Talk:Turkish State Railways Transport

Name of the article

@Central Data Bank

Ah sorry I had forgotten I renamed it before so had not noticed you had reverted and asked for discussion here.

I think their official social media accounts are enough to show that they use “Transport” when talking to non-Turkish speakers. But feel free to revert again and explain why you think the original name is better. I think the original name did not mean anything to most English speakers. Chidgk1 (talk) 09:19, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi! I will be reverting it, since in Turkish, TCDD Taşımacılık is a proper name of a company. However, renaming it to TCDD Transport would be reasonable, as it would take the branded abbreviation (TCDD) and translate the word Taşımacılık. However the full name as you changed it to does not reflect the branding of the Turkish company. Cheers! (Central Data Bank (talk) 11:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC))

OK I have requested below Chidgk1 (talk) 13:52, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I think there are too many articles about Turkish railways and Turkish trains. However there was no consensus for my proposal to merge Yüksek Hızlı Tren into High-speed rail in Turkey.

So I propose merging Yüksek Hızlı Tren into this article for the following reasons:

1) Non-Turkish speakers might understand “tren” but “Yüksek Hızlı” is meaningless to most of them. So after a merge they would likely be able to find the info more easily.

2) The merged article would still be a reasonable length.

3) I suspect the high speed trains will become even more important for the company in future. For example once they run to the EU frontier hopefully more EU tourists will come to Istanbul by train. And future YHT services to the east of Sivas will be politically important in helping to strengthen the unity of the country I would think. Chidgk1 (talk) 09:46, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

For France we have High-speed rail in France, TGV and SNCF and it seems OK. So why not for Turkey?

The issue with Yüksek Hızlı Tren is that it should be trimmed. "Lines in operation", "Lines under construction" and "Lines under planning" should be deleted and just link to High-speed_rail_in_Turkey#Lines_in_operation. Same as what is done in TGV#Lines_in_operation. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 10:18, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Antoine As a Brit I can say for sure that more Brits will understand TGV and SNCF than understand YHT. I suppose that will be true of most readers of English Wikipedia. More importantly it is far less likely that a second high speed train operator will be authorised here in Turkey than in France. In the highly unlikely event of that happening I would be happy to split YHT off again if requested. I suspect that if YHT was merged more editors would take an interest in trimming or otherwise improving the info. Chidgk1 (talk) 10:27, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Emphatically oppose: There is no correlation between merging TCDD Taşımacılık (the service provider) and Yüksek Hızlı Tren (a railway brand/service). SNCF and TGV are separate, DB and ICE are separate, Amtrak and Acela are separate. YHT is a high-speed railway service operated by TCDD Taşımacılık. Not to mention, it is not a once-daily train in an isolated part of the country, but the premier flagship service of the Turkish railways. It must have its own article. One aspect I would agree, is that the article should be re-ordered to get make it more readable. A merge I will support (and have supported in the past) is the merger of Yüksek Hızlı Tren with High-speed rail in Turkey. Since YHT is the ONLY high-speed rail operator they can be merged together. TCDD Taşımacılık and YHT merging makes no sense as YHT is its own entity, not to mention the premier railway service in Turkey. (Central Data Bank (talk) 11:12, 25 October 2024 (UTC))

@Central Data Bank Sorry I am not a railway expert so I am a bit confused - what is the definition of “a railway service” please? I thought I understood what an operator is but it seems you are saying that YHT is both a service and an operator? And what is the difference between a "provider" and an "operator"? Chidgk1 (talk) 13:57, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@User:Chidgk1 To answer your question, a railway "operator" is an organization that owns and operates train services along a certain route or network. A railway "service" is an individual route operated by the "operator". In Turkey, all railway infrastructure is owned by the Turkish State Railways (the tracks, stations, technical equipment etc...), train services are not provided by TCDD itself, but rather a sister company TCDD Transport. TCDD Transport owns its own fleet of trains, which it operates on the infrastructure TCDD owns. TCDD Transport is not the sole operator of trains, as there are a few private freight operators such as OMSAN, Körfez Transport and Pasifik Eurasia. TCDD Transport has numerous railway "services" (routes that individual trains follow), such as YHT high-speed service, or other named trains such as the Eastern Express or Ankara Express. I believe you are British so to give an example from the UK, companies like Southeastern or ScotRail are service "providers", i.e. they operate the individual train services on tracks owned by Network Rail. YHT is a railway service, which is a collection of routes served by its high-speed trains. TCDD Transport is the operator of this service. Hope that cleared things up for you! Cheers. (Central Data Bank (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC))

@Central Data Bank Thanks for your quick and lengthy reply. I now understand that “provider” and “operator” are the same. And I understand that a service is a route that individual trains follow, which seems to accord with our infobox.

So when YHT first started I can see it was a service, because it was only between Istanbul and Ankara. But as it is now several routes if we still call it a service we will get confused. Instead I would consider it a brand for all the high speed services belonging to TCDD Transport. Having said that the TGV article describes TGV as a service, so perhaps rail experts use the word “service” in 2 ways. Chidgk1 (talk) 16:44, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I fully agree with @Central Data Bank's comprehensive explanation, but we could expand on the topic a bit further. As of 2016, Turkish State Railways (TCDD) owns and is responsible for maintaining the railway infrastructure, while TCDD Taşımacılık is responsible for operating trains on this infrastructure. With this separation, part of the service privatizations, companies such as OMSAN, Körfez Transport, and Pasifik Eurasia are also able to operate trains on tracks owned by TCDD. In this context, TCDD Taşımacılık operates five types of train services: International Trains, High-Speed Trains (Yüksek Hızlı Tren (YHT)), Mainline Trains, Regional Trains, and Commuter Trains. Since TCDD Taşımacılık is a service provider and YHT is a type of service, it wouldn’t be appropriate to merge them. This is similar to examples like SNCF/TGV, DB/ICE, and Amtrak/Acela. At most, it could be merged with the High-speed rail in Turkey article, but even that would be incorrect. That article focuses on the high-speed rail infrastructure, while YHT refers to the nine high-speed train services currently operating on this infrastructure. In this regard, I believe that merging the articles on TCDD Taşımacılık, Yüksek Hızlı Tren, and High-speed rail in Turkey would not be appropriate. --bluetime93 💬 20:01, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that YHT is a type of service. So could another operator also call one of their services YHT if it was high-speed? Chidgk1 (talk) 06:45, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

No, YHT are specifically trains operated by TCDD Transport. Also, a train service does not necessarily have to follow a single route. So while YHT started between Eskişehir and Ankara (in 2009), it was slowly expanded to the route it operates on today. This is apparent in European high-speed trains such as ICE's route designation numbers, but unfortunately TCDD Transport does not do a very good job at branding and labeling its trains. So, for now at least, the only way we can differentiate individual YHT routes are via the names of the cities it travels to. However, I do think the YHT article needs to be cleaned up and improved. I will try to do this in the coming days. (Central Data Bank (talk) 12:04, 26 October 2024 (UTC))

Requested move 25 October 2024

Turkish State Railways Transport → TCDD Transport – Per discussion above. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:52, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

• Agree As per the above discussion. (Central Data Bank (talk) 12:05, 26 October 2024 (UTC))