[Talk-us] some GNIS places not showing up in OSM

[Jason McHuff]

Thanks for the reply.  I should point out that there's
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ where (I'd think) railroad points like
these should be prominent.

If Beburg is in OSM, shouldn't it be identifiable by data source tag?

While the "Electric Shops" are probably long gone (Wikipedia says
"Operation as an electric railroad ended July 10, 1945."), Beburg is
still a control point for the railroad. It used to be a junction
between the line that goes west along OR 10 and then OR 8, and a line
that went to the northwest and onto
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/30292737 at it's southernmost point.
(https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/53648601 is new build )

As I said, it could definitely be confusing for OSM to infer rail
junctions, etc. have meaning outside of the railroad, e.g. are real
locales.

On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 11:24 AM Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 8:08 PM Jason McHuff <osm-talk-us at jasonmchuff.net> wrote:
>>
>> Examples:
>> https://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=138:3:::NO:3:P3_FID,P3_TITLE:1637910
>>
>> https://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=138:3:::NO:3:P3_FID,P3_TITLE:1166614
>>
>> Entry date listed is well before 2009 (when
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/USGS_GNIS says import was done)
>>
>> Note that these are railroad locations, and not ones that have much
>> meaning outside of the railroad.
>
>
> Many locations such as rail junctions came in from the TIGER and GNIS imports with a variety of strange tags. Often these came in without any tagging that renders at all, or with inappropriate tagging such as `place=locality` for the reference number of a railway switch.  Over time, mappers have gradually made many of these more consistent. For example, at one point, I altered https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/42074994/history so that it wouldn't render as if it were a settlement.  It's simply a rail switch with a reference number, which a specialized railway map might render but which won't appear on a general-interest map such as the OSM front page. It certainly didn't make sense for the map to show a settlement named 'CPF 480'!
>
> I suspect that Greton and Beburg might have suffered a similar fate, being simply the names of rail junctions and not actual populated places.
>
> I see for Beburg that it's simply a grade crossing in Beaverton. I can't find the original node in among the tangle at https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1404129443#map=19/45.48634/-122.79997&layers=D but I'm pretty sure it's there somewhere.  Although I see that in GNIS an alternative name of 'Electric Shops' appears, and since the appearance of the map suggests that the railroad no longer has a workshop at the location, the node might simply have been removed to reflect the reality on the ground.  A great many GIS nodes describe features that have been demolished.
>
> --
> 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin