Topic has been opened. I thank everyone for their patience. I think this topic is expansive and could produce many interesting discussions. Cheers.
1 Like
While it was locked yesterday, we talked about this in the discord. I figured that at least some of what was mentioned there should be brought here. Some argued that only the embankments, cuttings, tunnels, etc should be mapped with railway=abandoned instead of razed, but I think that was:railway=yes is better. The point is that it is describing the embankment/etc itself and not saying itâs a railway.
The reason that people want to tag like this is because they think that the architecture and structures left behind from railways are distinct enough that a tag to distinguish that something came from a railway is warranted. Also ideally ORM would switch from getting razed and historic railway data from OSM and instead from OHM.
2 Likes
3-4 years back I encountered a road that served as a main street that had formerly been a railway, but was still mapped as a railway, even with with valid photos/imagery showing it as mostly dismantled. I noted it had a nonexistent road mapped parallel. The mapper of the parallel road confirmed he was too afraid of inciting controversy by editing the old railway, so adding the parallel road was his solution. I didnât pursue the matter further as I didnât really care about this problem at the time.
Maybe was:railway=yes would be a valid solution for such situations.
1 Like
I donât have anything to do with OpenRailwayMap, but I do look after a map style that shows razed and dismantled (as well as abandoned, extant and proposed) railways.
A worked example of what Iâd need to do to use OHM and OSM data would be most welcome** (including any legal aspects - if I combine the two in one display layer are there any issues?
Also, from the perspective of people who have added razed and dismantled railways to OSM, what do they need to do to move them to OHM - both the technical aspects and the legal aspects?
** a pull request at https://github.com/SomeoneElseOSM/SomeoneElse-style would of course be welcome for the technical part of this.
1 Like
Isnât that exactly what e.g. railway=dismantled and =razed actually mean?
3 Likes
Licence/Community Guidelines/Horizontal Map Layers - Guideline - OpenStreetMap Foundation seems relevant
AFAIK if you just show at the same two datasets and do not edit either based on another one (and just show existing railways from one and no longer existing one from another) then share-alike is not triggered.
WARNING: I am not a lawyer, this is not an official OSMF statement (as usual, unless I noted otherwise).
It still has exactly the same problem - if there is no evidence of a railroad having existed at a location (on a given place, not in archives or old maps) then such railway is not mappable in OSM.
Disclaimer: case where feature was recently removed and is visible on aerial imagery may fall under exception of keeping recently gone features
1 Like
If thereâs really no evidence for a railroad there then its not mappable on OSM and its been like that for a while. It would only be a tag on a cylceway, embankment, cutting, tunnel, bridge, or so on, that has evidence that it was a railway. The point is that the tag is describing where whatâs currently on the ground came from.
These are some examples of that that people posted in the discord :
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2540126
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2682203
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1179149906003374243/1196132447604199464/20240114_152039.jpg?ex=65ede326&is=65db6e26&hm=3d8fa1fac3ca51a5bd47056a978d252fbfe9f6e3eb1150c23277ef200fc8726b&
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1179149906003374243/1196132447293804634/20240114_135203.jpg?ex=65ede326&is=65db6e26&hm=9bac7ce4f80c0aebd19ea45ae414df22df6507469745ae41a44e56a175c4efec&
I donât personally see the appeal for adding it onto things and I wouldnât use it, but if someone can truly verify that a road, cycleway, etc came from a railway with ground evidence or an old map or something, it seems fine. It would not be just a replacement of railway=razed.
1 Like
There was some on-the-ground evidence in the situation I encountered - there were a few structures still left indicating the road was formerly a railway, but only pieces remained and what existed was defunct. I was only an observer to the mapping dispute - If it had been up to me I would have drawn the whole thing as a tertiary way, reflecting its current function, instead of as a railway, when it was last capable of operating as such 40 years in the past.
I guess the question we have to tackle is: if only parts of a very large structure is still extant, where do we the line between mapping and not mapping it? I fall on the side of avoiding mapping the leftover parts of anything thatâs mostly been demolished.
Is it a legitimate thing to do to just slap these on a way underneath a typical highway tag (assuming parts of the old defunct railway still exist)? If yes, maybe it is unnecessary to depecrate railway=razed and railway=dismantled.
Thatâs only going to be an option if all of the data currently in OSM is also compatible with OHM. I suspect that this is not the case (which is why I asked for clarification above).
For completeness, I have moved OSM historic data to OHM in the past**. This was when the source of the data in OSM (out of copyright maps) was definitely compatible.
Iâve added plenty of âabandonedâ railway data to OSM in the past, usually based on survey with infill from OOC maps. However, sometimes Bing has been used (for aligning private tracks, for example). Is that compatible with OHM? Even if it was, would OHM want it?
