Talk:Tag:railway=station

Station as part of the (rail)way?

The station should not be part of the railway, like bus_stop. ck3d 11:49, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

So the node of the station should not be part of the ways? Why not? --Bahnpirat 14:16, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

If a station has more than one railway, on which railway should the station tag be assigned? A station is not a physical part of a railway. If you define train routes, then the station will be part of the route and that is the only needed information for routing and displaying. ck3d 17:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. What most people probably want to find their way to, by car or by foot, is the main station entrance. If we say that the station is somewhere out in the tracks, we risk that turn by turn navigators will lead people to some road near the tracks, but not where the platform is. Perhaps it is even on the wrong side of the tracks. That is dangerous! I think it makes a lot more sense to put railway=station near the entrance. Or perhaps somewhere in the middle of the station building where the biggest information board is, if the station is big. Thats where the station is for me. --Henriko 21:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Did you ever settle on anything regarding this? Not being a developer I'm not sure how navigational software would see this. If i were developing a city navigation system, I'd want it to work something like the tfl (Transport for London) route finder. Including walking directions and train directions.? Martin Renvoize 14:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

All good points but a bit one-sided... There is of course huge value in placing the node as part of the way, which is why most mappers have (I believe) ended up mapping it this way. Using the data to render, or otherwise understand a rail network map. If there's no node on the railway, this becomes quite tricky.

Some related discussions that I can remember: Talk:Tag:railway=subway entrance#Several railway lines going into a large railway station and Talk:Railways#Tube stations and tube lines. But overall it seems like a general problem with our strategy (or lack of strategy) for tagging and handling railway networks. There's several difficult problems in around this. Not the kind of thing we do very well at solving in any consistent way, but we can always try. Maybe we should discuss this somewhere at Talk:Railways. There is also a talk-transit mailing list.

-- Harry Wood 13:25, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

UK station three letter references (CRS codes)

I notice that http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations_destinations/ uses a three letter code for stations. Is there a list of these we could use? Is it useful to add them to OSM? --LeedsTracker 19:32, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh look: http://deaves47.users.btopenworld.com/CRS/CRS0.htm Wonder what copyright status is? Would be good to add references to stations in the same way we add refs to roads or amenity=post_box --LeedsTracker 19:37, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I think this is very unlikely to be copyright free. Unless this information is actually displayed at stations somewhere (and hence we could actually go and find out anyway) - then it's likely been copied from something like National Rail Enquiries or similar. Post boxes have their reference numbers displayed on the box itself. Road numbers have information on signs Richard B 12:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

True enough. Also found a list at WikiPedia that includes CRS codes and postcodes for stations. I've asked about data sources on the 'A' talk page.--LeedsTracker 14:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I've added the CRS codes (ref:crs) from https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/ (OGLv3) --DaveF63 (talk) 10:38, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

If other railway facilities such as junctions, crossovers and freight-only stations had CRS codes and they were used for management of the infrastructure, I would recommend to use railway:ref=* instead. That tag is used accross countries to tag the reference code used by the operator of the infrastructure. OpenRailwayMap supports it (both rendering at lower zoom levels and search). --Nakaner (talk) 15:01, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

It is a UK specific tag to reference passenger train stations only.--DaveF63 (talk) 01:21, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Station an area ?

In the reference page, the railway=station should be or . But the text explain that we should make a node for it. So where is the truth ? --Marc 14:09, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I have updated the page to give more details about mapping stations as areas. PeterIto 12:24, 22 April 2011 (BST)

I'd still like some clarification on this matter. For larger stations/stations where the building is mapped, is it preferred to have a node with a station tag and the building tagged as building=train_station, or should we skip the node and have the building tagged railway=station? --Mike` 20:35, 27 April 2011 (BST)

You should not map the building as railway=station, because railway=station as an area is seen as the area of the railway station (how obvious ;-) ), which is often from the entrance signal or at least from the first switch/point (AE/BE...) of each direction. --rayquaza (talk) 12:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to continue this conversation. The wiki page was updated to eliminate this confusion, but a debate also discussing mapping as nodes vs. areas was opened in October 2020, when DaveF63 changed the old tagging scheme illustration to the new, current one.

