Yeah this one is definitely stylized a bit, I sort of condensed a few aspects of the place into one shot. If it was a real postcard it'd be a heck of a shot with both the wagon and the train, or maybe it's a touch of in-world propaganda.

Other details include the lack of power poles for the right track (they cluttered the lines of the scene) and probably the steep grade of the train tracks (I'm not a civil engineer).

I do think it could be justified in-setting - I figured there are definitely wrecker crews out there collecting vehicles (and almost included some in this scene) but decided they hadn't gotten this far out yet. Wrecked cars would be someone's priority, both because they''d represent an easy source of refined metals, and because (depending on what fluids or batteries are left in them) they're all minor ecological disasters waiting to happen.

But nobody's gotten to them yet. This society is still strapped for resources, there's never enough workers or hours for everything that has to be done. They choose their priorities and try to mitigate the damage where they can't fix it. Maybe they don't have enough enough space or need for how many vehicles were abandoned during wars or forest fires, maybe these ones are too low priority, too far from wetlands or other critical areas, maybe it's just too much time spent traveling to get them.

But yeah, realistically they would have at least been moved to make space when the work crews were building or maintaining the train tracks. Perhaps what we'd really see is some simple warehouses dotting the highway here and there, with all the cars shoved inside out of the elements, waiting for someone to come get them.

Thanks! I have a longtime fondness for postapolcyptica, and I think I see solarpunk as the more positive, cooperative-minded alternative to a lot of the stuff I grew up reading. Personally, I think the most likely solarpunk society is something that emerges during/after the crumbles, when the state and corporations are less able to flatten alternatives to the status quo because the status quo itself is fading. I think a lot of my emphasis on reuse and simply using less unfortunately make the most sense if there's just less to go around. And like I said, I want to focus on the idea that we'll keep rebuilding, and there's hope in that.

My in-progress stories are probably too postapocalyptic to qualify as solarpunk, but something transitional might not be a bad thing to have either.