Note: this post contains the current active draft of the railway manual. If you would like to propose and changes, additions, or deletions, please post in the thread to do so. This post should be edited only when consensus in favor of a specific change has emerged.
Scope
- the purpose of this project is to map current regularly scheduled passenger rail services. Tracks which are not currently used by passenger trains in regularly scheduled revenue service should not be mapped, unless service is only temporarily suspended short-term. To qualify as "regularly scheduled service", service must operate at least once a week for at least three months of the year.
- Bus routes, including "trackless trolleys" and bus rapid transit routes, are out of the project scope even in cases where they are shown on the same official maps as rail services (e.g. we are not mapping the MBTA silver line).
- trains which run on rubber tires are allowed to be mapped so long as they follow a fixed guideway (e.g. Montreal Metro)
- in places where railcars are loaded onto ferries with passengers on board, the ferry routing should not be mapped and the ferry terminals should be considered terminals of the rail service
- Amusement park rides should not be mapped unless they provide a substantial transportation function (e.g. the Disney World monorails are okay)
System Tiers
Tier 1: intercity rail systems (e.g. Amtrak, Shinkansen)
Tier 2: commuter rail systems and tourist/heritage railroads
Tier 3: heavy rail rapid transit systems
Tier 4: light rail systems
Tier 5: streetcars and people movers
Monorails may fit in either tier 3 or tier 5 depending on function
Naming guidelines
- Each line should have a display name that is the name of the system plus what the agency operating the service refers to it as, e.g. "NYC Subway 6 Train", "London Underground Circle Line", "Amtrak Empire Builder"
- the list file name should be the region name the same as from Highway mapping plus the name of the service abbreviated per the same procedures that are used to abbreviate labels for highways, except that "Line" should be abbreviated "Ln" and the word "Train" or its equivalent in other languages can be omitted so long as no ambiguity results. e.g. NY 6, ENG CirLn, MT EmpBui
- waypoint labels should be the name of the station as it appears on official signs/maps, abbreviated per the same procedures that are used to abbreviate labels for highways with the exception that there is not a need to limit to truncate further than to three letters per word if there are more than two words other than a street name generic. e.g. "Atlantic Avenue - Barclays Center" -> AtlAveBarCen, "Termini" -> Ter, "Mornington Crescent" -> MorCres
Points to include
- former stations should be included if they were closed in relatively recent history, with their point labels preceded by * to indicate their closure. Use discretion, it is not necessary to include temporary stations or stations that last had a train stop at them in 1927.
- employee-only stations should not be included unless they were formerly open for public use
- shaping points may be added to improve route traces if the path of the tracks deviates substantially from a straight line between consecutive stations. Use discretion.
- only the current routing of a service should be mapped. If the service formerly took a different route and the point where the old route deviates from the new is not in proximity to a station, a point for the divergence point may be added following the same labeling guidelines as for rerouted roads.
- If a divergence point between two concurrent services is not in proximity to an a station, a point should be placed at the location of the divergence for the purpose of concurrency detection. This point should be labeled per the same principles as the endpoints of concurrencies for roads.
- the same "one point per interchange" rule used for roads applies with rails. e.g., wye junctions should be mapped as single points. As with roads, however, it is not necessary to have a graph connection at transfer points between two lines that have significant offset between where their platforms are.
Handling Branches
- If a service has multiple branches they should be differentiated per the same procedures used to differentiate road routes with the same designation, e.g. "NYC Subway A Train (Ozone Park)" NY AOzo vs. "NYC Subway A Train (Far Rockaway)" NY A.
- The word "branch" or its equivalent in other languages should not be used in differentiating names unless it appears in the official public name of the service, e.g. "Metro-North New Haven Line (New Canaan Branch).
- If a service runs exclusively in a closed loop, the whole loop should be mapped with two endpoints of the line having the same coordinates. The endpoint should be whatever is deemed the most prominent station in the loop.
- If a service runs in a loop at one end and hits multiple stations along the way, the entire loop should be mapped and the endpoint of the line should be the point where the loop closes and two-way service resumes.
- If a service takes a slightly different route in different directions at some point in the middle (e.g. light rail/streetcar runs one-way down adjacent streets) the mapped path should split the difference between the physical paths the two directions follow, same as with road routes following one-way pairs. All stations along the one-way pair should be included as distinct points even if they are only served in one direction. Stations with different names in each direction that serve the same cross street may be combined into a single waypoint with a slash separating their names in the waypoint label.
- If a service takes a substantially different route in different directions at some point in the middle (e.g. runs around different sides of a downtown loop depending on direction), the different directions of the service must be mapped separately and should have their names distinguished by the terminal station in each direction
Other Drafting guidelines
- Lines should be cut into different routes at each crossing of a region boundary, with points labeled as the names of the two bordering regions separated by a slash, e.g. ENG/FRA
- Where service patterns differ by time of day and/or day of week, mapping should follow weekday midday service, with the exception that tracks which only see service part time should be mapped regardless of when their part time service is
- It is not necessary to distinctly map express services separately from local services, skip-stop services distinct from each other, etc. if the different services run entirely along the same route and never diverge (e.g. local and express service on the SEPTA Broad Street line should not be mapped separately since they both run exclusively down Broad Street), however this may be done with discretion in cases where the local and express services do not have a single common name (e.g. it is okay to distinctly map the NYC subway A and C trains), and it must be done if the local and express services diverge (e.g. the CTA red and brown lines must be mapped separately)
- Where mapped, express services should not have visible waypoints for stations they skip. However, it will be necessary to include all local stations as hidden shaping points for the purpose of concurrency detection with the local service, unless express and local trains follow physically different routes (e.g. the NYC Subway M and R local trains following Steinway St and Broadway where the E and F express trains take a shortcut and follow Northern Blvd)
Misc
- The Wikipedia Policy of "ignore all rules" applies: if in a specific instance it makes more sense to do something other than what the rules stipulate, go ahead and do what makes sense and explain your rationale
- Where possible, local convention should be followed in sorting out any ambiguities.
