I am not happy how we are tagging signal boxes today. The rules say that we fill the tag "name" with the name of the signal box and the reference (eg "Zossen Zo" or "Weinheim ESTW-Z"). That makes that on the "normal" OpenStreetMap this is shown on the building. The normal OSM user can't understand what kind of building that is. Nobody outside the railway community understands these acronyms.

My proposal is not to use the tag "name" for ORM anymore. Let's use the "ref" tag only or use different tags that are not used in OpenStreetMap. So we can use the tag "name" for something like "signal box" or "Stellwerk"  that will be shown in OpenStreetMap and is commonly understandable.

I already proposed that here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE_talk:OpenRailwayMap/Tagging#Stellwerke

What do you think?

Best regards

Eckhard (EM311)