Proposal talk:Surface of embedded railway tracks

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What about sleepers (ties)?

I think the proposal has limited scope since it basically covers only tramway tracks (which are usually embedded in street surface), as opposed to sleepers (ties) used for railways – invariably wood or prefabricated concrete. Granted, it says as much, but it makes it really narrow. I would even say that we do not need a vote for this: Key:surface is rather open-ended that it applies to "roads/footpaths and some other features". Duja (talk) 11:02, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Ref Talk:Key:surface#surface of railways
There are street-running mainline rail, especially for freight in USA. railway=rail + embedded=yes , embedded_rails=rail show them.
—— Kovposch (talk) 07:19, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
Although there are far more railway tracks with sleepers than embedded tracks, I believe that embedded tracks have a greater need for the information about the surface, because they are potentially also usable by other vehicles, such as buses or emergency cars. I have excluded the topic of sleepers from this proposal for three main reasons:
1. Existing usage: In some tram tracks, surface=* is already being used, which shows that other mappers also consider it a relevant piece of information worth recording.
2. Lack of tagging approaches for sleepers: I have not found any established tagging methods for sleepers, which could indicate that there is little demand for mapping them.
3. More visible characteristics for non-embedded tracks: In addition to the material of the sleepers (wood, concrete, steel), there is also the material between or beneath them (gravel or a concrete base), the arrangement pattern, and the spacing between individual sleepers. This kind of information would not fit within a single surface=* tag, which is why I see this as a completely separate topic.
Regarding the statement that no formal vote is needed: I initially understood the phrase "and other features" to refer to sports facilities, as they are also mentioned further down on the wiki page. Since different people might interpret it differently, a formal vote would provide clarity on whether surface=* should be explicitly applicable to embedded railway tracks or not.
--TrainTraveller (talk) 21:52, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Confusing different proposals

This shouldn't be split between 2 proposals. They are about the same topic.
It's unclear and puzzling to use surface=* and be*_rails=* separately. They should be combined. There's already handrail:center=* that should be adopted with the correct British spelling.


—— Kovposch (talk) 07:26, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

This first proposal should just clarify the application of surface=* to (embedded) railway tracks, without introducing new attributes, just for simple cases. The second proposal introduces new attributes to describe cases where surfaces vary between or beside the rails. Keeping them separated allows that someone might approve the first one but reject the second one. Admittedly, they both focus on the same topic, albeit with different levels of detail. If it makes things clearer, I can put them both together.
I like your suggestion with surface:centre=* but a disadvantage of embedded=centre is that you can no longer say that a certain area is not embedded because you can not set the value 'no'.
Just to complete your renaming suggestions, would be the other tags as following?
And the more rare cases:

--TrainTraveller (talk) 20:24, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Can you explain what between_rails:left=* and between_rails:left=* looks? Example locations or photos?
—— Kovposch (talk) 11:50, 7 March 2025 (UTC)
As of now, I haven't found strong real-world examples where between_rails:left:surface and between_rails:right:surface would actually differ. It was more of a technical option, by splitting the center into two halves, to provide the same tagging possibilities as for beside_rails. However, for now, I think keeping it simpler without these attributes makes more sense.
In all examples I have found so far where the surface differs at all, the differences are only between beside_rails:left, beside_rails:right, or both compared to between_rails. So I will just focus on that.
If there are no opposing opinions, I will incorporate your suggested changes gradually."
--TrainTraveller (talk) 00:54, 8 March 2025 (UTC)
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