[Tagging] transformers on poles -- ambiguity in documentation?

Nathan Edgars II neroute2 at gmail.com
Mon Oct 17 16:05:12 BST 2011


On 10/17/2011 8:56 AM, John Sturdy wrote:
> When you follow the link on the image for that text, the page there
> (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Powerpole-branching01.png)
> says:
>
>    A two-legged wooden power=pole with a transformer. For the gallery
> that helps assessing border cases of power=pole vs. power=tower
>
> So,  should these things get tagged as "pole" or as "sub_station"?
>
> I'm inclined to tag them as "sub_station" as that's more informative,
> but should there be something indicating that the substation is not on
> the ground, e.g. location=overground?

Some Germans came up with the original power tagging without much 
knowledge of English usage, so sub_station was used for transformers, 
station for substations, and generator for stations. This has led to 
obvious problems, where probably most power=sub_station uses in the 
English-speaking world are substations and not transformers.



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