[OSM-talk] Should we map things that do not exist?

[steve.barkto at gmail.com]

On Mon, 25 May 2020 08:20:03 -0600 (GMT-06:00), Jack Armstrong
<jacknstacy at sprynet.com> wrote:

>Why are railways given a special status?

  One possible view is that railways were an early OSM data consumer.   In
many cases, OSM became the best resource to know current and previous rail
lines, and useful for cases to track down related historical artifacts,
plan for reuse based on slope, etc.    
 OSM did render all rail lines for a time (including razed), then stopped
rendering historical items.   OpenRailwayMap has taken over rendering, but
I'm not sure if they've started transitioning to OpenHistoricalMap as a
source of purely historical items.   
  It would be handy if there was a way to delete an OSM object "into
OpenHistoricalMap" with a checkbox.