[Talk-GB] Stations and platforms=*

[Andy Allan]

On 28 June 2012 12:02, Tom Chance <tom at acrewoods.net> wrote:

> There are two pages on the wiki, each giving slightly different advice, each
> containing confused, ambiguous and conflicting suggestions:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Railway_stations
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:railway%3Dstation

My bugbears are that building=railway_station and railway=station
areas have long been confused. I don't really see the difficulty,
since in most cases the footprint of the building (if there is one)
bears little resemblance to the whole station. I would tag
building=railway_station around one or more buildings, and have a
railway=station area surrounding the building, platforms and whatever
else makes sense to include.

Unfortunately, one prolific railway mapper in the UK disagrees with
the above, and has in the past converted railway=station areas into
building=railway_station (which is usually inappropriate, even for
large terminus stations) and added a separate railway=station node,
which is vexing. Or, like in the example on the wiki, people add both
railway=station and building=railway_station to the same area, which
again show more muddled thinking rather than appropriate mapping.

If we could agree that railway=station nodes can be mapped in more
detail as station areas, and building=railway_station is kept for the
building(s) themselves (and otherwise untagged with ref etc), then
that would at least be a start.

Cheers,
Andy