Talk:Tag:railway=narrow gauge
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Gauge
We should specify a range of gauges to be considered narrow_gauge. Otherwise the usage is quite arbitrary. Nzara 17:28, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
Is this tag needed?
Why not just use railway=rail and specify gauge=narrow (or more specific if you know, of course)? --Gorm 20:44, 8 July 2012 (BST)
- @Gorm: Good question, i'm not a railway expert, i just see quite stable organic growth taghistory narrow_gauge which probably speaks against it.
- Thanks for your recent contribution regarding this topic: Being bold. Depricating. Use railway=rail + gauge=* instead
- Regarding your change of the status from defacto to deprecated and the proposed usage of railway=rail instead of railway=narrow_gauge i just wonder a bit how this can be compatible with the description of railway=rail with currently says "Rails of a standard gauge track"?
- Btw. did you ask/talk to a wider community by mailing list or forum (don't think wiki talk pages are observed a lot) for the deprecation of tag railway=narrow_gauge? --MalgiK (talk) 18:36, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
- I did, in the Telegram group [1]. With 1500 members I see that as a good part of the community. --Gorm (talk) 10:12, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- You can stop using a tag yourself or within your own community. You can draft a proposal to document your own usage without RFC. But you can't change the reality that others are using or have used it, especially when applications have wide support. (have you asked them too?) You need to at least discuss the status here first. Deprecation is perhaps the strongest wording wiki can take. That's why it needs to be proposed to reflect community consensus. --- Kovposch (talk) 11:00, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- Regarding talk and telegram: Great, but there is an issue with closed (non public) channels like the most osm telegram channels. For my understanding the talk/discussion can only count for open platforms, means no account is needed like on the wiki, mailing-list or the new Discourse community forum. So in other words people without a telegram account can't follow this talk.
- >> Channel OpenStreetMapOrg: https://t.me/OpenStreetMapOrg open public preview: https://t.me/s/OpenStreetMapOrg is not accessible
- >> Channel OpenStreetMapIr: https://telegram.me/OpenStreetMapIr open public preview: https://telegram.me/s/OpenStreetMapIr is accessible
- I tried to open the page of the public preview which isn't available for https://t.me/s/OpenStreetMapOrg maybe you could ask the admin of that channel (OpenStreetMapOrg) to bring it in public mode? As similar to https://telegram.me/s/OpenStreetMapIr which is also accessible even without telegram account?--MalgiK (talk) 22:41, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- You can stop using a tag yourself or within your own community. You can draft a proposal to document your own usage without RFC. But you can't change the reality that others are using or have used it, especially when applications have wide support. (have you asked them too?) You need to at least discuss the status here first. Deprecation is perhaps the strongest wording wiki can take. That's why it needs to be proposed to reflect community consensus. --- Kovposch (talk) 11:00, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- I did, in the Telegram group [1]. With 1500 members I see that as a good part of the community. --Gorm (talk) 10:12, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- "Be bold" doesn't mean you can change the status of an established tag. Wiki article is for describing existing usage. Please start a proposal if you want.
gauge=narrow is not "more specific". This is already opposed in Key:gauge#Why_not_to_use_text_values. Not only does it conflict with the actual gauge width in number, it is vague and ambiguous. Eg is 1372mm "narrow" if it's not standard? Technically it is, but it might not meet the expectation. Taken to the extreme, there are nominal 1432mm gauge. If narrower than 1435mm is the definition, they would somehow be "narrow", despite being almost compatible. Both are claimed as "narrow gauge" in Wikipedia. However, in the actual article, "significantly" wider or narrower is described as the criteria. Shows why one shouldn't blindly following Wiki altogether.
