Yes.  They cost money.

The problem with all of this is that US manufacturers (as did many in the West) looked at the Toyota LEAN / Just-In-Time model and said “that’s how we can save money!”. The difference is that Toyota made sure they could adapt to supply-chain issues with surplus stock on mission-critical items. Western manufacturers…

That sounds like the story about all of the cars that were left sitting in the parking lots of LIRR stations because their owners were killed on 9/11.

This is almost certainly the case for a lot of these, especially given COVID. 

Have you ever had to walk from the terminal to the far edge of extended parking in Pittsburgh? Some of those people just haven’t made it back to their car yet.

That all depends if the car’s owner actually kept up with the registration.

Probably more likely than people fleeing the country.  But I’m sure there has to be one or two of those as well.

Thinking about the circumstances that led to these abandoned cars is quite sad. Could be the owners traveled alone and died at their destination with no next of kin to be found. 

I grew up in a not too far from a similar location of interest. An abandoned coal mining town. There was an abandoned highway that you could walk on and a lot of people sprayed with graffiti. There were also various abandoned buildings, some of which burned down as a result of vandalism. You can break this stuff up…

I could see taking little loose trinkets if it’s truly abandoned; that wouldn’t be much different from picking up a stone or a leaf, but certainly dismounting components is akin to cutting down a tree in the forest. (ironic given the train’s original purpose)

Not a popular opinion, but I would love a train speedo on my desk at work. Or some other cool part of a train. I have some compressor blades from a F-14 as well..

I do a lot of voluntary work with a local underwater archaeology society off the west coast and I can definitely understand the desire to ‘take’ something from an interesting site. Even people who would typically reject the idea get a little bit wide-eyed when they see a wreck for the first, or 100th time. There’s…

Some say meth, but honestly it’s probably something much more mundane, which is even sadder:

Yes, but you aren’t addicted to drugs and desperately seeking anything that might lead to your next hit. 

Someone did nearly $2000 damage to my wife’s car to get the factory radio that likely got them less than $50. They used a crowbar to pry it from the dashboard rather than remove the single screw underneath and destroyed the wire harness by pulling it rather than using the connector or, if they wanted both halves,…

There are a couple of nice trails in Albuquerque that have lots of neat petroglyphs but every single site is vandalized by turds who think people need to know Chad was there in 1995. 

Learning that the train’s damage was mostly from vandalism and not from sitting was the saddest part. Images as recent as 2019 show it to be in mostly complete condition. Apparently, it gained some unfortunate popularity after people on social media posted its coordinates.

Yeah but the whole parade was televised no?

Why’d you have to remind me of this vid!