>This is not an import.

I could be wrong, but I think anytime some does a single, mass edit based on an external source like this it's an import. At least colloquially if not in actual policy. Although I think cross-referencing with GIS dataset produced by the FRA would count. Although it mostly semantics and does thing to answer my question about if it if this was discussed somewhere beforehand or not. If it's not an import, cool. It's still an undiscussed mass edit, which isn't any better. At least it is if you haven't discussed it anywhere and I can only assume you haven't since you didn't answer my question. Although I don't want to falsely accuse you of anything. So did you discuss it somewhere before hand or not? Also, is it documented anywhere? 

>By whom? Certainly not the FRA, Caltrans, or Union Pacific.

I'm aware of what led to the original name being it what it was. That whole thing aside though, no one really just calls it "Valley Subdivision" since it's way to ambiguous. Literally nothing comes up in a Google Search for it.   Yet Google Maps does display the route if you search it for "Union Pacific Valley Subdivision." In the meantime I know at least where I live we usually refer to it by that name. I've also read plenty of news articles in the past couple of years that referred to it that way. I'll grant that the FRA probably doesn't refer to it as "Union Pacific Valley Subdivision." But no one consults them before looking for a railroad route on OpenStreetMap, or really otherwise. 

So I think you've lost the point in this if that's the metric your using for what the correct name of something is. Either way, I'm pretty sure that what we put in the name tag should be based on common usage. Not obscure government websites that no one consults or cares about except a small contingency of train buffs.  

The whole operator thing IMO is a strawman since an object can be both the name of the operator and the name of the object. They aren't mutually exclusive. It would be ridiculous to remove all the names from Walmart stores just because they are operated by Walmart Inc.  




