[Talk-us] Railroads and Railroads (Historic)

[stevea]

Hi Nathan:

Good to see your thoughtful questions here on talk-us.  I have seen 
your edits and I believe you have a depth of knowledge about tagging 
railroads already.

I believe in tagging attributes that we know to be true about things 
as we edit them, or before we edit them.  Tagging is free-form, but 
free-form can include being thoughtful, especially as it incorporates 
deep personal knowledge.  Smarter tagging includes reaching out to 
others who might or do have deep knowledge.  In other words, while 
one smart person making a proposal is good, two or more putting their 
heads together (especially with complementary or 
multiplicative/non-overlapping experience) is even better.  And 
builds consensus and community.

No doubt you have seen that historic=ruins is a tag used to attribute 
a specific semantic:  something either like a castle, fort or wall or 
might have been a castle, fort or wall, or goes in that direction. 
"Historic" in this sense goes back hundreds of years, or certainly 
thousands.  Railroads, especially the earliest ones, might make it to 
a sesquicentennial and so encroach this boundary, but early railroads 
are an interesting blend of technological industrial achievement in 
the context of human historic ruins.  Food for thought.  I think 
historic=railroad and ruins=railroad can both work, in the right 
contexts.  Help to sharpen these up!

I don't know how the ruins=railroad tag might already be established; 
tagwatch isn't my forte, anybody?

Rail-banking is a real legal and "along a spectrum" activity that OSM 
should accommodate.  Perhaps a full description of this spectrum in 
an OSM wiki page with various proposal tags might emerge with you? 
If you have a reasonable perspective on how tagging might begin, 
evolve, grow and be (become) useful, I think OSM as a project invites 
you to bring it forward as best you might advance the subject.

So, soliciting how railways are used, banked, contribute to 
"accidents" (as "John F. Eldredge" <john at jfeldredge.com> writes) is 
knowledge that you might have (maybe you do), others might have, and 
others certainly do not.  The right thing to do is to have OSM best 
capture both what you know (in the real world) and "about" railways. 
You might write up a wiki page that proposes certain tags in certain 
circumstances, this is one way OSM grows.  Do your best to posit a 
smart set of tags, an intelligent way to use them using the concept 
of a life cycle of railroads, and "best express" this as a tagging 
scheme.

Then both use it, document, and improve it.  I'm not just talking to 
you (Nathan) here, and I'm not just talking about railroads.  I'm 
talking to everybody in OSM about everything:  using things (tags) 
smartly and documenting and gaining consensus and making it smarter 
as we go (while getting intelligent feedback in a loop while growing 
better and smarter ad infinitum)... simply IS our OSM and how it 
works.  On a good day.

SteveA
California


>On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 4:26 PM, John F. Eldredge 
><<mailto:john at jfeldredge.com>john at jfeldredge.com> wrote:
>
>On 11/10/2013 03:30 PM, nathan proudfoot wrote:
>
>>Hello got some questions about Railroads,
>I have a passion for the preservation of railroads and the maps 
>surrounding them.  I both update current map data with a line per 
>each track.  Track is in most cases two rails attached by a sleeper 
>or tie. I have over 10,000 edits over on GMM and under 4,000 with 
>OSM.
>
>I am mostly coming to ask about historic railroads and how to map them.
>In my area we have lots of rail trails, these trails mostly have 
>been mapped by
>bicycle=yes
>foot=yes 
>highway=cycleway
>horse=yes
>name=John Wayne Pioneer Trail
>note=railway=abandoned indicates a rail-trail
>old_railway_operator=Milwaukee
>
>railway=abandoned
>Ect......
>
>Is this the way that we should be mapping these as there are 
>historic attributes.
>For instance we could add.
>historic=ruins
>ruins=railroad
>
>or we could remove railway=abandoned
>but in this case the railroad is rail banked and could be brought 
>out of abandoned status. 
>
>We have other routes in the state that are not rail banked and are 
>historic and are not seen as abandoned.  
>
>  Best Regards,
>Nathan Proudfoot
>
>email: <mailto:n.pfoot at gmail.com>n.pfoot at gmail.com
>
>
>We probably need a value such as railway=inactive for routes that 
>are not in use, but still have the rails in place.  The only problem 
>is that, if someone erroneously tags an active but little-used route 
>as inactive, this could lead to an accident if someone went hiking 
>or rail-biking on the route.
>--
>John F. Eldredge -- <mailto:john at jfeldredge.com>john at jfeldredge.com
>"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
>Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
>Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
>
>
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