It may be that trains the world over travel through unappetizing landscapes, but these are the ones I have seen. In these former neighborhoods, things got started, carried on for some time, then unexpectedly and inexplicably stopped. There probably was no drama involved, no leave-takings with joy or tears.
Warehouses sit crumbling and forlorn.
Water towers are rusting and keeling over. Weeds grow through cracks in the disused pavement, vines crawl up the walls that have not been cleared for graffiti. Power and telegraph lines stagger alongside the tracks with some insulators and wires still attached, and you wonder who threw the switch open and if it was intentional. In the South kudzu would have been draping everything in a pall of late winter gray, but this was the Northeast. Snow was whirling, but not enough yet to cover the decay.