That's a good point about the brevity of it all. This was the world's first modern industrial landscape, but it was still a brief efflorescence even in the scale of historical time. That perspective was incompatible with the mythical North I was exposed to in school, though, which was industrial through and through, and could change (if at all) only in becoming more so. Factories and pits might stand idle, but there was no sense that they'd ever be grassed over.