Railways: Draft Manual

[Duke87]

As long as we don't have a solution in the code, any workaround should be easy to spot, i.e. not using shaping point but using any other key word in the label name, e.g. DIV prefix in capital letters like DIVxyz, DIV_N, DIV_A etc.

Is there consent on this?

I do see the benefit of the label including an easily queryable string, which this does and what I wrote doesn't.

I fully agree that the points must be added for concurrency detection. However, if they are hidden, we are struggeling with mapview and showroute. I'd like to apply my approach for divergence points:
As long as we don't have a solution in the code, any workaround should be easy to spot, i.e. not using shaping point but using any other key word in the label name, e.g. SKIP or LOCAL prefix in capital letters like LOCALxyz, LOCAL_N, LOCAL_A etc.

Anyone?

Too kludgy for my blood personally. Would rather just make getting mapview updated to render this properly a prerequisite for bringing TMrail out of "beta".

[Jim]

As much as I would like to spend some time to get the mapview/showroute rendering issues resolved to help both the 6lane.list side project and getting rail going, it's not realistically going to happen any time soon unless someone else is willing to dive into the code.  It's probably best to use temporarily visible points to get the rail side of the project moving forward.

[michih]

- 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

I fully agree. I will change this if there is consent: https://tmrail.teresco.org/hb/showroute.php?u=michih&r=deumv.02sch&lat=53.631149&lon=11.406861&zoom=17 @si404, fine for you?

[michih]

I'd argue that the big wye is perhaps on the edge of splitting. I'd probably merge it if drafting the system now. The little one certainly would be merged.

Here we have branch with station. The station marked in green is only served by line 4. The station in blue is served by line 1, 2 and 3. I tend to keep it as-is.

https://tmrail.teresco.org/hb/showroute.php?units=miles&u=michih&r=deumv.04sch&lat=53.603170&lon=11.429611&zoom=17
https://tmrail.teresco.org/user/mapview.php?u=michih&sys=deusnt

[Duke87]

Here we have branch with station. The station marked in green is only served by line 4. The station in blue is served by line 1, 2 and 3. I tend to keep it as-is.

https://tmrail.teresco.org/hb/showroute.php?units=miles&u=michih&r=deumv.04sch&lat=53.603170&lon=11.429611&zoom=17
https://tmrail.teresco.org/user/mapview.php?u=michih&sys=deusnt

Personally I would still 1PPI this, having a point for all four lines in the green circle and a point for lines 1, 2, and 3 in the blue circle. Yes, lines 1/2/3 don't stop at the station in the green circle - that's fine, no different than an express service skipping a station.

Fundamentally I just think it's silly to have an implied expectation that all three legs of the wye must be ridden distinctly for a full clinch. We don't do this for roads, we shouldn't do it for rails.

Indeed, if this were a Y-interchange between two highways and highway 4 had an exit in the middle not accessible from highway 1/2/3... yep, we'd still have everything meet at one point there.

[michih]

Yep, both wps for line 1,2,3 but skipping the „Green“ wp would make the trick. Like it. other opinions?

BTW, I travelled all legs albeit I lost a lot of Time waiting

[michih]

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

Should metros be tier 3 or tier 4? I'm not an expert for railways. Thus, I don't get what's the different for your tier 3/4 suggestions.

I think that I miss a category between tier 1 and tier 2 for non-high-speed and non-urban regional railway systems.

Edit: Found this:

Tiers were as follows:
1 (not used) for dedicated HSR operators,
2 for continental systems (like Amtrak),
3 for Commuter/Regional Rail,
4 for Subway/Metro,
5 for Light Rail (everything from basically-metro to piddly little street-cars).

I'd fully agree!

[michih]

I reworked the Schwerin system according to how I got the manual proposal:

I truncated all wp labels.
I moved the main station wp from the regional station location to the actual stop of the tram.
I merged the above mentioned wp to a 1PPI by using "+SKIP_" label prefixes as suggested by Duke87.
I split line 2 into two routes since there are two one-way branches with stops at the branches.
I used the "+DIV_" label prefix where line 2 branches off line 1/4 routes. They are actually called +DIV_T2_W (line 1) or +DIV_T2_N (line 4). T = tram.
I used "(Main)" and "Stadthaus" as "abbrev" to distinguish the routes.
However, I struggle naming the branch wps though:
- The western divergence point at the stop is a no-brainer. I simply used the stop name.
- The eastern divergence point is between stops. I'm gone with T1/T4 now. Thoughts?

[si404]

Tiers in this version at the moment:
(1) Intercity (I'd suggest limiting this to high speed operators would be too narrow)
(2) Regional
(3) Metro
(4) Tram
(5) PeopleMover

One issue I found is that nothing fits neatly into boxes. Even in Germany, which loves to categorise trains into various different boxes, its all a bit nebulous and ill-defined.

Another issue is that systems might cross several tiers: Southeastern . And even routes - eg The S1 in Karlsruhe - running as on-street tram, semi-segregated light rail, underground metro, and regional rail at various points along the route!

