[Tagging] unfinished railway of historic importance

[John F. Eldredge]

Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On 02/25/12 01:23, Richard Welty wrote:
> > how do you tag a never-completed railway which has significant
> important
> > landmark value in the current landscape?
> 
> I think that what you are seeing is not a railway at all.
> 
> I suggest to tag what you see on the ground, rather than whatever the 
> object was that people once planned to build. I don't see why there 
> should be a "railway=cut" when a layman would never know the the cut
> he 
> observes was once meant to have a railway line.
> 

>From my firsthand experience, former railways (and presumably also unfinished railways) tend to have some distinguishing features.  In particular, they tend to have a much shallower grade than roads made for other types of traffic, since locomotives are not very good at climbing steep slopes.  Also, you are more likely to find single-track railways than single-lane roadways, so a single-lane-width cut is likely a sign of a railway.  Someone who only goes to the trouble to build a single-lane road is not likely to bother with excavating a cut, but instead will mostly make use of the natural contours.

-- 
John F. Eldredge --  john at jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria