These last few months I've been performing The Erie Canal Song (or Low Bridge, Everybody Down) which laments the decline of Mule Power and the related work and culture as the Steam Engine proved more efficient, and became the dominant technology to move goods along the waterways. I know this is not what you're looking for, Bob, but a bigger picture look at change in what drives an industry. Maybe there's a later song that laments the decline of the RR Steam Engine.

A song that came to mind reading this thread is Brother Can You Spare a Dime? (Gorney/Harburg, 1930)

Once I built a railroad
Made it run
Made it race against time
Once I built a railroad
Now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Not quite what you're talking about either, but a bit of that sweep of history, of economic change.

I live in a small city with an active freight line running through it. (I'm 64 now and have rarely lived where I couldn't hear the freight trains moving through at night; it's like a lullaby to me. When I was a kid our family lived very close to the RR tracks - on the "wrong side" of the tracks but I didn't figure this till years later.) This city was once a hub in the Upper Midwest for the Northern Pacific Railroad where they built and repaired locomotive engines and other RR cars. There's a nice diagram of the railyards in 1888 near the top of this page to give a sense http://www.crowwinghistory.org/nprr.html The RR has since changed hands multiple times and now by volume mostly moves oil and coal. The railyards still look kinda cool but are greatly diminished physically. Some developers are working with the current RR, Burlington Northern Santa Fe* (BNSF), to develop the site for a mix of retail, service and commercial businesses. The old Roundhouse is long gone, but there's now a Roundhouse Brewery in one of the remaining buildings. They just brought back their very nice Driftbuster Winter Ale in November. Anywho, I do go on. I will poke around for local songs about locomotive and train car production, decline of at least the steam locomotive industry. There are a couple of history buffs I know who might have some ideas.

*This reminds me that I used to do a decent cover of Johnny Mercer's On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe in open G tuning. Time to revive that song.