** This was before OHM âlostâ its database and had to be restored to a much older version, so unfortunately my contributions were lost.
1 Like
It would be great if the main discussion could take place on an official OSM channel (like here on the forums), and then you report the results to Discord, instead of the other way around.
Yes! It seems folks want to undo years of OSM convention. While we should be open to change, I donât think it adds value in this case.
Since you quoted part of my response, I want to be clear, my decision to not delete railways is not a matter of being afraid of inciting controversy, but rather out of respect for other mappers and the realization that there are probably a lot of other people that know a whole lot more about railways than I do. I understand that other mappers may have different motivations.
3 Likes
Thatâs Monsal Head Viaduct in Derbyshire, somewhere that I am very familiar with. That trail is obviously both highway=cycleway and an abandoned railway**. (not dismantled or razed so not subject to to the suggestion at the top of this thread, but worth mentioning for what Iâm going to say next).
The ways on the route used to have ârailway=abandonedâ tags until https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1101430653 was added to duplicate the current cycleway with an old railway. This is wrong for a number of reasons - there is only one feature here, not two (it was a railway, and is now a cycleway), and the âformer railwaynessâ of the cycleway has been lost.
I suspect that this issue is not widespread around the world, but I have been âbucket and shovellingâ it in various places in England that Iâve been.
** edit to add why this is particularly useful: Until the tunnels were reopened when walking from Matlock to Buxton you had to scramble over the top of the hill that the tunnels cut through. The information that it was a former railway means that everyone and their granny can walk it without problems, something that absolutely wasnât the case before.
3 Likes
I donât see why not. I have done something like this with tracks a trails. Where the track is so overgrown that it is no longer possible to drive a vehicle on it, but it is possible to hike on it.
2 Likes
I agree, but âdiscussion moving somewhere elseâ is entirely understandable when a thread is closed (even temporarily) here. I referred to a very old âtalkâ mailing list post earlier to try and show that this isnât a new thing that has just blown up.
3 Likes
Yes, it has been going on for many years, but this latest incarnation seems to have started on Discord and continued there until a sort of consensus was reached, and only then was anything posted on the forums. In other words, it didnât move to Discord when this thread was closed.
for all of them there are relatively clear remains of railway (or at least construction very similar to typical railway structures) so these are railway=abandoned (maybe even railway=disused if railway tracks are remaining, this may be even an active railway line (based on this photo alone).
This thread is about something else.
Bad mapping using say railway=razed is about cases where for example railway, village and 40m of soil and rock below it was replaced by open pit mine. See say File:Turow.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
Or say File:AlejaAdamaMickiewicza-OgĂłlnyWidokNaPoĆudnie-StareMiasto-POL, KrakĂłw.jpg - Wikimedia Commons where (AFAIK on this segment, but not fully sure) had now gone, without trace, a railway embankment.
And some people still try to invalidly map such railway in OSM and defend it as OK. But in this cases these data will be sooner or later deleted from OSM and it was never correct to put in there.
(this is not a theoretical case, I deleted tracks only across this specific open pit mine at least twice)
(and yes, there is another strain of problem with people remotely deleting railways where mapper surveyed and confirmed existence of remnants - without attempt to even contact original mapper)
That comment was about display of map data from OHM and OSM at the same time. (IANAL - yes, you can)
Whether OSM data can/should be moved to OHM is a separate issue.
1 Like
Openhistoricalmap actively encourages people to come over and map historical things. Iâve even heard theyâve got some new railway layer, although I donât know much about it. Its not about disrespecting railway mappers, rather its about having good data. Past railways do not belong on OSM. The status quo of razed and dismantled railways allows people to come in and map demolished railways and think theyâre in the right.
1 Like
It may very well be the other way around. The cycleway in my picture with the tunnel began itâs life in OSM 2011 as railway=preserved, was modified 2014 to railway=disused and 2021 moved to railway=abandoned because of the work at the cycleway. 2022 the tag construction=cycleway was slapped at this way. The last change was last year after the opening of the cycleway. Now it is highway=cycleway and railway=abandoned.
This combination is the usual one here where I live, both sides of the French-German Border.
There are parts of Germany where they prefer this form of mapping too, see
Perhaps I wasnât clear, the ârespectâ has to do with admitting that some other mapper may be able to see things on the landscape that you and I canât because they have more experience in this matter than either of us. It doesnât mean that something has to always be left on the map out of ârespect.â By all means, if you want to delete a railway that runs through a housing development that was created by first scraping away all remnants of what existed before, go ahead. I wonât complain.
If you are having a dispute with another mapper regarding whether a specific feature belongs in OSM, bring that dispute to the attention of the community here. If the feature really no longer exists in any form, you will get my support.