User:Orwall
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About me
I live in Leuven, Belgium since I started studying here in '94. I currently work as a signaling engineer at Infrabel. My parents live in north-west of Brabant, currently a very white spot, that I tried and will try to update since I became a member on 12.01.08.
Rail-roads
Since I work at the Belgian rail-roads, I'm interested in the status and improvement of the Belgian rail network map. I try to add info as soon as I contacted our internal mapping project people (for those interested I will add some info about internal mapping projects at Infrabel). I see that the level-crossing is an active element of discussion, in which I already gave my opinion: the node should for the moment be created automatically. There just are too many LC's! Addendum 26.01.08: Of course, if we would be able to enter this data automatically, using some Infrabel GPS database, things look different.
On 14.01.08 I contacted (by mail) three division chiefs within the B-Holding (Tracks Infrastructure I.51, NMBS Tracking group (TR.2x) and our legal department) to get a hold on the available rail road GPS data, if they have any. I explained the project and hope they respond favourably. I will post their responses here.
On 17.01.08 I was contacted by the chief of division NMBS - Applications/Projects (of course they have a project group, involved in tracking, called ATLAS). They seem to have tons of GPS data from their locs available. I will meet him next week to discuss format and possible inclusion in OSM. Looks promising, doesn't it. Update: meeting will take place on Friday 25th.
The meeting on 25.01 was very interesting, I summarized its conclusions on the pages WikiProject_Belgium/Railways and Talk:WikiProject_Belgium/Conventions/Railways.
On 22.04.08 After gently reminding the chief of the ATLAS-project :-), I immediately received a 62MB textfile with GPS coördinates of (presumably) most Belgian railroads. I will analyse this data and have it post-handled by the OSM Team of Leuven. I will now also contact our own Level Crossings GPS man to ask for those data if possible.
Equipment
I use my Sony Ericsson K550i mobile phone, and a simple Bluetooth receiver, to log GPX files using software that I downloaded and installed yesterday (12.01.08): TrekBuddy.
Contributions
13.01.08 I added some smaller hiking tracks north of Leuven and tried to correct the hill between Herent and Leuven and the area around the Donkerstraat+Wijngaarden. I also added principal roads between Londerzeel and Malderen, and Lippelobos (using Potlatch, but I will try to reconfirm this by GPS files.
14.01.08 I added a route I frequently take going to and from the NMBS parking in Kessel-lo (that I also added). I also added a route which I use to go to Herent centre, coming back along the canal/Col.Begaultlaan.
15.01.08 Going indirectly home, I added a track in the "no-yahoomaps" zone of Kessel-Lo (Pachthof, tarweschoof etc) and hope I corrected some minor errors there. This zone is very complex, so I think I will run through it once, to map it afterwards (by car it's pretty impossible).
16.01.08 I tracked and mapped a side route towards the swimming pool in Kessel-Lo. Lots needs to be done there. In the following weeks contributions will be limited to visits to friends' places in Leuven and further. Among others: a ride towards Antwerp Harbour (for the job).
23+24.01.08 I have added the gData BioGeo dataset of Berkeley as a potential datasource, an ESRI-based collection of several GIS elements. Problem is I know squat about converting ESRI based data (which I see is quite common) to OSM usable data, and secondly don't know if free is free. Nevertheless, ESRI seems something the OSM community must have met before. In the past weekend I also posted some contributions on the problem of mapping rail road lines, stations and halts.