Chuck, Thank You for your time fixing the reporting marks section.
Railroad Line numbers do exist for railroads in the United States and Canada. Ref= is for the use of line numbers. I can send you links to line numbers. Line numbers were given to a line by the railroad when it was laid and often lasts it's entire lifetime, without a change. The other way I see it used is to identify what track number it is: Eg Main 1, or you are in a yard and there is track 1, 2, 3, etc. Both of these are examples of track numbers. I will discourage the changing of in use tags for the soul purpose of editing for the renderer. This is a renderer problem and not a problem with OSM. Here is the wiki about not editing for the renderer https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tagging_for_the_renderer There is a OpenRailwayMap email list. I was just there chatting about how Traffic Control is different from Train Protection. I will agree that ORM under represents the data from North America that is already within the map. Please make these suggestions in the ORM list to make the ORM renderer more usable as you have described. Quote from your email: " The label is occasionally the spelled out operator name, but most commonly (better than 90% of examples) the operator reporting marks, which serve as a standardized shorthand. Even the names, as we tag them in the name field, are rarely used to refer to the lines, and are essentially never used on mapping here.They're the absolute last-choice designator, and you *really* have to hunt to find any rail map in the US (including by the operators) that labels any line by name." " That's the US industry standard." All of this paragraph are style choices when rendering the data from within OSM. If you would like this to change, talk to the ORM list or make a better renderer. I will reject your assertion that we should dumb down the map just becuase that is the way TOPO had it. If you are a railroad owner and you are worried about the amount of information on OSM that is a valid argument but that is not the way you are presenting this as of now. Thanks for your thoughts on all of this. I agree that OpenStreetMap, Open Railway Map, and the renderer could be improved to better show off what we have here in North America. Researchers utilize OSM as we have the most up to date railway map in the country of any data source and it is important to maintain standards. I believe that the wiki pertaining to railway=* is confusing and the addition of continent specific tagging makes it more difficult to understand. If you would like to help me with cataloging this information this is one of the side projects. But right now I am over on Open Historical Map adding railroads over there. Best Regards, > Nathan P > email: natf...@gmail.com >
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