[Tagging] unfinished railway of historic importance

[Richard Welty]

On 3/6/12 9:22 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 10:54 PM, Frederik Ramm<frederik at remote.org>  wrote:
>> I just found the idea of saying "this is a railway - a never-built one, but
>> a railway nonetheless" a little extravagant.
umm, not never built. never completed. and in this case, a never completed
railway that impacted the course of a war.
> Ok, yeah, there is definitely room for debate around how abstract we
> allow features in OSM to be. I wouldn't agree with
> planned-but-abandoned features being stored except in unusual
> circumstances. This kind of issue comes up with route relations in
> particular. What defines a "route"? How official does it have to be
> before OSM wants to know about it, etc.
>
> In this case, I think it would be generally acceptable to map the
> entire train line, even if only certain sections actually underwent
> any construction. Obviously there will be a point at which that
> becomes ridiculous though: if a train line was planned for 500km, but
> only 5 km saw any construction at all, maybe you'd only map whatever
> section of track contained that constructed section.
>
in the case of The Unfinished Railway, it has a place in history, the
National Park Service intends to preserve the sections within the boundary
of the Battlefield, and it is referred to as the Unfinished Railway in 
pretty
much all publications discussing the Second Battle of Manassas.

i have only mapped identifiable sections within the area controlled
by NPS, outside of the park the route has been wiped out at least in
part by development pressures, which are quite heavy in that part
of Virginia.

richard