Kieron Connolly’s new book of photographs of more than 100 once-busy and often elegant buildings gives an idea of how the world might look if humankind disappeared. Here: Bodie, Mono County, California. Gold was discovered at Bodie in 1859 (just after the initial California gold rush) and it went from mining camp to boomtown. Its decline began in 1880, when word spread of new boomtowns elsewhere. The Standard Consolidated Mine closed in 1913, and four years later the Bodie Railway was abandoned. By 1940 the population was down to 40. Today, Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay as a visitor attraction. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

In this November 18, 2014 photo, Murshida, 12, sits on the lap of her mother Marjina as the train leaves for their village in West Bengal, at a railway station in New Delhi, India. Six months ago, Marjina stepped off a train in New Delhi with her two children, hoping to find a better life after her husband abandoned them without so much as a goodbye. The family spent their days at a landfill picking through other people’s garbage to find salvageable bits to resell or recycle. After six months of poverty, illness and shame, they returned to that train station in New Delhi, headed back to an uncertain future to their hometown in West Bengal. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

Commuters travel in an overcrowded train near a railway station at Loni town in India's state of Uttar Pradesh on April 24, 2023. India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous country by the end of June, UN estimates showed on April 19, posing huge challenges to a nation with creaking infrastructure and insufficient jobs for millions of young people. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

Minoru Suzuki and Sanshiro Takagi, wrestlers from Japanese professional wrestling promotion DDT Pro-Wrestling, fight inside Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train from Tokyo to Nagoya during a wrestling show in Japan on September 18, 2023, in this handout photo released by JR Tokai (The Central Japan Railway Company). (Photo by JR Tokai/Handout via Reuters)

Victoria Falls is a town in the province of Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe. It lies on the southern bank of the Zambezi River at the western end of the Victoria Falls themselves. It is connected by road and railway to Hwange (109 km away) and Bulawayo (440 km away), both to the south-east.

“Glenfinnan Viaduct is a railway viaduct on the West Highland Line in Glenfinnan, Lochaber, Highland, Scotland. It was built between 1897 and 1901. Located at the top of Loch Shiel in the West Highlands of Scotland, the viaduct overlooks the Glenfinnan Monument and the waters of Loch Shiel”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A view of the Glenfinnan Viaduct on March 30, 2012 in Glenfinnan, Scotland. Built by Sir Robert McAlpine, the single track viaduct that is made up of 21 arches is considered to have been one of the largest engineering projects of its time. Today, it is still used by ScotRail and was recently used for scenes in three of the Harry Potter films. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

Technicians check a CRH high-speed train at Shanghai Hongqiao High-speed train base on December 28, 2011 in Shanghai, China. China's railway stations have started today to sell tickets for the 2012 Spring Festival travel season scheduled to run between January 8th and February 16th, centred around the Chinese New Year which this year falls on January 23rd. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)