Railway stations

Feature : Railway stations
Description
A place where trains stop and passengers board and disembark.
Tags

Railway stations are often complex and include both transport connections and varying amenities. A complex station can be mapped to varying degrees of detail using the following tags and descriptions.

Overview

A straightforward railway station may be mapped using the structure and tags shown in the diagram below

More complex stations, such as termini and other main stations in cities and may need to be mapped to a different level of detail. See below for descriptions of suitable tags.

Location

Building

For larger stations it is often convenient to mark the entire station building. To complete this, create a closed way and use the tag, building=train_station. Currently there are a number of proposals relating to subterranean stations (subway, underground).

It is especially convenient in route planning to include the building entrances. This is accomplished by tagging the appropriate nodes in a building's boundary as building=entrance or railway=subway_entrance. These entrances will often be seen as the intersecting node of a buildings boundary way and a station concourse (footway) way.

Element Key Value Description Additional tags Comment Image
Station buildings

buildingtrain_station Outline of the station building(s) Optional tags:
name=* may be identical to railway=station, but in such cases probably best omitted,
operator=First Anglia;Network Rail...
wheelchair=yes;limited;no
layer=*
addr:street=*
addr:housenumber=*
addr:postcode=*
public_transport=station

Number of floors building:levels=* (do not include mezzanine floors or the platforms in this total).

 Care may be needed when the station consists of a number of buildings.
Entrance

entrance yes; main; exit; service; emergency Entrance to a building On main entrances add railway=train_station_entrance and also ref=* and/or name=* if these exist.

The tag exit_to=* can be used to indicate that the entrance provides access to a particular locality of amenity (e.g., bus station, car parking, town centre).

A system of 2 relations is use to indicate a different name for an entrance and an exit at the same place, as indicated on Guidelines for pedestrian navigation

Other optional tags:

wheelchair=yes;limited;no
level=*
layer=*
access=yes;customers;private
Canopy or over-roof building:part roof Rain protection on platforms. See Key:building:part Image © Paul Bryan (excerpted)

Indoor mapping

Multilevel and underground stations can be described precisely with the Simple Indoor Tagging model.

Railway infrastructure

Infrastructures in multilevel stations should be placed on the Z axis using level=* and layer=*.

Element Key Description Additional tags Comment Image
Rails

railway=rail Metal rails allowing the circulation of any form of transport, including, main lines, subways, old lines and tramways Use railway:preferred_direction=*=forward;backward;bothto specify the usual direction of trains on the segment.

Optional tags:

electrified=contact_line
gauge=* for rail spacing
frequency=*
voltage=*
 Always link the rails to a line using a relation, do not use name=* for this.

See Railways for more details
Stop position

railway=stop Used to indicate approximate stopping point of the train in the station (in the middle of the train). local_ref=* reference of a track.

Example: "local_ref=A" for track A.

Allows to link with tag ref=* on the platform.

Optional tags:

name=*
public_transport=stop_position
 Ensure that name=* is the same than the one used for railway=station
Platform

railway=platform A space next to the rails where passengers wait for trains
public_transport=platform
wheelchair=yes;limited;no
covered=yes;no

Optional tags:

operator=SNCF;RENFE;...
 Create an area that covers the whole platform, or different areas if you want to distinguish platforms with different name=* and/or ref=*.
Rail crossing


railway=crossing A node where pedestrians can cross the tracks Optional tag:
access=no if not accessible to the public
Buffer stop railway=buffer_stop Stops the train at the end of a track

Amenities

Station buildings often contain many amenities. Where appropriate, these amenities can be individually marked by a node and tagged.

Some amenities often found in station buildings and around their locality can be found below:

Freight railway stations and shunting yards

railway=yard - a railway station for freight. This includes yards that don't involve the loading or unloading of freight.

The mapping is documented at yard and freight station tagging and follows the OpenRailwayMap tagging system.

Stations and sites which are not currently in operation

If the station is not currently in service, it should generally not be tagged railway=station. See https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2013-February/012918.html .

Note that railway stations without any traces whatsoever (for example open pit mine is now where railway station used to be) should not be mapped in OSM, with exceptions for ones likely to be remapped as existing. Open Historical Map is a better fit.

Public transport
Buses
Trolleybuses
Trains
Light rail
Metros
Trams
Monorail
Aerialways
Ferries
Flights
QA tools
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