On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 5:23 AM, Serge Wroclawski <[email protected]> wrote: > But if you can't discover them while on the ground, eg if there's been > a building placed over it, if the area has been paved over, or is now > used as a field, then I see two problems: > > 1. It's not possible to validate > 2.The railroad is no longer present, by definition
Such railroads are definitely possible to locate, precisely because of their linear nature. Sometimes the signs are the curve of a wall, or a strange row of trees. Sometimes the signs are subtle, such as a series of gas pipeline markers. But they can be validated. Disused railroads are different than playgrounds or demolished buildings. The boundary between "inactive" and "active" is somewhat subtle: some lines linger on with one train per year for decades. The boundary between "abandoned" and "razed" is subtle: it often happens in bits and chunks. But the linear nature of a railroad is not subtle. To understand what remains, you want to understand the linear nature: railroads (almost always) connect to other railroads. * Making sense of a remaining railroad feature (e.g. a tunnel) requires understanding where the tracks went.* The process of trail building, for example, is reclaiming all of those legal right of ways, or negotiating alternative routes. I oppose deletion of a railroad until all of it is gone. As long as bits remain, the connecting context is important. It's minimally verifiable as well, as a "boots on the ground" mapper can visit the visible parts, and infer the connections.
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