At first I assumed this was about abandoned rails but I only saw one photo of an obviously unused line. The rest all appeared to be live to me. I've seen more train photos than I could possibly remember, but it's interesting to see the trains vanish and the tracks take a back seat to the areas around them. Along with the absence of trains there were no people either, giving the photos a calm but also slightly eerie feel to them. Pretty interesting set all around. Makes me wish I had the eye of a photographer.
Additional photos and fewer compression artifacts can be found here:
http://john-sanderson.com/galleries/railroadlandscape/