[Talk-us] Abandoned Railroads

[Nathan Edgars II]

Eric Christensen wrote:
>The existing maps show abandoned railroad tracks in the area.  That must
>have been some time ago as there are no traces of these tracks left.
>
>At what point do we remove those from the maps or should we keep them
>there indefinitely?

railway=abandoned is, like old_ref and others, a tag that doesn't
always have any current "on the ground" relevance; it simply shows
that there once was a railway along the way. If there's something
still there, other tags like railway=disused (if tracks still exist;
this should really be rendered differently from railway=abandoned),
highway=cycleway, or embankment/cutting=yes can be added, or a linear
strip of green may appear between two landuse polygons.
railway=abandoned basically adds extra information that this linear
artifact was a railway, while that one was something else (maybe land
set aside for a never-built highway, or a park corridor), and provides
interesting historical data (even for the non-railfans, it can be
interesting to know how the area was served by railways, and where the
rights-of-way have not been preserved). It could be argued that we
should not render railway=abandoned, but only the related features
that still give evidence of such, but I think the historical interest
is enough to show them (differently from railway=disused, though).