4:13 p.m.
I'm trying to figure out another North American tag interpretation, to keep
us consistent with everyone else.
For most North American railroads, operating sites like junctions, siding
ends, and crossovers (really, all Control Points) are referred to by name
and milepost (and milepost here is most often alphanumeric, example "LP
1.9" for a site named "Colley Avenue"). We've been discussing
internally
how to tag these this week, and realized we probably need a better
international interpretation to help us stay consistent.
My initial thought a week ago was that this would probably be
railway:position. However, that tag isn't included by default in the
tagging scheme for these types of operating sites, and based on how it's
used, others have pointed out to me that this is probably a better fit for
railway:ref for these sites. I tend to agree.
For a good, quick typical view of how these are used, see here for a page
out of an employee timetable (which is really the reference book for the
subdivision), page 4 (PDF page 8) where the above example was taken:
http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/NS/NS%20ETTs/NS%20...
So far in North America, railway:ref is only being used for the
three-letter codes for passenger stations, which is a very clear correct
use. Using that tag for the many, many control point operating sites we
have would very much be a different use to what's already done, so I'd want
to verify that it's correct and intended before actually implementing it.
After all, if we stuck with railroad:position for this, it would leave
railroad:ref an "uncluttered" tag for passenger stations, which do
represent its most important use.
What is the sense of the wider community here on how this was meant to work?
A large part of the reason I've been bringing so many of these NA-specific
questions to the list over the past week and a half is that we've been
starting to work up a simplified NA-specific JOSM tagging preset. Anything
I include as an implicit tag interpretation is going to potentially get
repeated over the map quite a bit, so I'm trying to be *really* careful
about making sure my understanding of the tags built into the preset tools
is correct, so they will be correctly applied.
Thanks for your help and input,
Chuck