Russ is a railfan. I am a railfan. We are a group of people for whom railroads hold a lot of interest and nostalgia. Being able to see locations of abandoned railways in OSM is very desirable for us. (Not to mention that some of them will eventually be converted to rail trails, and so their location is important from that aspect.) I guess we're asking that an exception to the "verifiable features only" rule be made for these features. Simply confining abandoned railroad features to OHM is not a good solution, because without being able to view them in the context of existing features, they lose a lot of their value.
A long time ago someone decided that administrative boundaries would be granted an exception. We are also mapping cycle routes. Is it too much to ask for abandoned railroads to be granted an exception too? I know the classic argument against this is that it would open the floodgates for all kinds of other historic objects to be mapped, thereby cluttering the map. But are there really that many people that would clamor for feature type "x" to also be included? I've not heard anything on this mailing list from anyone advocating passionately for any other type of historic feature. One thing that differentiates abandoned railroads from other features is that they are few enough in number compared to other features that they don't add that many more elements to the map. All things considered, I wouldn't think that keeping abandoned railroads in OSM would cause that much harm. We cater to cyclists (of which I am one as well), why not railway enthusiasts? Mark Bradley _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
