Chapter 138: Chapter 25, Dividing the Fruit

Anything is easy to talk about but hard to do, and Franz would not overlook the limitations of productivity. The age of railway construction technology had gradually matured, yet the efficiency of construction remained low.

Twenty years to build 38,000 kilometers of railway, averaging 1,900 kilometers per year, was undoubtedly a challenging endeavor in the mid-19th century.

Funding was also an issue, with twenty million shields to construct 1,900 kilometers of railway, the average budget was just over ten thousand shields per kilometer, which might barely suffice for construction in plain areas, assuming labor was essentially free. (This calculation only took into account engineering costs and did not consider compensation for demolition or geological conditions.)

In reality, the Austrian Empire was not a country of plains, and complex terrain was not uncommon, which severely constrained railway construction.