On 09/03/2015, Bryce Nesbitt <bry...@obviously.com> wrote: > Somehow I come down on the side that railways have enough footprint on the > current world that > they belong in OSM proper, unlike say old buildings or former shops. > > A abandoned railway slowly evolves from a mappable way, to a series of > other things, before disappearing > completely. But it leaves significant land use patterns on the waterways, > roadways and buildings it once ran near. > > I know it's a messy dividing line. I see it as important context to > current day mapping.
That's a fair point, but I've seen it pushed beyond reason too many times. Often it seems that the contributor used an old map to trace railway=abandoned without glancing at the satellite imagery (no, there's nothing left of the raillway when a housing estate with a pond have been built in its location). Also, if an abandoned railway has evolved into something else, then it's not an abandoned railway anymore. If you add a highway=cycleway tag, you should remove the railway=abandoned tag. Lots of real-world objects evolve while retaining traits from their previous use. In some cases that trait can be tagged for itself and kept after the evolution (deconsecrated building=church for example), but in the case of railways, the only traits that survive are normally bridges, cuttings and embankments. Those can be mapped for their own sake, without resorting to railway=abandoned. _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
