[Tagging] [OSM-talk] Should we map things that do not exist?

[Kevin Kenny]

On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 11:03 AM Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging <
tagging at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> This kind of temporary keeping no longer existing objects is commonly
> accepted.
>
> (note temporary part - mapping objects that are fully and completely
> gone[1] and
> unlikely to be mapped by accident is at best extremely dubious, and
> deleting them is fine)
>
> [1] so for example it is OK to map railway tracks where some evidence of
> them remains
>

We all seem to be reading from more or less the same page, then:

disused - track still present, could be put back into service with minimal
work (vegetation clearance, track inspection, ...)
abandoned - track still present, deteriorated, would need construction work
(repairing washouts//slides, realigning track, removing trees, ...) before
being placed in service
razed - rails lifted or buried [1], sleepers and ballast may remain, traces
on the ground such as embankments, cuttings and drainage features
observable OR track visible in obsolete imagery and way included to prevent
re-addition of a demolished feature.

As another corner case, I'm willing to allow
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4261370 - The ballasted grade is
still there under the reservoir, and in fact the scrap crew got the rails
out only just in time.  The rail mappers might want to check out
http://ginosrailblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/last-days-of-gloversville-and-northville.html,
which has some pictures of a locomotive on a totally submerged section of
track, while scrappers in knee boots are hastily tearing up the rails
behind it. They were forced to leave about 1.5 km of rail behind, but were
able to recover it during a drought the following summer. Portions of the
roadbed occasionally surface in a dry season when the water level has been
drawn down, and bits of sleepers have occasionally washed up as driftwood.

 [1] One area that I once lived near had a streetcar line where they never
bothered even to recover the rails, just paved over them. The rails
occasionally reappeared where for one reason or another the car line and
the road were not coaligned.

-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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