[OSM-talk] [tagging] RFC: railway=incline

[Alex Mauer]

Sven Geggus wrote:
> All I said is that there
> is no such beast as a generic incline railroad. 

But there is such a thing as a railroad which is known to be incline, 
but for which the drive system is unknown.

As I understand it, there are standard railways which have rack-driven 
sections, so some way to indicate that independent of the railway value 
is definitely needed in any case.

And there are definitely entirely cable-driven rail systems (e.g. the 
San Francisco cable car system).  This could be handled with something 
like railway=tram, cable=yes, or with something like railway=tram, 
traction=cable.

And there are other incline railways, not part of the standard rail 
system, which may be:
* unknown drive type
* funicular
* other cable-driven systems
* rack drive
* other drive type

However, as far as I am aware, the following do not exist:
* railways which are both cable- and rack-driven in the same section
* railways which are cable-driven for only a section
* funiculars connected to a main rail system

I've updated my proposal at 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Incline_railway 
to reflect this.

-Alex Mauer "hawke"