November 13, 2006
Deindustrialization in real time
They're tearing up the train tracks.
The tracks run right past our house. A few months back, I posted about walking along them:
the tracks are in crappy shape. The sleepers were originally wood, but many have rotted away, or burned in brushfires. Some have been replaced by concrete sleepers, but many have not. The track bed is in visibly bad shape. Signs have fallen over or been vandalized; signals are obviously long dead.I had vaguely noticed that the trains weren't very fast -- maybe 50 km (30 mph) tops. Now I know why...
...it was depressing. Interesting, but depressing.
The constant garbage, of course. But also, the tracks went past abandoned factories, now rusting and empty. It was evening, and windy. The red light of sunset gave the rusting metal a peculiarly dark and dreary look, while the wind sent plastic bottles jumping and bouncing along the ground. Although the tracks ran through a densely populated neighborhood, there were few people around, and the wind blocked the sound of traffic. I could have been alone in a city left empty by some catastrophe.
Well: last week I walked home from the office, and -- in the course of looking for a shorter way home -- wandered across the tracks.
And they're being torn up. Rails gone, sleepers gone. Just the bare dirt of the bed left. We hadn't heard any trains for a couple of months; we'd vaguely thought it might was because of the season. (The rail line goes up to Sevan, which is a big summer resort.) But no -- they're shutting it down altogether.
It's true that the track was in miserable condition. Still, this seems both strange and sad.
Strange: the track is no small thing. It's the only rail link going east towards Azerbaijan. It stops at Sevan, which is on the lake... but the opposite side of the lake is just a few miles from the Azeri and Karabakh frontiers. If there was another war with Azerbaijan, you'd think a rail line to the lake would come in handy.
Also, the track links forty miles of factories and warehouses like beads on a string. A few blocks from our house is a furniture factory. It was a great box of a thing, with its own spur off the line. Presumably it sold furniture all over the former USSR. Closed now. Ripping up the line is a clear statement that, no, that industry isn't coming back. Maybe that's a wise and correct economic judgment; after all, Armenia's economy is growing again. Maybe it will never need those old smokestack industries. Did someone sit down and work this out? I wonder.
Sad: We used to hear the trains go by, and mark our schedules accordingly. The morning train meant it was almost time for me to leave for the office. The evening train, all kids should be in bed.
..next to the furniture factory is a school. I assume it was for the workers' kids; the USSR did that sort of thing. Closed now, lock on the gate, weeds growing up through the playground equipment.
No more summer rides on the little electrical train up to the lake. People said the train was old and overcrowded and smelly and slow, but I used to watch it pass and, you know, it looked like a fun ride. I never got around to trying it; now I never will.
So, what will happen to the right-of-way? Well, there are rumors.
One is that it will become a road. But that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Parts of it could be converted, but there are other parts that are just too narrow. It switchbacks up some steep slopes. I don't see this.
Another rumor is that the Russians are buying the train line. Buy an empty bed? The Russians are buying all sorts of things around here, so maybe.
And that's all.
Posted by douglas at November 13, 2006 04:32 PM