The problem is that as mobile organisms, we perceive reality as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate. Then tell stories about our journeys and build civilizations out of the collected knowledge. So this narrative flow, from past to future, seems pretty fundamental. Physics codifies it as measures of duration.
The reality though, is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is this physically dynamic state, as events form and dissolve.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it. Causality and conservation of energy.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think frequencies, or metabolism. As you point out, it is the need for everyone to work together, which is the basis of a universal time. Which goes much further back than trains, as much of human history is about getting everyone dancing to the same tune, reading from the same script, speaking the same language, etc.
Time is asymmetric, because what is being measured, action, is inertial. The earth only turns one direction. Entropy is not being measured and is a second order effect.
Basically time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought, so we are more objective about the relationship.
The left, cause and effect, logical hemisphere of the brain is analogous to a clock/ruler, while the right, emotional intuitive side is to a thermostat/barometer. Frequencies and amplitudes.
Energy is “conserved,” because there is no physical past for it recede into, or physical future from which it arrives, as it is the changing configuration of this dynamic that creates time.
Thus the energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.
Consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past.
Lives go birth to death, while life goes onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.
Verbs are dynamic. Nouns are static.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in.
Cosmic convection cycles.
Our gut and heart process the energy driving us on, while the head sorts through the forms precipitating out and refereeing the emotions bubbling up. Society is that dichotomy as well, between the organic energies bubbling up and civil and cultural forms coalescing in.
Head versus heart, desire versus judgement. Youth versus age, liberal versus conservative.
Immortality is not temporal, as a continuation of the narrative, but spatial, as the same light/sentience shining through the multitudes of lenses.
The physics is a bit like a geocentric cosmology, in trying to explain the sun and stars going east to west, before realizing it is the earth turning west to east. Epicycles were brilliant math, but lousy physics.
The trick though, is trying to get this idea through the current linear paradigm, when it requires people to objectify the ticking of their own mind.
Fully examining the physicality of the present is a bother, when we all have places to go and people to meet.
