God of Technology: Creating the Internet in Another World-Chapter 457: Steel Beast

"Top speed can reach 600 kilometers per hour. As for cargo capacity... based on our testing, 24 cars is the optimal setup. If used for cargo, each car can carry 160,000 pounds, assuming you can fit it all in, of course."

Viscount Roster remained remarkably calm when answering the big shots’ questions in Car 1. "For passengers, it’s like right now, each car can hold 120 people."

The calmer he acted, the more shocked everyone else became.

Put another way, this steel beast could haul over 3.8 million pounds of cargo in one trip, traveling at 600 km per hour.

It was absolutely ridiculous.

How far was it from the southernmost part of the continent to the northernmost?

At most three or four thousand kilometers.

Meaning if you departed from the City of Gold in the far south and took this ultra-high-speed rail system, you’d reach the watch wall in just six or seven hours.

Leave in the morning, arrive by noon, come back at night, a round trip in a single day. It was beyond their imagination.

Even legendary magicians couldn’t go much faster.

Dragons were only a bit quicker than this. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Even more terrifying was the cargo capacity.

Assuming you were transporting grain, assuming the cars could hold it all, you could transport enough food in one trip to feed a million people for a year.

What kind of horrifying transport capacity was that?

If this ultra-high-speed rail system covered the entire continent, then all trade would...

They didn’t dare keep thinking.

It was just too terrifying.

Originally they’d thought laying all this track on the ground was either wasteful or a scheme to pump steel futures.

Now it was clear that wasn’t the case at all.

Wait a minute!

They were actually starting to suspect that Viscount Roster was behind the steel futures crash. If he’d released this news just a few days earlier, steel futures prices never would have dropped.

But there was nothing they could do about it now.

Things had already reached this point.

Viscount Roster was an important figure in the Church of Technology. They couldn’t really do anything to him.

The only thing they should be thinking about now was how to make the best use of this ultra-high-speed rail system!

Everyone here was upper-class on the human continent. They’d faced tons of problems before: natural disasters, military issues, business challenges, and it seemed like all of them could be improved with this ultra-high-speed rail system.

"Can it really haul millions of pounds in one trip? Can it really go 600 km per hour? How many gold coins does it cost to build a rail system like this? How much does one of these trains cost?"

They were all people at the top after all. Their minds worked pretty fast.

One after another they came to their senses.

Everyone started firing questions at Viscount Roster.

"The numbers I’ve stated can absolutely all be achieved."

Viscount Roster was very firm. "As for cost, that’s hard to say. The main thing is steel. For other auxiliary materials, right now it’s around 500 gold coins per kilometer."

500 gold coins per kilometer just for auxiliary materials, that was no small amount.

Taking the City of Gold to watch wall route again, three or four thousand kilometers, that would require 1.5 to 2 million gold coins.

Add in the steel, how much would that be?

How much manpower would need to be mobilized during construction?

How would it be maintained afterwards?

All of that costs money.

When you added it all up, conservatively, one rail line would need around 10 million gold coins.

Wait, 10 million gold coins was definitely a lot, but if you could build a rail line like this, was 10 million really that much?

A railway running from north to south, passing through the continent’s largest human kingdoms, going through at least a dozen duchies, countless territories.

Every territory could use this railway to create endless value.

It might take some extra time because of station stops, but still, this railway should be able to make the full trip in one day, right?

In one day you could send specialties from the southernmost part of the continent to the far north, with no worries about spoilage.

How much profit could that generate?

Some of them knew very well, goods from certain city-states, when sent to the Kingdom of Dawn, could easily sell for ten times the price.

Sure, once this transportation system was built, you definitely couldn’t sell things for ten times the price anymore. But even with a 50% profit margin, you’d still make a killing.

Getting goods flowing between regions, completing in one day routes that used to take months or even half a year, how much money could that make?

And that was just the merchants involved in transport. What about the people doing the production?

Originally their products could only reach the surrounding few territories. Now if there was an ultra-high-speed rail station nearby, they could sell to every place along the entire line.

How much value could that create?

The market scale would expand countless times over.

Everyone fell into a daze.

Bold ideas popped into their heads one after another.

Forget about going outside, just within their own kingdoms, achieving this kind of connectivity between several territories would probably create enormous value.

"The ultra-high-speed rail system has a relatively high cost, there’s no denying that. I’m very clear on that, but I care more about the massive value it brings."

Seeing that they’d pretty much digested his words, Viscount Roster smiled and continued. "With the progress of magic-tech industrialization, I think everyone has already noticed, our productivity has expanded infinitely."

"We’re producing goods on a far larger scale than before. To truly convert these goods into value, we need to transport them to everyone who needs them."

"The ultra-high-speed rail system combined with magic-powered vehicles is what I consider the optimal solution."

"Mark out all the important cities on the continent and establish main trunk lines running vertically north-south or horizontally east-west, forming a huge network."

"Then connect secondary cities to these main trunk lines, forming an even denser network. Finally, use magic-powered vehicles to transport goods from these networks to every territory..."

Viscount Roster explained his vision using relatively easy-to-understand terms.

Everyone fell silent.

If you wanted to connect every territory with this ultra-high-speed rail system, forget about the cost, just the chaos level alone would be enough to drive them crazy.

But if you followed Viscount Roster’s thinking, first connect the most important cities with trunk lines, then expand network coverage.

Use magic-powered vehicles for the final details, that was actually a pretty good idea.

And it would be easier to manage.

However, building a network like this, the most important thing was getting everyone along the route to agree. That was actually an extremely difficult task.

But it had to be done.

The ultra-high-speed rail system was destined to be a great facility that required everyone’s cooperation to complete.