[Talk-GB] railway:historic = rail tags

SomeoneElse lists at mail.atownsend.org.uk
Sat Jun 30 15:11:06 BST 2012


    I've noticed a few of these popping up recently, e.g.:
    http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/168528933
    <http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/77277743/history> and
    http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/77277743/histor
    <http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/77277743/history>y
    <http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/77277743/history> .

    It seems to be being used as an alternative to "railway=abandoned"
    (or as sometimes mapped "railway=dismantled").  The first of those
    examples is a not-obviously-visible-on-the-ground one, but the
    second is still visible as the route of a former railway.

    I mentioned it to the author a few days ago and he pointed me at
    http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Railways , where apparently
    some discussion is going on.  I mention this here because I suspect
    that, like many users of OSM data, I don't read the wiki every day
    to see if someone is about to replace "tag X" with "tag Y" in the data.

    Aside from that "railway:historic = rail" doesn't seem to
    distinguish between (1) "there was a railway here, and you can still
    see the route now" from (2) "there was a railway here, but you can't
    still see the route any more".

    (1) has been universally mapped as "railway=abandoned"; (2) has
    either been:
    o mapped as railway=abandoned
    o mapped as railway=dismantled
    o not mapped (because there's nothing there on the ground now)

    Obviously "mapping things that aren't there any more" is a bigger
    issue than just railways and had been done to death on mailing lists
    and elsewhere (e.g.
    http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/4th_Dimension/Archive
    ).  Suffice to say, we don't have a good answer to that right now
    other than "don't except in special cases *".  However former
    railways often are still visible and are useful, if not yet used for
    something else.

    I'm raising this first on talk-gb rather than internationally
    because (a) that's where I've seen the changes made and (b) the UK
    suffered from a lot of NPE-traced "railway=abandoned" that weren't
    really, with no features being left on the ground.

    Cheers,
    Andy

    * Like a pub that I walked past on Thursday that is about to succumb
    to the ongoing Tescoification of Britain.




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