[OSM-talk] Detailed tagging scheme for railways - India

[Roland Olbricht]

> I recently got addicted to mapping the railway network in India in detail
> using landsat imagery. 

Good news for the map :) This is really great work.

> Since i wasnt able to find any other railway mapping
> project which specified detailed mapping conventions, i came up with my own
> scheme which i've compiled here:
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/India/Railways

What about
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Public_Transport#Railways
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Railways
?

In general, the two schemes are quite compatible, so there's not much to worry 
about. Some remarks (which may or may not apply to railways in India):

- railway=halt is at least in Europe already frequently used with a different 
meaning: "station" designates stations where trains can begin or terminate. 
"halt" means (usually smaller) stations where trains only stop but legally 
can't begin or end. To make things worse, most mappers map either all stations 
as "station" or they map all small stations (regardless of their legal status) 
as "halt". You have a clear definition of the feature (not regularly served), 
thus I'd strongly encourage you to use a different value for it.

Rails within a city (which usually serve for mass transit within the city) 
should be tagged as railway=tram or railway=light_rail. Please add this to the 
wiki page to prevent somebody else from mapping them on error as railway=rail 
or something else.

There is also a mailing list for Public transport. Please subscribe to the 
list and repost the mail there:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-transit
There are more "railway addicts". Hence, you are likely to get more feedback.

If you get bored by mapping only the railway network, you can also start 
mapping the (regular) services on it:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Oxomoa/Public_transport_schema
is a scheme for mapping those.

Cheers,

Roland