• The old scheme
  • featured public_transport=station and public_transport=platform tags
  • advised mapping railway=station to cover the area of the whole railway station as defined by railway regulations (between entry signals on both sides of the station).
• The new scheme
  • doesn't feature public_transport=station and public_transport=platform tags
  • advises mapping railway=station to cover the same area as public_transport=station.

After a back-and-forth of Dieterdreist undoing and DaveF63 redoing this edit, a discussion was (re)opened in the Tagging mailing list by Dieterdreist asking for further comments – hence the warning template on the page.

• Aharvey voiced support for retaining the old tagging scheme but said that "maybe a solution is keep railway=station and public_transport=station both defined as the passenger view, but use a new tag for rail infrastructure so you can still correctly map the station for train drivers."
• Mateusz Konieczny mentioned that "I tried mapping some railway station as areas and I ended not doing this. Either mapping would be quite arbitrary or include massive area that is not really relevant."
• Dieterdreist stated that "tagging concepts should accommodate both, the general mappers and the experts".

My opinions on these, respectively:

• I think there is no need to have two separate tags for stations mapped from passengers' point of view, as they would result in duplicates and create confusion.
• I understand that it would be a lot of work to map greater stations. But first, smaller (4 or less tracks) stations make up for the vast majority of railway stations, where mapping would be easier. Second, it is indeed relevant to have an area for the whole station – as defined by railway regulations, which in Hungary is between entry signals on both sides of the station – because otherwise you can't pair most railway station infrastructure elements (side tracks, switches, signals etc.) with the station they are located in. It would be really important to have these connections, e.g. I have a project where I need to download all infrastructure elements of a station from OSM, but I can't do that now, because there is no easy way to tell which side track or switch belongs to which station. So I think it would worth it.
• I agree that tagging should accommodate both general mappers and experts. What I said in the previous point is expert usage, but I think tagging schemes should also enable these.

Therefore I would recommend restoring the old tagging scheme and I also support adding a recommendation to map railway=stations as areas instead of nodes for the same reason. --Gymate (talk) 19:30, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

This discussion was continued in the Community Forum. Gymate (talk) 08:26, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Former stations

Former stations are currently being mapped in many different ways, including:

railway=station; disused=yes

railway=station; abandoned=yes

railway=station_site

railway:historic=station_site

historic=station_site

historic=railway_station

One could possibly add the following option:

historic:railway=station.

Any suggestions one which one we should standardise on? To my mind the first is incorrect in that disused should only be used in circumstances where the facility could easily be brought back into service, and in the great majority of places where it is used the station and often the line itself have been removed. The last one, which is my proposal fits with some more general lifecycle modeling of railways and other features where any tag can be prefixed with 'proposed', 'construction' and possibly also 'historic' to indicate a upcoming or previous change to a tag value.

-- PeterIto 17:13, 1 April 2012 (BST)

As I'm partly responsible for having mapped disused stations.

This was my take on it ...

• railway=station; disused=yes - Buildings extant on active infrastructure, could be returned to use with minor works. (eg. West Watford)

• railway=station; abandoned=yes - Station extant on active Infrastructure, but unlikely to be reinstated (eg. York Road, Primrose Hill)

• railway:historic=station_site - There was a station, but you'll have a job to find evidence of it or the site's been redeveloped. (example Croxley Green LNWR )

• railway=station_site. (Example: Blake Hall )

I've got no objection to historic:railway=station provided that historic:railway=station_site is also provided, and existing tag usage migrated which is used in the situation where the site is known to have been a 'station' (or freight terminal etc) but where the majority of what would conventionally thought of a station has gone, and it requires a degree of 'archeological technique' to find the remaining evidence...

