I find it facinating how often governments leave old train tracks in place when the lines are discontinued. They must think that they will resurrect them one day. Perhaps when peak oil strikes these rusty old derelects of a less economically rational world will once again provide the link between far flung communities.
Here where I live we actually have a real life steam train that goes about 30 kms inbetween the local communities, and is a popular tourist attraction. It was derelect for many years, I think between the 1930′s to the 60′s becuase of landslides and also it was not used for its original purpose of moving trees, cattle and crops down to the train lain that goes into Melbourne. So in this instance the old track had move purpose, from moving goods to moving tourists. Perhaps after a collapse, other parts of civilization will be repurposed in this way.
There is a real feel to these abandonnded tracks. The idea that so much work went into the construction of the track, and then so many years later the powers that be stop them and let them rust tells us a lot about modern society. We prop structures up while they work for us, and as soon as they stop working for us in an acceptable manner we get rid of them… sometimes. Well we should anyway. But the modern world does not, It goes on with outmoded ways of being, degrading the planet and its citizens further and further until the system will tell us to stop. Maybe we should walk the old tracks, consider why they have been closed down and then look around us.
What other structures, be they personal, business, governmental have served their purpose, and now can be left and not included on our current economies of upkeep.
Everything that we are attached to has an upkeep amount, be it attention, money, oil, physical labour, time spent. As soon as the upkeep amount goes over the incoming funds, the system is in trouble. Once the reserves of when the system was in surplass have run out then the system is over. This idea is fractal, it works for all levels of being, from relationships to suns and galaxies. All systems are an economy, and nothin can run on nothing
Who can see the face in the picture below.. it has been staring at me for the whole time i have been writing this