[Bickendan]

I'll have to email this one in, but once I do, would one of you be willing to take the Oregon rail data I compiled back in 2016 and look over what might need to be changed (ie, splitting the Streetcar Loop line into two, one for each direction), file name corrections, etc etc?

[michih]

I reworked the Schwerin system according to how I got the manual proposal:

I truncated all wp labels.
I moved the main station wp from the regional station location to the actual stop of the tram.
I merged the above mentioned wp to a 1PPI by using "+SKIP_" label prefixes as suggested by Duke87.
I split line 2 into two routes since there are two one-way branches with stops at the branches.
I used the "+DIV_" label prefix where line 2 branches off line 1/4 routes. They are actually called +DIV_T2_W (line 1) or +DIV_T2_N (line 4). T = tram.
I used "(Main)" and "Stadthaus" as "abbrev" to distinguish the routes.
However, I struggle naming the branch wps though:
- The western divergence point at the stop is a no-brainer. I simply used the stop name.
- The eastern divergence point is between stops. I'm gone with T1/T4 now. Thoughts?

It's live now: https://tmrail.teresco.org/user/mapview.php?u=michih&sys=deusnt

[Duke87]

Another issue is that systems might cross several tiers: Southeastern

I like the solution that was implemented for Boston where the Green Line light rail and Mattapan trolley are broken into a separate system from the heavy rail subway lines

And even routes - eg The S1 in Karlsruhe - running as on-street tram, semi-segregated light rail, underground metro, and regional rail at various points along the route!

That's a light rail (tram) line, based on photos of it. Belongs in tier 4.

I'm not an expert for railways. Thus, I don't get what's the different for your tier 3/4 suggestions.

There are multiple distinguishing features, but heavy rail rapid transit systems:
- always run on their own ROW, not in streets
- have high level floors and are typically boarded from high level platforms
- typically involve longer, higher capacity trains

Light rail systems meanwhile:
- run in a mix of their own ROW and in streets
- typically have lower floors and lower platforms
- typically involve shorter, lower capacity trains

These distinctions also have some functional implications because light rail trains can generally handle steeper hills and navigate tighter curves than their heavy rail counterparts, and also have shorter stopping distances (they have to, to safely run in streets).

"Light rail" is also admittedly an American term, but British English "tram" is used similarly.


Good rule of thumb is if it looks more like this it's light rail, but if it looks more like this it's heavy rail.

[michih]

Thanks!

Good rule of thumb is if it looks more like this it's light rail, but if it looks more like this it's heavy rail.

That's tier 4 vs. tier 5. I asked for tier 3 vs. tier 4.

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

[michih]

That is going to be extremely messy. I've used hidden points because
1) you can't interchange between routes there - it's not a point people need visible (it's services we're mapping, not infrastructure)
2) there's so many of them and it would clutter stuff.

The more user-friendly solution would be to sort out dealing with travels that end at hidden points*. Something we want with roads for the 6-lane project anyway.

*Not that you would normally put these in your list (rare cases like diversions via curves rarely used by passenger rail) but the concurrency ending at a hidden point makes a mess on mapview.

I think our most manageable solution here will be to put in visible points at the non-station points where tracks diverge/join but with the intent to support concurrencies ending at hidden points properly in the future so they could be converted to hidden.

I'm gone with +DIV but it's really a pain for maintenance. I was shocked what I messed up here when selecting "color by concurrencies": https://tmrail.teresco.org/user/mapview.php?u=michih&sys=deuulrs
It took time to realized that the yellow mistake is not my bad. Bordered in red. RS7 and RS71 run from center to SE, not from center to SW as it looks like. Users will face the same issues when marveling their travels on mapview.

Edit: Darn! +DIV is a hidden wp. I should replace it by plain DIV 

[michih]

Naming guidelines
- 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

I had fully agreed but then I redrafted deuulrs. Let's have a look into - a very short since still regional route only - RS5. The route only has 17 stations but there are Herbrechtingen and Hermaringen. Both are one word. More than one syllable but only one word. "Her" is not a word for its own. Calling both Her is not possible. I'm gone with Heb and Her but could also call them Heb and Hem. Sure.

However, while road wps are mainly labeled according to road numbers, there are no exit nor rail track numbers for rails. That means, almost all wps will have truncated names. And yes, I want to truncate them because Herbrechtingen, BofingenOstpreussenweg or MunchenHauptbahnhof are way too long.

Is there any technical reason why we should truncate to three characters? Why not four or five? I think that the road limit is due to performance reasons. It is also dated back when users had to type the wps into their list file. I guess we wanted to reduce the risk of typos.
I think that the performance issues are gone now - for update process and on the production server. No one really needs to type anything into their list file but can use the .list Tool editor. Maybe we should promote the latter more prominentely to convince users to use it.

So, again, why not truncating wp labels to four or five characters to help maintainers and users to read the wpt files and list files?