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by D47817 (talk • contribs)

This has now been resolved as the name has been confirmed as Govia Thameslink Railway. Simply south ...... time, department skies for just 8 years 18:55, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Split proposal

I'm proposing that we split this article in order to have separate articles for the Thameslink and Great Northern brands. They are listed separately in the train operators navigation box, and are essentially two different sets of operations mixed together at present. I have already separated the fleet table for each brand, to help find out which brand uses which type of rolling stock. Separating the articles will allow readers to find out about the individual operations far more easily than they can now. Each brand of GTR will then have its own individual article: Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express. Cloudbound (talk) 21:33, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Oppose as they are strictly speaking one franchise. If they were two, then maybe, but not right at this moment, they are not. NordicDragon Talkpage 14:14, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - It's the same TOC. For that matter, the Southern page needs to be made distinct from the Southern (2000-2015) brand. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:29, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

It isn't worth it, until some of their metro routes transfer either to Thameslink or London Overground, then it can be done. NordicDragon Talkpage 15:38, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Massively in favour, as they have quite different routes, rolling stock, performance, etc. Also, it seems to be usual on Wikipedia for different brands of the same parent company to have their own page, eg. Waitrose and John Lewis (department store). Also, if we think all routes operated by one franchise should be on the same page, then why isn't Southern included in this page??? Either there should be 3 separate pages for the 3 brands, or 1 page for the whole franchise. At the moment, it's neither one nor the other, which doesn't make sense. So that makes it 2 votes each way. Any other views? Mmitchell10 (talk) 09:23, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

@Mmitchell10 Southern is independently notable as it existed before the current franchise an still operates under the same brand, and so it wouldn't make sense to make the Southern article about the previous franchise, nor would there be any point in duplicating the information here. Generally speaking trading names don't get their own article as per WP:BRANCH. Waitrose and John Lewis are an exception which makes sense as they specialize in different products. Not to mention Thameslink and Great Northern currently share a website! Mainline421 (talk) 23:31, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Mainline421. I take the point that Thameslink and Great Northern appear 'closer' to each other than Southern and Gatwick Express, but I think this is only legacy issues due to the fact they were the ones originally paired together, before Southern and Gatwick Express joined them in July 2015. I don't think Govia intend to treat them as a pair longer term? It wasn't just Southern which existed as a brand before the current franchise, didn't Thameslink and Great Northern also? I find it quite confusing at the moment: Southern and Gatwick Express each have single pages which cover the current franchisee plus historic info. Thameslink and Great Northern have a combined page for the current franchisee, plus separate pages (Thameslink and Great Northern Route) which are more historic. Meanwhile there's also a Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern page. Mmitchell10 (talk) 21:58, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

@Mmitchell10 Thameslink and Great Northern services were previously operated by FirstGroup under the First Capital Connect brand. Govia did previously operate the Thamelink part from 1997 to 2006 under the Thameslink brand though. Great Norther only previously existed from 1846 to 1923. Thameslink and Great Northern Route are about the routes (we should probably rename the Thameslink one to Thameslink (route)) and Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern is about the franchise (concession) which I think we should rename to Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern (franchise). If we rename those two articles I think everything will be solved here. Mainline421 (talk) 14:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Mainline421 I think you could be on to something with the making the Thameslink route article more obvious. I'm going to remove the split proposal tags as concensus isn't there for a split. I do however think all the related articles could be made simpler, so I'll be looking into that. Cloudbound (talk) 23:34, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, this sounds like a good solution. I think it could also be helpful to expand slightly the lists of links to other pages/disambiguation pages, which are at the top of the various articles. I'll see if that's sensible. Mmitchell10 (talk) 18:57, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Noticing both the irregularity of this page, and the previous attempt to merge this article into its respective counterparts back in 2016 (unclear consensus), I decided to open this new discussion.

This article, as stated in the lead paragraph, focuses on the brands of Thameslink and Great Northern - "Thameslink and Great Northern are the brand names used by the Govia Thameslink Railway train operating company on the Thameslink and Great Northern routes..." - as a single unit with brief mention of their history of being merged into a single rail franchise from 2006 through 2014. However, even though this article isn't positioned to cover the past TL/GN franchise, the franchise no longer exists regardless, and was combined with the South Central franchise (covered in the Southern article) to form the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise from July 2015, with a considerably more extensive history from privatisation through to the present already covered in each routes' respective articles. Though both are operated by Govia Thameslink Railway, GTR considers and operates them as separate services that travel to different destinations, despite any overlap of services.

This article covers the following:

• Brief history: covered collectively by individual station articles and the Thameslink Programme article
• Proposed services (now implemented) under "franchise commitments": covered each individual route's articles and the Thameslink Programme article (most proposals stem from this programme)
• Current destination services: covered by each individual route's articles
• Rolling stock: covered by each individual route's articles
• Brief section on "performance reviews": can easily be merged into each route's articles

This article is primarily a duplicate or information already covered in arguably more extensive detail on each route's respective articles. – Nick Mitchell 98 ^talk 08:43, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't see TGN as warranting its own article. GTR should be one article, and redirects to that from the various brand names. While yes there will be some duplication between the articles this is reasonable when you have a TOC so intricately linked to a major piece of infrastructure. -mattbuck (Talk) 23:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@Mattbuck: Actually, that does seem like a better idea to merge TGN directly into the GTR article and maintain the sub-brand articles as-is. Good thought. – Nick Mitchell 98 ^talk 02:50, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

@Mattbuck: If there are no objections from other users within one week, I'll make the move to merge TGN directly into the GTR article in a similar style to West Midlands Trains. – Nick Mitchell 98 ^talk 01:27, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Mitchell 98: go for it. I'd also suggest merging in Southern (Govia Thameslink Railway) for the same reason, but that will be a more complicated job as there's a lot of pre-GTR to keep separate in another article. -mattbuck (Talk) 07:23, 4 July 2018 (UTC)