[Talk-GB] railway:historic = rail tags

Donald Noble drnoble at gmail.com
Tue Jul 3 22:47:13 BST 2012


As someone who has added a few railway=dismantled ways to the map, I
thought I might add in my reasoning.

Railways, by their nature, link places and are pretty much continuous.
So in areas (like Glasgow) where there are sections of old railway
infrastructure visible on the ground I have mapped these as r=disused
or r=abandoned depending on whether the tracks are still in-situ. But
I find it useful if these can be linked by sections of r=dismantled
(or some other tag) that reflects that there was a railway there, even
if all traces are now gone, as this can make sense of the remnants
that are there.

I appreciate there is a line between mapping what is on the ground and
creating a database of historic routes, and perhaps dismantled
railways crosses that line (if you'll excuse the pun). However, there
are also instances of highway=no, where roads have been realigned or
ripped up, should these also be removed from the database?

Personally, I wouldn't map a long section where there once was a
railway but it has now been completely obliterated by this complex
housing estate and shopping centre, but I have mapped a place where an
abandoned railway was obliterated by a carpark but the remains of it
are visible on either side (and on 3ish year old bing imagery).

This doesn't really address the OP regarding railway:historic=rail
versus railway=dismantled, which I have no real views on, as neither
appears on most map renderings. Although I have recently changed a
couple of railway=station+disused=yes nodes to
railway:historic=station, where there is no visible evidence left on
the ground (and so they are no use for navigation), so maybe
railway:historic=rail keeps things tidier.

regards, Donald


-- 
Donald Noble
http://drnoble.co.uk - http://flickr.com/photos/drnoble



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