--- Kovposch (talk) 09:34, 2 October 2022 (UTC)- Proposals is hard. Being bold is not :D The only reason this tag is still growing, is because editors offer it and people apply it without thinking. As you point out there is no set definition of "narrow", it is "vague and ambiguous" This is exactly why the fact that a railway line is narrow does not belong in the main rail=* tag. An exact number in gauge=* is of course the best, but mappers aren't always out with a ruler to measure millimeters. So, a "narrow" is just fine until someone comes around and updates it to something more precise. rail=narrow_gauge should go away, just like highway=unpaved, highway=steep, highway=ford has gone away before it. Also the other uses of the main tag (like preserved, subway etc) clashes with narrow_gauge: What if the line is both subway and narrow or some other combination thereof? Gauge belongs in gauge=* not in rail=*. --Gorm (talk) 10:12, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- How can you tell something is exactly standard gauge, and slightly narrower or wider by eyes then? On the contrary, you can even use your phone camera with apps to measure distance.
Gauge doesn't belong in gauge=* because gauge=* is already used for the exact number. Your examples are wrong. They have no conflicts in the substitute. This is instead similar to replacing a highway=narrow with width=narrow, which has further been deprecated in Proposed features/Narrow width.
Quite the opposite, you can already use rail=narrow_gauge in lieu of railway=narrow_gauge. The better choice is track_gauge=* to accompany loading_gauge=* classification.
--- Kovposch (talk) 10:54, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
- How can you tell something is exactly standard gauge, and slightly narrower or wider by eyes then? On the contrary, you can even use your phone camera with apps to measure distance.
- Proposals is hard. Being bold is not :D The only reason this tag is still growing, is because editors offer it and people apply it without thinking. As you point out there is no set definition of "narrow", it is "vague and ambiguous" This is exactly why the fact that a railway line is narrow does not belong in the main rail=* tag. An exact number in gauge=* is of course the best, but mappers aren't always out with a ruler to measure millimeters. So, a "narrow" is just fine until someone comes around and updates it to something more precise. rail=narrow_gauge should go away, just like highway=unpaved, highway=steep, highway=ford has gone away before it. Also the other uses of the main tag (like preserved, subway etc) clashes with narrow_gauge: What if the line is both subway and narrow or some other combination thereof? Gauge belongs in gauge=* not in rail=*. --Gorm (talk) 10:12, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
Railways in parks with gauge = 600 mm: railway=miniature or railway=narrow_gauge?
The definitions for railway=miniature and railway=narrow_gauge have been changed several times in recent years - and it is still completely unclear to me whether railway=miniature or railway=narrow_gauge should be used for a railway in a park with a gauge of 600 mm.
Strictly according to what railway=narrow_gauge now says ("For small railways in parks which are tourist attractions and not part of a railway network railway=miniature is used instead.") railway=miniature should probably be used, even if the information about the railways that you find says that they are narrow-gauge railways (e.g. on Wikipedia). This is somewhat confusing and somewhat absurd. It also leads to such railways being tagged differently (see example below).
I am not a railway expert, so can someone define/formulate the definitions here more clearly for such cases? (Preferably on both wiki pages ...)
Examples:
- "Schlossgartenbahn Karlsruhe" (gauge = 600 mm): currently railway=narrow_gauge (changed in 2018; previously railway=miniature). See https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/155613870 and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlossgartenbahn_Karlsruhe
- "Parkeisenbahn Saarbrücken" (gauge = 600 mm): currently railway=miniature. See https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/124212507 and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkeisenbahn_Saarbr%C3%BCcken
Goodidea (talk) 17:12, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- The difference between railway=miniature and other forms of railways is that the rolling stock is miniature as well. A railway=narrow_gauge supports full-size trains, and railway=miniature supports scale models of trains. clay_c (talk) 18:25, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
- I've already thought of that, but it's not clearly stated in the wiki. It would be a much clearer distinguishing feature than the track width. Instead, the Wiki page for railway=miniature says: "Miniature railways are narrower than narrow gauge" ... that's not true then. Maybe in most cases, but not always. So it's a bad definition... Other mappers (see "Schlossgartenbahn Karlsruhe") do not seem to have understood this clearly either.