[Talk-us] Creating relations for abandoned railway lines

[Kristian M Zoerhoff]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:24:27AM -0500, Richard Weait wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Kristian M Zoerhoff
> <kristian.zoerhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, all.
> >
> > I've been working on adding some abandoned railway lines in my area, and
> > I've been wondering how to group them together. The line I'm working on
> > right now (the former Elgin & Belvidere Electric Co. line) has been re-used
> > in some areas as public streets, bike paths, service roads, and even a
> > railway museum, so I've had to break the line into quite a few ways. I'd
> > like to group them back together with a relation, but I'm not sure if
> > anyone's done this for an abandoned railway line, or if this is even the
> > right thing to do. My plan was to create a new relation like so:
> >
> > type = route
> > route = train
> > operator = Elgin & Belvidere Electric Co.
> > abandoned = yes
> >
> > It's that last tag I'm unsure of. Is abandoned = yes allowed/understood in
> > relations?
> 
> Dear Kristian,
> 
> It is most likely that no relation is required to group them together.
> 
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Relations_are_not_Categories

I've thought about this some more today, and I think this specific case 
does qualify as a relation. I'm not trying to group multiple, disparate 
lines operated by a railraod into a collection; there's just a single line, 
but due to adaptive reuse of the Right of Way, I've been forced to break it 
into multiple ways. I don't see this as much different from a state highway 
that travels on multiple streets, or even a road that's broken into multiple 
ways so one segment can be tagged as a bridge or tunnel. It's a singular, 
logical relation, from end-to-end. Now, if the E&BE had ever run multiple 
lines, then I can see the objection to putting them into a relation. That's 
not the case, however. 

I do see the need for care here. We don't want someone tagging every line 
operated by Union Pacific as being part of one huge relation, for example. 
However, tt would be perfectly acceptable (to me, anyway), to tag an 
individual named railroad subdivision with a relation, though, assuming it 
had to be broken into segments for things like bridges/tunnels. It's a fine 
line to walk, that's for sure. 

Oh, and I now see that I don't need to tag the relation as abandoned, as all 
the ways have this tag (except for the portion tagged as "preserved" at the 
Illinois Railway Museum).

Anyway, there's still time to change my mind, as I have other things I want 
to clean up before I add this relation. Man, do I have a love/hate 
relationship with TIGER right now.

-- 

Kristian Zoerhoff
kristian.zoerhoff at gmail.com