[OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 16/08/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
> it really depends, this is an example for an abandoned railway where reading
> the traces is quite easy, and which is tagged (IMHO correctly) as abandoned
> railway in osm:
> http://www.dieter-kloessing.de/Berlin/Berlin-Zehlendorf3.html#Anchor-Stammbahn-47857

That actually looks like disused rather than abandoned to me.

> the wiki shows some interesting inconsistencies btw, it currently says
> disused are railways that could technically re-enter into service any time
> without much effort (track and infrastructure are intact), while abandoned
> are railways that railways where tracks and infrastructure are removed. This
> is there since 2012 (or 2011), but doesn't make sense because it leaves out
> at lot of stuff which would then fall between disused and abandoned.

To me the distinguishing criteria between disused and abandoned is
wether the rails are still present or not. This sometimes leads to
strange results (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/223082804 would be
much harder to put back in service than
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/216942301 despite being disused
rather than abandoned) but it's a nicely objective criteria.