Some time ago, a section of a disused railway line within a town has been converted into pedestrian street. But the railway tracks weren’t removed, instead they buried them intact. There’s no visible evidence now that the railway tracks are there.
Currently it’s mapped as railway=disused, as I haven’t mapped yet the change. I’m not sure if railway=razed is really appropriate. railway=abandoned isn’t proper either, as there were no other infrastructure in that section besides the track.
I was thinking to include layer=-1, to denote it’s not on the ground anymore, but I guess that would create the false assumption that it was underground already.
If no trace of it remains, it’s no longer railway. I would just delete it.
I was thinking of that aswell, but I will wait for more input.
Consider it part of the paving at this point. We also don’t normally micromap the individual rebars that hold up a bridge.
I’m reminded of the “Graffiti Highway”, a highway that was abandoned due to an underground coal fire. After it got covered in graffiti, someone bought it up and buried it under mounds of dirt. The best we can do is map it as a dirt path. If that feels like telling only half the story, there’s always OpenHistoricalMap.
At this point it is not qualifying for mapping in OpenStreetMap, but can be added to OpenHistoricalMap.
Ok, I will remove the non-visible parts, and I will add a description on the pedestrian street I will map.
At some point I will start adding non-existent-today stuff in OHM, once I figure out specific info such as more precisely built year.
Even just putting it in with a precise end_date and a fixme=start_date is good enough, right?
It’s better than nothing, though there’s usually no reason to omit the start date. It can be a conservative estimate, and then start_date:edtf=* can express any uncertainty or date range. That’s what I did with the Graffiti Highway in OHM, since I haven’t pored over old topo maps to figure out when it was first paved.