There'd be a huge die-off in the first 5 years, but after that, I'd imagine that in the subsequent decade, people would get back to a Civil War/Steam era of tech pretty quickly, especially since there's an over-supply of housing that would still be standing (minus wildfires, which could admittedly be bad until enough fire-breaks were cut, or the fires themselves did it...) so that means there's only a time-sink for food going on, and the HUGE amounts of metals and tanks, pipes, chassis, parts, chains & cables that could be salvaged and re-purposed.
Not that big a deal. Teams of horses with block and tackle can topple an EMD SD-60 and roll it like a turtle, or those same teams can pull it on the tracks to the nearest turnout or wye.
We use elephants in the summer here to load and move railroad flat cars at the circus museum, and that's just for show.
People built Stonehenge and the pyramids without steam power or electricity. All those post-apocalyptic kids sans video games represent a huge kinetic energy resource.
Agreed. And even if they can't topple the heavy diesel electric locomotives in one go with plow animals, they can do it bit by bit, and shore up the tipping locomotive with logs and cribbing until it does topple, inch by inch. Would only take a few days time.
Although honestly, all the technical and social nitpicking and MMQB'ing, like the tech level, or the people being too clean (I don't imagine folks in the 1800's LOOKING much dirtier than they did today, unless in battle, or working in a mine or something... doesn't bother me with this show.
It's that the writing and that the show is devolving immediately into the usual TV tropes and memes right away. It's like when you got too old for those "choose your own adventure" books, and you could extrapolate all the plots ahead of time.
I gave them a fair shake.
I'm going to pass.