Details... details... details...
Railroading's saddest spots are where the trains are not. Emotion runs heavy through the places where the rails have tuned rusty, where the ties have rotted into the earth, and where the wheels will turn no more.
Progress, in the form of continuous welded rail, has created this tangled heap of scrap. It's easy to see that these segments of rail once bound together the ribbons of steel that flow across this continent. Without even the effort to dismantle them, they were cut from the rails, replaced with welded segments, and piled in the weeds.
The same thing is happening in smaller locations. This pile of surplus joint bars has served its task. Cast into the ditch, they await their fate.
Railroading, like life, is made from a complex fabric of components. Everything has it time; everything has its place. The eventual shifts in traffic patterns, the replacement of outdated equipment, the cycles - will render everything surplus. The trains run on, but they pass by the reminders of the past eras.
Short segments of rusted rail await a call to service.
Neatly stacked joint bars slumber in the sun, outside an old maintenance structure.
A distorted and forlorn switch stand presides over an empty field of weeds. Once a railroad yard, filled with clouds of steam and cinders, the bustle of cars being switched about, this place now stands silent. In the absence of trampling feet or weed killer, nature is returning.
No trains travel these tracks. In days gone past, large 2-10-2 steam locomotives trod over this very rail. But now - disjointed and rust bound - the only thing this iron has left to feel is the torch of the scrapper.
End of the line. What remains of this rail has already been hauled away for scrap. As the tie returns to its earthen origins, only the rail and tie plate will remain. Remain, at least until the salvage man returns for what he left behind.
In the emptiness of this field, loose spikes...
...rusted bolts...
...forlorn tie plates and rotted ties remain.
A point will come when the sands of time have flowed over this place, sealing its past. Life will again thrive here, but life of a different kind. Trees, wildflowers, birds, and squirrels will rise from the dirt. Having been forest when the railroad arrived, the land will have come full circle.
Memories and photographs will be the only proof that this place was something else.
