[OSM-talk] razed railways and other things that don't exist today

[Zeke Farwell]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2022 at 1:11 PM Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:

>
> I think people should keep in mind that a culture of deltionism is
> demoralizing to contributors and harms OSM more than a few  marginal
> items in the database.
>

This is a fair point, but given how often this comes up, it doesn't seem
like it's just a few marginal items.  Also it's just as demoralizing for a
well intentioned mapper who maps an area and removes some former railway in
the process to then get berated for it.


> I also agree with stevea@ -- old railways are usually visible in the
> landscape, and the data about where they were in between visible places
> seems more useful than harmful.
>

There is no question that the data about the location of former railways is
useful.  However, data being useful is not the standard for inclusion in
OSM.  We map the world as it exists today and this excludes plenty of
useful data.  Former features that no longer exist are simply out of scope
for OSM <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nonexistent_features>.


> Also note that people who do not like railroads often do not see the
> evidence as well as people who are used to looking for it.
>

I support mapping old rail beds as railway=razed where they are visible in
forests, fields, and other open land.  These traces are often not visible
to those with an untrained eye and that's certainly an issue.  However, I
draw the line at sections going through buildings, highways, excavated
areas, or under water where there really are no visible traces by any
reasonable standard.  In these situations, a person with a trained eye may
see clues and patterns leading them to the deduction that a railway used to
be there, but this is not the same as visible remnants.  This is mapping
something that is really no longer there in any meaningful way.

 --
Zeke
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