[Talk-GB] railway:historic = rail tags

[Philip Barnes]

I had spotted some of these, same mapper, near Whitchurch, and must
admit it has concerned me as previously it had shown on the map as a
tracked. 

It is still visible on the ground, but now not visible on the map. This
seems wrong to me, my feeling it should be reverted. Was going to
contract the mapper, but you have beaten me to it.

What should we do? I have not explored it yet, as new top the area, but
imagine it is walked and one of the tracks used within Fenns Moss nature
reserve. Other paths now join an invisible way.


Phil
--


Sent from my Nokia N9




On 30/06/2012 15:11 SomeoneElse wrote:



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/168528933> and

http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/168528933

<http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/168528933>y
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/168528933> .


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://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/168528933 , 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://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/168528933

). 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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