Naming conventions for railways in Ireland

Own_Oh · 2024-08-28T16:06:37.298Z

Long time mapper, first time poster here but today I raised a fixme request on a segment of the railway route near Fairview Park, Dublin. Essentially: why is the name applied to some of the Republic’s railway routes tagged with historic names, i.e. GNR, GMWR etc when these designations have not been used for decades? The railway route out of Dublin city heading to Belfast is name tagged GNR Main Line when it is simply the Dublin-Belfast main line.

The same happens outside Athlone where the Dublin-Westport line becomes the Mayo Line and the Dublin-Galway line becomes GMWR Main Line. This seems quirkey and ahistoric. Could we at least agree on using an alt_name or even old_name tags?

ramthelinefeed · 2024-10-04T12:27:49.016Z

Yeah, I also note that the various railways tended to start off run by smaller companies, then get absorbed into bigger ones as the decades went on (before finally being nationalised) - so any ‘historical name’ usually would need to be time-limited with start_date and end_date tags, to be strictly accurate.

Own_Oh · 2024-10-04T14:40:23.376Z

So in short, we need to establish an agreed naming convention for railways in Ireland?

ramthelinefeed · 2024-10-06T09:14:56.777Z

I don’t think that would be any different from the way every other object gets tagged with its name(s), really? There’s nothing special about railway lines in that regard.
Things can have names in multiple languages, alternative names, former names… There are tags for all these things.

alan_gr · 2024-10-06T13:18:24.240Z

I think one thing is a bit different from a lot of commonly tagged objects; it is unclear if railway lines in Ireland really have names at all.

E.g. is there something named as the Dublin to Belfast Line? I’m not talking about the route relation representing the public transport route, but about the physical railway itself. How about Dublin to Rosslare? If Dublin to Rosslare is a name, does it start in Connolly or Pearse? Is there an objective way to choose one over the other? Is there a Dublin to Westport Railway, or a branch of the Dublin to Galway line, or maybe both the Westport and Galway lines are extensions of the Dublin to Athlone line?

There may well be good answers to these questions for someone with sufficient knowledge of things like milestones along the track. I would certainly be open to a proposal along those lines. But I don’t have enough knowledge to propose something myself.

In the meantime, the lack of clear names tends to encourage the use of other approaches, like historical names as we have seen. People like to see labels on maps.

Own_Oh · 2024-10-08T09:39:40.442Z

People do like to see labels on maps, I am just a little concerned that we are showing them labels that have little relevance to people currently using them daily.

If we named them using the station names e.g. Dublin Connolly-O’Hanrahan Wexford then any continued line to Rosslare can be labelled O’Hanrahan Wexford-Rosslare Europort. I am not sure where the confusion could arise.

alan_gr · 2024-10-08T10:08:28.102Z

I agree about the historic labels.

For the current labels, the issue is not so much about confusion as about possible lack of verifiability. Is there a source or rationale for splitting specifically at Wexford O’Hanrahan? Say I preferred the labels “Dublin Connolly to Greystones” and “Greystones to Rosslare Europort”, is there any way to choose one or the other?

alan_gr · 2024-10-08T10:44:11.016Z

I wonder if the “Route” column in the Irish Rail Network Statement would be a useful starting point:

irishrail.ie

IE-2024-Network-Statement.pdf

4.80 MB

This seems complete and coherent - from a quick look, every segment of the Irish Rail network would fall clearly under one and only one of these labels.

I would be more comfortable with this if I could find the same labels in use somewhere else. This is a rather technical document prepared, as far as I can see, for the theoretical possibility of another operator wanting to compete with Irish Rail. I’d prefer if there was a more public-facing source. But other uses don’t seem very systematic, e.g. the same section of line might be referred to as “DART” or “Northern Commuter” or “Dublin to Belfast” depending on the context.

(This doesn’t cover Northern Ireland obviously).

Own_Oh · 2024-10-08T11:10:00.004Z

Thanks Alan. I can see Appendix 1B: Passenger Stations - Platform Capacity Tables has a column called Route which might work.

Would it be worth our while consulting with the RailUsers Ireland group?

alan_gr · 2024-10-08T11:38:44.658Z

Own_Oh:

I can see Appendix 1B: Passenger Stations - Platform Capacity Tables has a column called Route which might work.

Yes, I forgot to point to exactly what part of the document, but that is the one.

Own_Oh · 2024-10-08T11:51:46.210Z

So i wonder if we take this on ourselves or do we need to consult with a larger OSM group?

alan_gr · 2024-10-08T12:19:11.069Z

My impression is that Irish mappers are more active on Telegram, but I don’t know anything about that myself. They certainly don’t seem to be active here - as far as I can I see this forum isn’t even listed on the contact page.

https://www.openstreetmap.ie/contact/

DeBigC · 2024-10-19T16:27:45.435Z

Feel free to make your own app choices.

The Ireland osm community had a number of face to face consultations where we legitimately decided we would make our main channel of comms and interaction on Telegram- and we don’t indulge terrorism, nor any such other toxicity as we have a well regulated entry point into our group. Personal experience- Telegram can be set to not let any of those offending items in. The worst I remember is the occasional cryptocurrency ponzi - which gets flung out fast.

On the trains, and yes anything on osm… it is totally legitimate to tag former names for places and things. If we treat it like a static map we start to see these items as clutter. If we treat osm as a database we look upon old names for things as richness of detail. If there’s a lack of present naming of things its more than likely due to a lack of referential opendata on the matter, or the age old problem with opendata in Ireland having an incompatibile licence with what we need for OpenStreetMap

Own_Oh · 2024-11-04T13:58:15.355Z

Regarding trainline names, off to rename and retag lines around the city first then. @alan_gr up for this?

alan_gr · 2024-11-04T16:50:55.008Z

Sorry, but it’s not likely to reach the top of my priority list - I already have too long a backlog of notes from local surveys that I need to update.