When I was about 4 years old the last rail service to the small town I grew up in ended. Before that there had been daily commuter service to downtown St Louis. 20 years later the tracks went dead entirely and 10 years further on the tracks were torn up. The only thing left is the old train depot. Where once dozens of commuters would start and end their day, there was a restaurant for a time and a slew of other business until it became a thrift store. And next to it is no longer a pair of steal rails that connected that town to the city, the rest of the country and the world beyond, no now there is a four lane bypass that traces the path that once only the trains traveled.