>>975185>What can I say, there aren't any abandoned transportation stuff here besides a closed used car dealership. The old tracks were all pulled up.Are you in the USA by any chance?
Some years ago (I think it was between 2000 and 2005 or so?) the US changed a law that said that railroad owners could get tax credit for "upgrading rail lines".
That doesn't sound so bad, but it was really a loophole law.
China was in a massive building boom and was driving up the prices for scrap steel worldwide. The change in the US law meant that railroad owners could tear up unused tracks and sell the metal to China as scrap and not pay full/normal taxes on the income.
Not surprisingly,,,,, the law didn't say that they had to build NEW lines. But 'tearing up the old line' is apparently the first step in "upgrading a line", so it qualified.
Lots of older lightly-used US rail lines got torn up and are now gone. The right-of-ways are still there, but all the rails are gone.
Just a few years later (-oddly enough?-) US railroad companies began to have problems with...... where to park idle rail cars.
This story is dated 2009
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123535033769344811 