[Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)

[stevea]

>Speaking of rail mapping: I noticed something that could use some 
>attention. The key old_railway_operator=* is used ~90K times, but 
>almost entirely in the US. [1] It has a *really* minimal wiki page. 
>[2] And I don't see it mentioned on the main Railways page [3] or 
>the US Railways project page [4]. (though I did see it on the 
>California Railroads page you linked to)
>
>At minimum, I'm thinking some additional documentation would be 
>good. Also wondering if the US OSM rail community is doing things 
>differently from the rest of the world? Or maybe the rest of the 
>world is  still using their railroads! :) Thanks, Brad

Hi Brad:
I have run into devotees of "old_railway_operator=*" and respect the 
tag by leaving it be where I encounter it, though I don't go out of 
my way to add it unless I have absolute positive knowledge of it 
(rarely to never).

Along with other "things historic" it can ignite passion and 
arguments, yes.  Suffice to say that it is important to the 
not-altogether-exclusively-USA concept of "trackage rights" which are 
sometimes complex leasing arrangements by rail owners and operators 
to allow mixes of freight and passenger services on given sets of 
rail infrastructure.  The good news is that in the USA, the Surface 
Transportation Board makes all such "trackage rights" a matter of 
public record, so with some (tedious) work, we COULD properly tag all 
rail in the USA with a set of tags to reflect these complexities. 
However, it would be a lengthy, detailed task.

This would, of course, begin with good documentation to do so, which 
you point out doesn't seem to exist.  Precluding this, of course, is 
an OSM wiki volunteer with this knowledge (or can get it) who is also 
willing to brain-dump/channel it into proper wiki form.  We might 
have that, we might not.  I agree with you that it is a "good call" 
to make this more widely known -- there is LOTS in OSM that "could 
use some attention."

In California, rail is approximately "early alpha."  For the USA as a 
whole, I'd say rail is even before that, in an "early development" 
phase.  It is rapidly getting better (over months/years, not 
days/weeks).  Discussing (first) and then doing something about 
old_railway_operator=* (among other things) are going to chip away at 
even more improvement.  That's just how it works.

For example (perhaps I open a can of worms), our WikiProject United 
States railways says that for the most part, North American rail 
infrastructure has completely skipped "route=tracks" relations as 
documented in OpenRailwayMap, jumping right to "route=railway" 
relations.  This might be OK, or it might not, as I have no idea what 
ramifications this might have on renderers or routing engines (if 
any).  OK, we document it, and that's good.  But...?

Again, calling out to that intersection of OSMers and knowledgeable 
USA rail folks!  We can untangle any mess or improve any lack of data 
in our map if we wish, but we must have excellent real world 
knowledge.

SteveA
California