-- ShakespeareFan00 00:05, 24 April 2012 (BST)

Thanks. I have reordering the list and clarifying a few things for my own benefit. I hope I have not damaged the meaning. PeterIto

OK, so disused matches with railway=disused (ie not currently used, but easily could be) and abandoned matches 'railway=abandoned' (ie there is physical evidence but it isn't likely to be brought back into use). railway:historic=station_site is for what would be tagged as 'railway=dismantled' if it was a railway (which is one where it is probably impossible to see that there was a station/line). All makes sense to me. Do we need 'historic:railway=station' and 'railway=station_site' or are these identical to 'railway:historic=station_site'. PeterIto 08:59, 26 April 2012 (BST)

To come back on this, I agree with you :) The differing tags seem to be hangover from various different tagging schemes. I'd say combine on railway:historic=station_site as appropriate.. ShakespeareFan00 18:06, 29 May 2012 (BST)

Agreed, and I also like the use of 'railway:historic=rail' and 'railway:historic=tram' for railway lines (which I have seen used somewhere) more than 'railway=abandoned/dismantled' because it provides more detail about the former use which gets lost when using the railway=abandoned approach. As such possibly we should consider promoting the use of railway:historic for all of these purposes. PeterIto 11:33, 31 May 2012 (BST)

"railway:historic=station_site is for what would be tagged as 'railway=dismantled' if it was a railway (which is one where it is probably impossible to see that there was a station/line)" in cases of railway leaving no traces - it must not be mapped Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 20:33, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Cargo-only train stations

What about stations used only by cargo trains, without any passenger traffic? Is it proper to use railway=station for places like that? Example: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=50.0793&mlon=19.9604#map=14/50.0793/19.9604 Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 20:31, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

railway=yard on a node (not an area) would be right. See the OpenRailwayMap tagging scheme. The area itself can be tagged landuse=railway and connected to the operating site node using an operating site relation. --Nakaner (talk) 08:56, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

public_transport=station

The sentence "In addition, you can use the new public transport tag public_transport=station." is plainly wrong.

"The tag public_transport=station can only be added in the exceptional case when it should not be an area." approximates the truth much better.

For the discussed railway=station areas: the public_transport=station area is normally a different one as it gives the passenger view of the outline.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Public_Transport --Weide

public_transport schema is independent from railway=* It only duplicates existing tags, adding no extra quality to the OSM database. It shouldn't be referenced on this page. --DaveF63 (talk) 10:52, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

What does this sentence mean?

I have no idea what this sentence means or if it has any relevance to this page. "The area a passenger has in mind might not be mapped directly. Data users can create this area by calculating a convex hull around the stop area relation like OpenBusMap does." --DaveF63 (talk) 00:19, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

If a railway station is mapped as a relation containing several other features, you can create an oval or circular area around it for rendering purposes with operations like ST_ConvexHull in postgis. This also works for a relation that has several bus_stop points or several railway_platform areas: you can make a blobby area around these. Since this is a technical rendering hint, it really does not need to be on the page, or it should be edited to something like "even if the railway=station is mapped as a node, map renderers and other database users can still create an area which includes surrounding features" - though I don't think that's really necessary for mappers to know? --Jeisenbe (talk) 02:19, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Wikis should be written with the newbie in mind (KISS principle). As this is a niche rendering procedure which isn't specific to the page's subject, I'll remove it. --DaveF63 (talk) 15:30, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Clarifying station type?

Currently only the subway=yes/no tag is suggested to highlight subway stations. On the other hand, taginfo shows common use of station=subway and related tags such as station=light_rail.

It would seem better to promote the latter, more general, usage. Since the station tag is not necessarily attached to a relevant way, there is no way for a data consumer / renderer to confidently determine the nature of the station, which might be helpful for rendering in particular.

The only snag I can see is that station=miniature and station=preserved look odd!

--Phodgkin (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

They're for separate tagging schemas, please don't confuse the two. FYI tourist, preserved railways are rarely (ever?) public transport. --DaveF63 (talk) 23:39, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Well I am now confused. I don't see reference to different tagging schemas on this page. The query is motivated by noting that Carto uses the subkey station=subway on railway=station to render subway stations at a different starting zoom from others. But this leaves the situation where "stations" (or better "halts"?) on miniature railways appear at surprisingly low zoom levels. I'm not sure how the public transport aspect applies since we are discussing railway=station rather than public_transport=station? Phodgkin (talk) 18:30, 5 March 2024 (UTC) DaveF63 (talk)

You referred to the two schemes with the first two wiki pages you linked to. I tidied up this, & other pages as there was a lot of confusing crossover between the two. OSM-Carto can decide to render how they wish using the tags provided. I'm unsure how the way they render subway stations affects miniature railways.

