The Shadow of Great Britain

Arthur saw Leopold showing interest and quickly struck while the iron was hot.

"Your Majesty, when we talk about railways today, we only talk about tracks, locomotives, freight volume, and speed. While these are certainly important, if we only build railways and expect them to become the source of national development, then we must not only consider what lies above the rails, but also how to control the railway system. Without a head, even the strongest person is merely a walking corpse, and the electromagnetic telegraph to the railway system is like the head to the body."

Leopold’s eyebrows twitched; he still did not understand the connection between the two.

He was not completely unfamiliar with wired telegraphs, but in his understanding, it was just a fashionable item from London.

Indeed, this thing might be very useful for the police system, which often has to deal with emergencies.

Without the help of the telegraph, the criminals who committed the royal theft could certainly not have been caught so quickly at Golden Cross Station.

However, for most people, spending a shilling just to send a "Hello" from Regent Street to Hyde Park was still too luxurious a pastime.

Perhaps they could try it once in a while, but most of the time, gentlemen and ladies still preferred to spend twenty minutes personally walking to a friend’s place to greet them.

Seeing Leopold’s lack of understanding, Arthur patiently explained: "You can imagine a scenario where a train departs from Brussels, traveling through the lowland hills and lush forests, carrying not only cloth and coal but also hundreds of workers returning home from Liege. However, no one anticipated that a heavy rain last night had washed out the roadbed near Waf, causing the sleepers to sink and the tracks to deform. According to the current management style of the railway company, once the station guard discovers an unusual situation, they would immediately send someone on horseback to the neighboring station to report, and then the message would be delivered step by step to the dispatch office. This entire process could take four or five hours quickly, or half a day slowly. By then, the next train might already be on a collision course."

Arthur paused for a moment, looking at Leopold: "But what if there were telegraph stations along the line? Even if it’s just a young operator on shift in a small hut, upon discovering the fault, they would only need a few taps and Morse code to alert the dispatch hall in Brussels within a minute, immediately halting the train’s departure or ordering it to make an emergency stop at the next safe station. This not only saves time but also saves lives and property. Don’t think I’m fearmongering; remember what happened during the opening ceremony of the Manchester-Liverpool Railway? Poor Mr. Hesketh. If only someone had sent the arrival time of the next train via telegraph, how could he have been hit?"

Arthur’s words were logical and well-founded, causing Leopold’s eyebrows to twitch. After a slight contemplation, he nodded gently in agreement: "It seems that the telegraph can indeed make train dispatch more efficient, but I have heard that its construction cost..."

Arthur already knew he would be concerned about construction costs. After all, when he went around talking to various railway companies about telegraph cooperation last year, the management of these railway companies used this reason to shut him out.

According to the Great Western Railway Company and the Manchester-Liverpool Company’s statement, the exclusive rights for newsstands at stations could be easily negotiated.

But to establish telegraph stations?

Sorry, unless the England Electromagnetic Telegraph Company is willing to dig into its own pockets to build the lines and then allow them to try it for free for a year after the telegraph station is established, they’ll have to show the guest out.

In this regard, Arthur really had no way with these penny-pinching British railway companies.

Because even if he was convinced that the telegraph was crucial to the railway system, the other side didn’t think so. After all, from the perspective of the railway companies, aren’t their businesses still quite profitable even without the telegraph? Therefore, they were not keen to discuss cooperation with Arthur.

However, Arthur felt that Leopold and Belgium would definitely be interested in the telegraph.

Or rather, they must be interested, because...

Arthur smiled and said: "Your Majesty, the telegraph is the nervous system, the railway is the artery, and finance is the heart. Only when these three beat together can Belgium’s industrial bloodstream truly flow smoothly. You can’t just calculate the construction cost of the telegraph line. Perhaps at this stage, the telegraph is hard to make a direct profit, but it can save a lot of economic losses. You are a veteran player at the London Stock Exchange and have examined railway companies for such a long time. So you must know that now many railway transports rely on paper ledgers and manual lists, a simple cargo coordination can take three days, while the goods themselves only need six hours to be transported.

And after having the telegraph? The consignor can directly send instructions from Antwerp to Brussels to temporarily change the shipping destination of a batch of Flanders wool. The railway bureau can also adjust the transportation capacity in real time to avoid empty trains returning. This is not just icing on the cake, but a cost reduction measure. Reducing the empty run of a train saves not only fuel but also labor and axle wear and tear. Save a little today and a bit more tomorrow, and this repetitive, year after year accumulation, the indirect profit of the telegraph station is not less than selling train tickets."

Leopold was somewhat persuaded by Arthur’s words, so he did not directly refuse the construction of telegraph lines but first asked about the price: "Then... according to the current market price, how much would it cost to build a telegraph line matching the Brussels-Mechelen railway?"