[Talk-us] Rail westerly

[Charlotte Wolter]

Steve,

         Thanks to Michael for a great find and to you for trying to make it
usable in OSM. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
         Sounds like we should hold off on any wiki work for a while. There
is much data to examine, and I'm already doing stuff for HOT.
         I'd like to take a look at the materials for Arizona just to 
see if their
names for lines correspond to what I'm seeing already from TIGER.
         Like I said before, we have time to make sure we're doing this right.

Charlotte


At 11:24 AM 12/31/2014, you wrote:
>Michael Patrick writes: (about the Oak Ridge National Laboratory: 
>... Railroad Network data).
>I found these at:
>http://www-cta.ornl.gov/transnet/RailRoads.html
>And have downloaded (~10 megabytes) a zipped shapefile of the entire network
>(as well as the simplified 7 megabyte one which "omits inactive 
>lines and contains
>only current operators, but incorporates interlines as network links.")
>I knew there had to be something like this in the public domain, and 
>I say thank
>you very much,
>
>Michael.
>
>
>I'll examine these in JOSM right now.  First they need to be 
>unzipped, and it looks
>like the (provided on that web page) PRJ file to change from WGS 84 
>(default) to
>either NAD 27 or 83 projection is required. I haven't done that to 
>these data in the
>instant case, but I've fiddled these before and I think it is doable.
>Results in JOSM (after many seconds of load time) -- and JOSM MUST have the
>Shapefile plug-in -- do indeed display a nationwide network of rail 
>lines.  As a sample
>I chose (UP's Coast line in California, which I believe I have 
>gotten mostly correct
>in OSM recently) has 30 rather cryptic (at first blush) tags, but 
>these indeed look to
>be usable data.  Geographically, yes, the rail line looks "about 
>correct" though the tag
>structure seriously will have to be harmonized to become something 
>to import into OSM.
>This starts to move (quickly) into the direction of a major import 
>(and all its required
>vetting, etc.) into OSM. I ask others to help me determine the 
>suitability of whether we
>might want to use these data.  I imagine a fair bit of work would be 
>required to
>harmonize the 30 tags into those we might deem appropriate for USA 
>rail in OSM, as well
>as strategies for conflating them with existing TIGER rail 
>data.  It's a big, big, BIG job.
>On the other hand, I could see small segments in these data that 
>interest local mappers
>being used to confirm names or actual track locations for existing 
>data on a line-by-line
>basis, too.
>Thanks for really good discussion about this, Charlotte stepping up 
>to make a wiki page,
>Michael's reference to these data and the great volunteer, 
>cooperative and collaborative
>spirits we find in OSM here in the USA.
>
>SteveA
>California
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Charlotte Wolter
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