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Things you only find in OSM no 94...

Posted by SomeoneElse on 1 February 2026 in English.

… railway departure boards in pubs.

Realtime departure board in Victoria Tap, Manchester

A surprising number of pubs near stations in the UK have them now. The picture above (a detail from this Manchester Evening New article) is from the Victoria Tap in Manchester.

A search of the OSM data in the UK** finds a few, but I’m sure that there are more. A web search finds a bunch of suppliers, and many of their “here’s what you could have in your pub” examples are clearly in the southeast and southwest of England, so I’m sure that there are more to be mapped!

** That’s a simple postpass query:

{{data:sql,server=https://postpass.geofabrik.de/api/0.2/}}
SELECT osm_id, tags, geom 
FROM postpass_pointpolygon
WHERE tags->>'amenity'='pub' 
AND tags->>'departures_board' is not null
AND geom && {{bbox}} 
Location: Medieval Quarter, City Centre, Manchester, Greater Manchester, England, M4 3TR, United Kingdom
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Discussion

Comment from mmd on 1 February 2026 at 10:30

Wait, where is the part in the query that checks if “pubs are near stations”?

Comment from SomeoneElse on 1 February 2026 at 13:10

@mmd If there’s a pub, and there’s a railway real-time departures board there, where do you think the pub is likely to be? :)

Comment from mmd on 1 February 2026 at 13:31

I really meant the missing ones, so pubs near stations that don’t have a departure board in osm and might benefit from a local survey.

Comment from SomeoneElse on 1 February 2026 at 13:46

Ah - I see what you mean. The tricky bit might be “recording the absence of something that isn’t very common, and doesn’t usually occur with that object anyway”.

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