Struggle in the Steam Age

The reason why this report on building a railway in the north of Green Island appeared on Lawrence's desk is also very simple, because many people were moved by this plan and hoped to advance this project.

It's just that before that, they sent this news to Lawrence, a recognized wise man on the island, in the hope that he, as a non-resident of the island, can help analyze this matter from a public perspective.

. In fact, purely from the perspective of personal interests and the development of the entire island, Lawrence hopes that a railway can be built here.

Because there is basically not much industry in this place, everything needed to build the railway has to be purchased, and the factories under Lawrence can just provide part of the required materials

. At the same time, from the perspective of overall development, a railway located in the north can indeed connect the originally separated north into a whole, and at the same time promote the development of the barren north in the entire island.

However, sometimes the theory does not mean that it can be true in reality, and it can even be completely different from the facts, such as the current railway.

Building a railway in the north of Green Island can indeed promote the overall development of the region, but the problem is that neither the wealth nor the population of the island can support the construction or even operation of such a railway.

As the lord of New Sauer Island, in addition, he also built a short section of railway when he built an industrial zone on his own territory. Therefore, Lawrence knew the difficulty and cost of building a railway.

Therefore, as long as you know it after simple comparison and calculation. Building this railway now is a completely unscientific and economical thing, and this is a conclusion that Lawrence has come to after suffering.

In fact, Lawrence was not very clear about this matter at the beginning, but in the previous planning of the Sauer Island Railway, Lawrence slowly learned a lot about this aspect.

When I first became a lord. Firmly convinced that to get rich, Lawrence first built roads and planned a circular railway for his territory, as well as one north-south railway and one east-west railway, in an attempt to link the entire island together by railway.

But soon he was defeated by the facts. Lawrence showed the plan to his adoptive father and several retainers. They didn't make any comments, but simply calculated the cost required to build such a system. .

After seeing the construction fee that was almost astronomical to himself at the time, Lawrence quickly gave up on the construction of the railway and chose the core and offshore transportation that seemed slower and more dangerous but much cheaper.

And after the construction of the simple railways in those industrial areas started, Lawrence looked back at his previous settings and found more inadequacies. For example, he had never considered operating costs at all before.

For New Sauer Island at that time, such a large-scale railway simply did not have enough people and materials to transport. Compared with the one-time expenditure of building the railway, the subsequent maintenance cost is a bottomless pit that is almost unaffordable.

And when Lawrence saw this information this time, he immediately thought of the railway system he set up for the island when he didn't understand anything at the time.

Obviously, these nobles on the island may have left too few prosperous areas. So much so that I don't know much about railways, which are new in the past hundred years, so I came up with this whimsical plan.

Not to mention that the terrain is not particularly good, and how difficult it is to build a railway in a very cold area is an engineering problem. Just how people and products along the way will lose money is a serious problem.

According to Lawrence's simple statistics, if there are no accidents, with the future productivity around the railway, each train can complete all the transportation tasks throughout the year with only two round trips per year.

Considering that this railway is not the Hogwarts Express, and no one is willing to pay and subsidize this matter, building a railway here is nothing but showing that the people who passed the proposal have brains. significance.

In other words, this railway is indeed valuable, but the value is definitely not what it is now. At least according to the situation and development speed of the region, it is more appropriate for the entire island to be dominated by water transport within ten years.

However, considering that this report can be sent directly to him, it represents the views of many people, so for Lawrence, if he wants to deny this plan, he must find some reasonable reasons for the plan.

Fortunately, although the nobles here are a bit outdated in vision, their previous education has given them a very good level of logical thinking.

So after Lawrence listed all the reasons why it was not suitable to build a railway in this place in the report, all the previously busy railway planning stopped.

It was at this time that Lawrence realized that after he proposed to gather these lords on the island to form an overall economic circle on the island, the lords who realized that they had money immediately started the infrastructure construction mode.

After all, as long as anyone with any higher education knows that the development of a region is closely related to the level of infrastructure in the region, and none of the lords on the island has not received such education.

In the past, one of the biggest reasons why everyone seemed to have nothing to do was lack of money, so naturally they couldn't spend much in this regard.

But after everyone is united, they naturally have enough wealth to invest in the construction of several key projects.

After realizing this, Lawrence immediately sent an application for review in this regard to the island lord council. Soon, the Lord Council of the island ordered to freeze all contracts related to infrastructure construction, and then began to organize a team to review.

During the review, the team discovered many things that were eager for quick success and even profiteering. It has to be said that after organizing part of the financial resources, those capitals with a keen sense of smell quickly came over.

For example, behind the Viscount's railway plan, there are shadows of some big companies in Briton. For those capitals in the financial industry, they only see the immediate benefits in their eyes, and they will not consider such things as future operations. A class of problems.

Therefore, if their plan is really successful, it is estimated that in addition to sweeping away the wealth that Green Island has managed to collect, it will also allow everyone to owe them a debt to work for them.

After realizing this situation, the lords on the island quickly gave up their previous practice of fighting on their own. And further realized the importance of uniting everyone.

In order to avoid this kind of situation from happening again, everyone finally decided to set up their own bank here with the New Sauer Bank as the core, together with the staff of the Fortune Church, the northern archipelago and the lords of the islands in the southeast of the Sea of ​​Stars.

Lawrence felt that from a certain point of view, he should thank the group of financial capitals. Because of their previous performance, Lawrence was able to expand his power to the northern islands.

Although due to the different nature of the colonies, the northern islands cannot issue their own currency. However, it is recognized here that Lawrence's star sea krona issued on the island is an acceptable currency and serves as an important part of the basket of monetary policies.

This was a great breakthrough for Lawrence, because only the surrounding islands and some organizations that had trade relations with him were willing to recognize the krona issued on his own island before.

But now, with the establishment of this new bank belonging to the Northern Archipelago, the scope of application of the Star Sea Crown issued by Lawrence has suddenly expanded a lot compared to the past. Of course, doing so is equivalent to expanding his power.