Key:railway

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railway

Description:

The railway tag is used to mark all kinds of railways or other transports using rails.

Group:

Railway

Element: help

Implies:

Tagwatch: help

Summary

This page concerns the mapping of all kinds of railways or other transports using rails.

The railway=* tag should be used on ways for all sorts of different types of railed transports.

All stations and halts should have their name in the name=* tag. The tracks themselves are generally not named, but you can do so, if it makes sense.

Distinguish between the rail systems

It's not easy to have a general rule to distinguish between the different rail systems, because there are so many slightly different systems in use in different countries and different cities. Find out for yourself what fits best in your area. Here are some guidelines:

Trams generally run above ground and often share roads with cars. They often have a smaller gauge (width between tracks rails) than a proper railway.
Subways generally run below ground, but not always.
Monorails have a single rail, which may be above or below the cars (or even both)
If a track are shared between different types of transport, tag them with the larger one. So a track used by a light rail and a proper railway is tagged as railway=rail.

London Tube Stations - mini project to collect lat/long data for London underground tube stations and release the data as public domain.

Values

Key	Value	Comment
Track
railway	rail	Full sized passenger or freight trains in the standard gauge for the country or state
railway	tram	One or two carriage rail vehicles, usually sharing motor road (Other languages)
railway	light_rail	Short/light passenger trains. Metro systems.
railway	subway	A passenger rail service running mostly underground.
railway	preserved	A railway running historic trains, usually a tourist attraction (changed to preserved from preserved_rail as "rail" is redundant).
railway	disused	A section of railway which is no longer used but where the track and infrastructure remains in place. See `disused=yes` for alternative tagging.
railway	abandoned	The course of a former railway which has been abandoned and the track and infrastucture removed. Designation not to be used if the feature has been turned into another use, eg cycleway.
railway	narrow_gauge	Narrow-gauge passenger or freight trains.
railway	monorail	A railway with only a single rail.
Service attributes
service	yard	Tracks within railway company operated marshalling yards
service	siding	Relatively short lengths of track, running parallel to (and connected to) a main route
service	spur	Relatively short lengths of track, built to give one company or entity access to the main line
Stops
railway	station	Railway station (Other languages).
railway	halt	A small station, may not have a platform, trains may only stop on request.
railway	tram_stop	A tram stop is a place where a passenger can embark / disembark a tram.
landuse	railway	Ground used around railways and railway-stations
Intersections
railway	crossing	A point where pedestrians may cross.
railway	level_crossing	A point where rails and roads cross.
railway	subway_entrance	The entrance to a subway station, usually going from surface to underground.
Rail-related features
railway	turntable	These are used for changing the direction that part of a train is pointing in.
railway	User Defined