Sounder commuter rail (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

• Featured article candidates/Sounder commuter rail/archive1

Nominator(s): SounderBruce 01:50, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

After a decade of sitting on some notes, I have finally finished writing an article on one of my username's inspirations: a commuter train system that serves the Seattle area. It has two lines, runs somewhat infrequently, but boasts great views (especially on the N Line, which runs along Puget Sound). A GAN review was completed last month and I feel that there wasn't substantial changes needed to prepare for a run at FAC. The first line turns 25 in September and I hope to have a TFA ready for that day. SounderBruce 01:50, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'll take a look at this one. It will be good to get some advance knowledge before I visit Seattle in a couple of months...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 07:34, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll post a review over the weekend.

• As an early comment, the article would benefit from a better, and especially more interesting, infobox photo to get readers' attention. The current image is cluttered and doesn't depict anything clearly. Something like File:Sounder_at_Carkeek_(20192129658).jpg would be superior. Nick-D (talk) 11:17, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Swapped with a scenic shot that isn't too "scenic". Will look at retaking a shot from the same vantage point with my equipment when the weather is more reliably sunny. SounderBruce 06:01, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • That looks good Nick-D (talk) 07:06, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've read over the article, which is in excellent shape. I have only 2 comments:

• For the 'Stations' section, were all the stations established for this service or did they exist before it started?
• For the ridership section, how does the actual ridership compare with what was expected when this service was planned? Nick-D (talk) 07:06, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I reviewed this about a month ago for GA. The article was in great shape then, and the nominator addressed several issues that I raised at that time.

• A month ago, the article had some railfan lingo, but I believe that was all converted into layman's terms during the GA.

• The article's prose & paragraphs are rather dense and detailed, but I don't think it rises to the point of encroaching on WP guidelines WP:SUMMARY or WP:DETAIL; and a dense, factual style is somewhat expected when describing an engineering infrastructure.

• Map color contrast: There are two maps near the top of the article that do a poor job of communicating info to the reader due to a color-contrast issue: those maps draw the rail line as light blue, while the line is adjacent to a light blue bodies of water (Puget Sound, Lake Washington, etc). .. the lines are very hard to see because it is blue-on-blue. These two maps are in the sections Sounder_commuter_rail#N_Line and Sounder_commuter_rail#S_Line.

The content of the maps is not under the control of the nominator of this article ... the nominator is using the standard rail/subway map template template:Rapid transit OSM map. That template gets the color of the Sounder line from WikiData at: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q56525586 and that file contains the official light blue color of the Sounder line, which, coincidentally, is nearly the same color as the map's ocean & lakes.

This is not the first time in the world's history that rail line colors have conflicted with map background colors (e.g. a green rail line going thru a green forest). This color-contrast problem has been solved in real world maps in many ways (e.g. drawing thin black borders on the rail line). For example: Google maps draws this same Sounder rail line in its official light blue color, but has white border lines, so as the line crosses blue water it is still visible: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6669173,-122.4022998,18.17z/data=!5m1!1e2?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUwNy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Does the template:Rapid transit OSM map template offer any solutions to this color-contrast issue? For example: does that template provide an alternate way to draw the line to enhance contrast with the background? I posted a query on that template's Talk page: Template_talk:Rapid_transit_OSM_map#Is_there_a_way_to_draw_borders_on_a_rail_line,_to_distinguish_it_from_background_color?

Has this map color-contrast issue been discussed before in the FA process? What was the outcome?

• That's all I have for now. The article is a great article, and I hope my lengthy discussion about the map color issue is not out of place here in the FA review. Noleander (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]