Looking back at the OpenRailwayMap Mapping Weekend

Alexander Matheisen
Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:27:01

The first OpenRailwayMap Mapping Weekend (with tagging discussion) took place in Cologne, Germany from 11 to 13 July 2014. Besides meeting other railway infrastructure mappers and mapping two railway lines, we discussed about extensions and changes of the railway tagging scheme. Here a report of this successful event.

The first OpenRailwayMap Mapping Weekend (with tagging discussion) took place in Cologne, Germany from 11 to 13 July 2014. It was a knowledge and communion exchange between the railway infrastructure mappers in Germany. We discussed about extensions and changes of the railway tagging scheme. Mentz Datenverarbeitung was represented by Emrah Kutlu.

At Friday evening the attendees arrived at the event location, Lokal K, and we got to know each other. We talked about public relations work for OpenRailwayMap and how to get new mappers (especially people who are no mappers at the moment but interested in trains and railways). Afterwards everyone presented his mapping techniques.

On Saturday morning we first had a breakfast at Lokal K which faded to a presentation of OSM-related work of Mentz Datenverarbeitung, a company form Munich, developing software for public transport companies, by Emrah.

He presented their experiments to route over the German railway network and the routing errors they found. We explained him the tags service=*, usage=* and maxspeed=*. We realized that there is a demand for tagging the normal direction of traffic of railway tracks to improve routing. The normal direction of traffic is the direction into trains usually use a railway track. This is the right track at double-track lines in Germany, it is the left track in other countries (e.g. UK, France, Switzerland). If there is the possibility to change the track on a double-track line before and after a curve, the routing algorithm might use the inner (opposite) track of the curve even if the train would block this track for trains of opposite direction. That's trains usually avoid usage of the opposite track.

At Saturday afternoon we paused discussions and went outdoor to map. Consti, Alex, Michael, and Emrah went by train from Köln West to Euskirchen. Emrah left the event there because he had to travel back to the airport, the other ones journeyed on to Bad Münstereifel and afterwards back to Cologne via Euskirchen.

The train from Cologne to Euskirchen was an older diesel trainset class 628. Due to the lack of GPS reception (apart from the door window and the gaiter we could just do simple video and photo mapping without georeferencing although the railway line is not electrified after Hürth-Kalscheuren. In Euskirchen we changed into a local train to Bad Münstereifel. The railway line to Bad Münstereifel is a not-electrified branch line. In Bad Münstereifel we stayed in the train and travelled back to Euskirchen. This rail ride took place in a modern Talent 1 diesel trainset which had a very good GPS reception at every place inside the train. That's why it was possible to take a lot of geotagged photos. Alex took photos of almost every signal and Consti indulged his passion of mapping ticket vending machines and their reference numbers for his [ticket vending machine map]((https://osm.lyrk.de/fahrkartenautomaten/#12/50.6083/6.8071). During change of direction at Bad Münstereifel the train driver was friendly and let the curtain of back cabin open so that we could take photos into the back direction.

In Euskirchen we did not use the Regionalexpress (express train) to Cologne but the slower and 30 minutes later departing local train to Cologne. In the meantime we mapped Euskirchen station using photomapping. Alex took photos using his 70–300 mm telephoto lens especially signals, signal numbers and more distant objects, I took overview photos using a 18–105 mm lens. The station building and the station forecourt were mapped, too.

Euskirchen train station is getting new Ks light signals (see the German Wikipedia article for images) and an electronic signalbox at the moment. Not all new signals are mounted at the moment but we decided only to map the newer ones because the older ones won't stay there longer than a few months. The results of our mapping tour to Euskirchen and Bad Münstereifel are not uploaded to OpenStreetMap at the moment. This will take place soon.

After arrival at Lokal K we continued tagging discussions. At about 8.00 p.m. jotpe, a local mapper from Cologne, joined us. Around midnight we stopped tagging discussion and went back to our flat to sleep.

Consti and Peter departed directly from the flat the next morning. Alex and Michael went to Lokal K where they met user spth from Frankfurt. They discussed a lot of open tagging issues, e.g. the ORM opinion if train stations (the station at whole, not the building) should be mapped as areas or nodes. We decided to change a few railway infrastructure tags which are used little at the moment and whose key or value names had been chosen badly. The tagging discussion took until 5.30 p.m.

The protocol can be found at OpenStreetMap wiki. The German version covers everything, the summarizing English version only the tagging discussion) and a few other parts.

The Lokal K is very suitable for meetings like this. We would like to thank the Cologne Wikipedia community for their hospitality and recommend it hereby. If it had a shower you could also sleep there (on the floor).

We plan a second meeting to discuss all issues we have not finally decided yet. This meeting will take place more centrally in Germany or in the Frankfurt area.