[Talk-GB] railway:historic=rail

[Richard Fairhurst]

I've just been bitten by the minority, largely undocumented usage of 
railway:historic=rail on a bunch of dismantled/abandoned railways in 
Britain. Having exported some OSM data and done a few days' manual 
processing on it, I belatedly find that various lines are missing due to 
not taking account of this tag and I'm going to have to do a whole bunch 
more work. :(

Taginfo/Taginfo GB suggest that railway:historic=rail is not used much 
elsewhere in the world, and that railway=abandoned, =disused and 
=dismantled remain the popular choices. No client software appears to 
take any notice of railway:historic=rail.

Would there be any opposition to gradually reverting uses of this tag to 
railway=dismantled/abandoned, depending on what's on the ground?

The only documentation I could find (on a wiki discussion page, of all 
the obscure places): 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Railways#railway:historic.3Dxxx_or_former:railway.3Dxxx_in_place_of_railway.3Dabandoned.2Fdismantled.3F

cheers
Richard