Getting back to the urban ecology topic. Railway lines and goods yards provide some very interesting habitats for plants and insects
when
they fall out of service. The substrate (I hesitate to call it soil) is well drained and entirely mineral so the closest natural systems are dunes or volcanoes! You get a very interesting list of invertebrates and plants - it was on a siding deep in coal dust that I discovered the first British
Zodarion italicum (presumably fell off a train and thought it was near Vesuvius?).
This picture is of Templin station in eastern Germany where railway services are being cut (it's the same the whole world over?) and in five years there are seriously sized saplings as well as all sorts of other plants taking the station and sidings back into a "natural" state ....
[I should note that the railway is still running - a small diesel unit every few hours from Berlin. It is a very good area to visit even for its farmland: farmers in the former DDR couldn't afford western pesticides so there is far more wildlife about .... for the moment ....
]
