Spending My Retirement In A Game

"And this here is where we keep the locomotives and carts as they're not actively being used," looking around at the rail yard, which was currently only holding the different carriages that the envoys arrived in, Eisen continued the tour that he was giving. It was the day after the banquet, and currently still quite early.

The sun had barely gone up when a few of the curious envoys wanted to get a closer look at the trains.

That included quite a few individuals from the giants' country, and a surprising amount from the central continent. It seemed as though all those business talks that ended up happening during the banquet last night ended up with a lot of them talking about the trains as well, so everyone's curiousity had risen quite a bit.

Though, of course, the only reason that Eisen was showing the trains to everyone here was to boost that curiousity even more somehow. He would try to actively explain all the benefits that Eisen and the others saw, and what their plans were with the trains in the future.

All of the locomotives were covered in a skill-blocking enchantment on the outside, so anyone here that had some kind of appraisal-based skill or ability wouldn't be able to figure out how the trains work just from a glance.

Of course, they could try and develop the trains themselves after just hearing about the concept and rough descriptions of how they worked, but there was very little reason to. Eisen wasn't even planning on asking for particularly much considering the actual worth of the train, since his main reason was to build some kind of connection between Asgard and every country that he possibly could.

Not to mention, if any country here decided to waste time with developing a locomotive from scratch, which would probably not work nearly as well as the one that Eisen and Xenia built while using the concepts and engineering of Earth while combining it with techniques from this world, it was almost like throwing away profit.

While they were doing that, the other countries could just get started with the construction right away and make use of the trains right away. And once the trains were constructed, and transporting goods would become not only easier but also vastly cheaper, it would decrease the incentive to work with any country that hadn't implemented the train yet.

That meant, in order to not lose profits, and to prevent their countries from falling behind, the envoys must all be thinking that they had to do everything they could to get their hands on this as soon as possible.

"So this is the equivalent of a shipyard? They'd be doin' construction here?" the current Grandour asked curiously, and Eisen thought about it for a moment.

"Probably not directly here, no," he pointed out, "This is more of a logistical center. All the carriages are kept here, and then taken as they're needed. The goods are placed onto the carriages or taken off for further transport. Construction would usually happen elsewhere. It's... sort of like the harbor itself rather than the shipyard."

"In that case, why did you construct a separate 'station'? Could people not simply board the train from here?" Aaron asked curiously, clearly trying to figure out if they could save money by combining some things here, but the old man quickly shut that down.

"No, that would be far too dangerous. We haven't fully implemented the railway system into our day-to-day trading just yet, so it's quite calm, but once this place becomes used more frequently, it will be a lot more dangerous for people.

There are already plenty of accidents where people are hit by horse-drawn carriages, so this place that's hard to oversee and extremely narrow in many parts will be just too much," Eisen explained, "Plus, with dedicated stations, it will be much, much easier to handle the large amounts of people that will want to use the train every day."

Surprised, the people that Eisen was guiding around looked at each other, as Aaron tried to make sure he understood correctly, "Do you mean that large amounts of people will want to use the train every single day? Do people truly travel this much in Asgard?"

With a loud laugh, Eisen shook his head, "Of course, do you even know how many people enter and exit cities every day? This is an archipelago, so going from one large city to another would usually require a ship. But with our inter-island bridges, it's much easier and faster. Not to mention, this is only the first step of the train."

"And what's that supposed to mean? Are you planning on making them bigger? Hold on... are you planning on connecting the-"
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"Oh, no, no, we will not connect the continents," Eisen interrupted the Grandour immediately, "That much would truly be impossible. For that, ships would still be needed. I actually meant the opposite; creating trains for every-day people to travel across a single city."

Curious, Aaron cupped his chin with his hand, "In a single city? Can't people get across a city quite well already?"

"Maybe if they have a carriage, sure," Eisen replied, "And even the larger group-carriages that you can buy a ticket for are quite expensive and still relatively small. Not to mention, extremely unreliable.

Providing trains for every-day people to get from one side of a larger city to the next, or even to get from smaller nearby villages into specific parts of a city will be incredibly beneficial to everyone. Cheaper, faster, more reliable."

"Are you planning on replacing roads with these rails?"

"No, of course not! Roads will still be needed for carriages and people. Trains won't be able to make a stop at every street corner, after all. Instead, at least this is the next step that we are planning in our capital, is to put the trains in either one of two places. Or maybe even both.

Either, we go above," with a grin, Eisen pointed up at the sky, and then quickly pointed down at the ground, "Or we go below."

Aaron's eyes widened excitedly, "A-Above? I can imagine you mean to construct tunnels underground for the trains... but you can make them float?"

"Float? No, nothing like that. Well, we could, but that might be a bit too expensive long-term. No, we'll just build some bridges across certain parts of town. Though, our best option would usually be below.

It's less noise once in service, we can construct it without bothering our people, plus, it lets us keep the beauty and integrity of our beautiful, history-filled cities," Eisen explained, looking around the group of envoys.

Komer had filled him in on what the largest concern for some of these countries seemed to be, and beyond the cost, which was already far outweighed by the economic benefits that implementing the train would have, they seemed to be worried about the appearance.

Maybe it was because Evalia was the youngest of the originals and her influence on the world was the most recent compared to the others, albeit also twenty thousand years old, but the value that was put on beauty, whether in art or in architecture, as well as many other parts of what both individuals and countries could be concerned with, was quite massive.

So making sure that they knew that it was possible to keep the visual integrity and history of a place intact without needing to forgo the benefits that came with different types of trains, was also incredibly important.

Plus, this way Asgard could also sell some techniques and methods of tunnel-boring to the different countries, so that was also only going to be a nice little addition. There was also a secondary benefit of this that Eisen had only recently thought of.

If subways were constructed across large, densely-built cities across the continent, that was practically an immediate and safe shelter in case of a catastrophe. Whether it was the battle between the dragons, or any other large-scale catastrophe that was planned for the future, these sorts of stations could save a lot of people.

On top of that, it would allow for easier evacuation outside of endangered zones as well as effective, hidden supply-routes carefully spreading throughout the continent. That being the case, though, Eisen was a little concerned about how well this was all going.

He knew that the train was an exciting, revolutionary invention in this world, but that didn't change the fact that all the envoys seemed almost too on board with the idea.

Maybe Eisen was simply too used to people trying to mess with him for the sake of messing with him, or this was a bad sign that something particularly annoying was about to happen.