Dear user Mauls,

you appear to be very intensively adding abandoned railways to OSM at the moment. There are a number of issues with this. Firstly, there’s a consensus in OSM that we don’t map stuff that is not visible on the ground. With abandoned railways this is a fine line, a “pro” can often discern something on the ground that looks like just a little heap of earth to another; even so, great care should be taken when adding these - care that I cannot believe is in abundance when someone adds so many abandoned railways in such a short time!

Adding railway=razed geometries that shoot through newly built infrastructure (osm.org/way/936293109) is frowned upon by many community members. With a very small number of exceptions, we don’t map historic stuff in OSM that has ceased to exist with no visible traces.

Secondly, it appears implausible that you are adding all this information across all of the UK from your own surveys or knowledge, yet you rarely specify sources. This is definitely a requirement to ensure you’re not inadvertently using copyrighted material.

Before adding any more non-active railways to OSM, please discuss your plans on the talk-gb mailing list and get buy-in from the community. If there is no broad consensus on adding abandoned railways, please remove the ones you have already added (or ask for help in doing so if you feel unable).

You seem to have ignored two changeset comments by a community member about this, hence this 0-hour block to grab your attention.

Thank you
Frederik Ramm
OSMF Data Working Group
Ticket#2021052210000098