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A while ago, I tried to tag our local railway station as a railway station. I assumed I did it wrong somehow, because the change got rejected. Looking at it now, I see that it's already tagged as a train stop, rather than a station.

While that might be the technically correct term for countries with significant railway infrastructure, everyone would call it a train station, rather than a stop. Also, the current set up has split it out into two stops - one on each platform, so I don't know how I would combine those into a single entity.

And it'd be nice if when I searched for "Avondale Train Station" it would at least come up with the option of looking at the one in Auckland, New Zealand, and not automatically redirect to the one in Canada. The same would go for pretty much all of our local train stations.

Are there guidelines around what it called a stop and what is called a station, and how to classify public utilities? If so, where might those guidelines be?

Thanks Ben.

asked 22 Mar '22, 03:53

tirohia's gravatar image

tirohia
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accept rate: 0%

edited 23 Mar '22, 03:08

1

There is no approval / rejection process in OSM. Could you link to the changeset in question?

(22 Mar '22, 09:37) SimonPoole ♦

Changeset 116636544.

It was REVIEWED_BAD #OSMCHA and then reverted, which is fine, in retrospect it's quite correct that it was reverted - it did indeed duplicate an already extant station. I still haven't figured out how to do the thing I originally set out to do though, which was to make the train station appear in search results for "Avondale train station"

(23 Mar '22, 02:59) tirohia

The station is mapped here, and tagged as a station: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/61845866

There are also two stop positions mapped, two platforms, and a stop area. But these are additional to the station object, it has not been deleted.

There is some guidance here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:railway%3Dstation , and you can find more by following links in that page. But as I said, a railway=station object already exists.

So I'm not sure what you want to map that is not already mapped?

Also searching for "Avondale" on the main OSM page, I get this station as the first result. If your question is about the difference between the name "Avondale" and "Avondale Train Station", the usual convention is not to include words like "station" in the name, as noted on the page I linked - although I'm sure there are exception.

permanent link

answered 22 Mar '22, 11:39

alan_gr's gravatar image

alan_gr
2.6k12245
accept rate: 15%

I get why my first attempt was wrong (reviewed #BAD) and why it was reverted.

The likely reason that I missed the existence of the railway=station object, is that it comes up when you search "Avondale". If I am searching for "Avondale" I am likely looking for the town center a couple of hundred meters away.

I'm not currently trying to figure out how to map anything new, I want to figure out now is how the tagging/naming works so that I can add/change something such that train station will come up when I search for "Avondale Train Station" or "Avondale Station", instead of being redirected to Canada.

How do people usually have train stations come up when searching for train stations, if the tag railway=station doesn't make it appear in results for "<place> train station" and the suggested norm as per your link is to leave "railway" or "station" out of the name? I note the place that it redirects to in Canada, has put the word "railway station" in the name - i.e. an exception as noted.

(23 Mar '22, 00:26) tirohia

Different geocoders (geo search engines) have different rules for searching. If you tried on openstreetmap.org, then you have used nominatim, which is pretty literal in its way of treating search input. Others might be more advanced. But the tagging conventions should not be based on the various ways the data is used. The convention is not to repeat in the name information available in other tags. Thus an advanced search engine could translate "train station" from the language of the user, etc.

(23 Mar '22, 18:29) H_mlet
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question asked: 22 Mar '22, 03:53

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last updated: 23 Mar '22, 18:29

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum