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

[Peter Dobratz]

Hi SteveA,

I see that you have summarized the a lot of the same information from your
email on the United States Railways wiki page:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States_railways

Looking through Paul's comments and yours, I don't see any specific
information about exactly how one would go about identifying specific
railways in Oregon so that they could be added to relations.

For the railways, Paul may be objecting to the content of the name and ref
tag on the Way objects themselves for the railway.  However, it is not
clear how to find out what the name actually should be.  The wiki page does
indicate that the name tag on the Way objects should match the name tag on
the Relation object with type=route and route=railway tags.  For many rails
around Portland, these Relations (type=route, route=railway) have not yet
been created.

You mention 2 specific examples (type=route; route=railway): Brooklyn
Subdivision (http://www.osm.org/relation/2203588) and Fallbridge
Subdivision (http://www.osm.org/relation/1443651).  Some of the Way objects
in Fallbridge Subdivision are also contained in
http://www.osm.org/relation/4734792.  Both of the relations for Fallbridge
Subdivision have FIXME tags expressing uncertainty about exactly where the
route Relation should begin and end.  How would one determine the exact end
of the Relation for the Fallbridge Subdivision?

Also, looking through the history of the above relations, I can't really
find anything in the changeset tags regarding the source of the data about
the railroads.  Where do the names Brooklyn Subdivision and Fallbridge
Subdivision come from?

Paul mentions that we should be using the name "Banfield Mainline" but
where does that name come from and what exactly does it refer to?

Are there signs on the ground with these things?

Peter



On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 5:18 AM, stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:

> Hello Peter:
>
> The California/Rail wiki page you describe documents a couple of different
> ways we tag rail.  OpenRailwayMap (ORM) documents a three tier
> (route=tracks, route=railway, route=train) method used in parts of
> Germany.  As that page (as well as the USA Rail WikiProject) explain(s),
> because of the way TIGER entered rail in the USA, (and the way we structure
> and name rail) we often use just two of these, skipping route=tracks
> relations and "jumping" right to putting "named rail" into relations of
> route=railway:  rail "infrastructure."  You might say that two
> ORM/German-style "lower and middle level" relations have been merged into a
> single "middle level" relation here in the USA.  There are also ("higher
> level," and the whole OSM world agrees) passenger rail relations:
> route=train (or route=light_rail, route=subway, route=tram...effectively at
> the same logical "level" as route=train).  That's OSM rail "structure" in a
> nutshell.
>
> In Oregon, there are the Brooklyn Subdivision (
> http://www.osm.org/relation/2203588), the Fallbridge Subdivision (
> http://www.osm.org/relation/1443651)... these are (correctly) the
> middle-level infrastructure relations tagged route=railway.  There are also
> (predictably, also, the higher-level) route=train passenger rail relations
> like Amtrak Cascades (http://www.osm.org/relation/71428) which are often
> made up of a group of Subdivisions (route=railway relations) like Brooklyn
> and parts of Fallbridge.
>
> THIS is what Paul was typing about in those Notes.  Specifically, a
> (higher-level/passenger) route=train relation should not have as its name=*
> tag the name of the system (like MAX, BART, Metro or Amtrak), it should be
> the name of the passenger line (Green Line, Downtown to University...).
> And, the "underlying" (lower-level infrastructure) route=railway relation
> should be correctly "named" as the rail company (or public works
> department, transit district...) names it: often something like XYZ
> Subdivision or ABC Industrial Line.
>
> OSM's Transport Layer is handy to display (rather raw) railway=* and (at
> closer zoom levels) route=bus.
> ORM is handy to display rail infrastructure (with Infrastructure radio
> button selected), especially usage=* tags.
> OpenPublicTransportMap (http://openptmap.org) is handy to display
> passenger rail relations.
>
> The USA is largely under construction for all of these, but we've come a
> long way.
>
> It's all in those wikis.  Makes sense?
>
> Regards,
> SteveA
> California
>
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