[OSM-talk-be] railways and stations

[Ben Laenen]

Your message was directly sent to my spam box for some reason...

On Saturday, 20 January 2018 14:27:39 CET Stijn Rombauts wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am rewriting the conventions page about railways [1]. It was a bit
> outdated...A few questions:- I kept the convention about the name ("L"
> followed by the number of the line, e.g. L25). But I noticed it hasn't been
> followed in many places (often 25 or L.25).

That's a small issue, our railways don't use the same convention everywhere, 
and you can find both L.25 and L25. When I started redrawing the railways in 
Belgium I ended up using L.25, whereas I've now started to think that ref=L25 
is the better option, and would fit in more with the other refs being used on 
junctions etc.

We just need to decide on one and keep using that. I'd now vote on L25.

> Do we keep this convention or
> not? The HSL/LGV lines have been given other names like "Ligne Nouvelle 1"
> or "LGV 3 - HSL 3". What do we do these?

The names shouldn't really be there, but I guess they don't do much harm. 
Their refs are ref=L.1 or L1 etc, no HSL or LGV in ref numbers.

> - The relations usually have a
> ref=L.25. (with the point). Still OK?

Same answer as above.

> - Some switches/junctions have a name
> (e.g. Y Val-Benoit) and are tagged as railway=junction. But this page [2]
> seems to suggest that railway=switch is a better tag. Or do we keep the
> railway=junction tag for named switches/junctions?

railway=junction is for a single node somewhere near the area where one or 
more switches are located. Their name should be something like 
name=Y.Abeelstraat (with a dot there), their reference is for example 
ref=YABLS without a dot.

railway=switch is for one single switch, they've got no names, only a 
reference, like ref=05AM.


> - Railway stations: I
> guess we're supposed to follow the rules/guidelines in this page [3]? Or do
> we have other opinions? E.g. in Visé [4] the tag railway=station has been
> used 3 times...

There should only be a single node tagged as railway=station.


> - Do we keep the distinction between railway=station and
> railway=halt. As more and more stations (=buildings) are closed, it seems
> to me that the distinction between the two has become quite vague.

There are a lot of definitions going around. In the railway definition a 
station would need a switch and allow a train to depart from. That would make 
Brussels-Central not a station... But in the end it's just better to tag them 
all railway=station.

Ben