Please don't use station=halt, as the distinguishing line between them & stations is ambiguous & subjective as indicated in this Pipermail discussion. Use railway-station in conjunction with other clarifying tags such as request_stop=*, platforms=*, usage=tourism etc. --DaveF63 (talk) 00:35, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. It's still not clear to me whether there are competing schema or whether station=light_rail is an optional 'add-on' to railway=station. The station=light_rail page is an orphan, but people will find it and have clearly been using it. It would be helpful to explain where the schema differ / compete on this page. I agree that usage=tourism is a potentially useful way to distinguish 'preserved' railways from 'normal' railways, but its usage on stations (as opposed to tracks) doesn't appear to be documented? Is the argument against say station=light_rail that a large station may have platforms with different "types"? [I won't get into station vs. halt - the page certainly seems to argue that they can be distinguished, and I'm inclined to stick with halt where it is part of the name e.g. "Dipwood Halt" in Beamish.] Phodgkin (talk) 18:49, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

The usage of station=light_rail is clearly explained in that tag's page. It's not orphaned - many pages link to it. Just because a tag is listed on a page, it doesn't mean it can't be used. Why don't you add usage to it? Where is "the argument against say station=light_rail"? Your point is unclear. The halt section is irrelevant to this page. It's duplication which leads to confusion & errors. It should be removed.--DaveF63 (talk) 17:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Poor examples.

The Kimle-Károlyháza and Rajka examples are very poor. A railway station is a place accessible to the public. It doesn't stretch a whole kilometre down the tracks, it doesn't include sidings (And by that I mean the genuine meaning of sidings. Tracks which run adjacent to platforms allowing passengers to catch a train are /not/ sidings).--DaveF63 (talk) 21:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

In the discussion, others prefer to use public_transport=station for the extent of your concept. I did suggest to keep railway=station + public_transport=station together, and use railway=facility for the operating site.
—— Kovposch (talk) 15:17, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

This webpage is for Railway=station. Public_transport is an *independent* schema. They do not intertwine. There should be no details about public_transport on this page. I'm in the process of removing all irrelevances from this page.--DaveF63 (talk) 13:48, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Please read the whole discussion first https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/railway-station-as-an-area/104839/49
—— Kovposch (talk) 04:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I've replied in the Community Forum. Gymate (talk) 19:03, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Inconsistent information

After the recent modifications the page is now quite inconsistent regarding freight stations. It is currently claimed that railway=station should only cover the publicly accessible areas, but for freight stations this would imply not being represented at all with the tag. This cannot be true. It is also claimed that landuse=railway can be used, if railway=station is put on a node, "to include the extents of the land owned & used by the operator as a station." this is misleading, because landuse=railway can be used on all land used for railway purposes, including but not limited to stations, and is also questionable because "landuse" does not imply anything about the "owner". --Dieterdreist (talk) 09:01, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Whether or not to append the descriptive term '-station' follows local convention.

There was some confusion because the rule against adding descriptive expressions (- station, - railway station) to map features is not found anywhere else except in this railway=station entry.
As far as I can tell, the problem was caused by the change from the conditional restriction “if it is not part of the name printed on signs at the station” to the unconditional restriction “Do not add the words ‘railway station’”. - Comparing edits
This was not an edit that was specifically discussed and agreed upon, so I reverted it back to the conditional restriction. Therefore, if you normally append the descriptive term '-station' to the station name, follow local custom. --깨몽/dreamy (talk) 16:40, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I agree your edit is an improvement. —-Dieterdreist (talk) 08:49, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Related discussion : Why are descriptive terms sometimes missing in object names? --깨몽/dreamy (talk) 10:11, 18 October 2024 (UTC)