Out on the Training Field the new and veteran troops were training for the spring invasions as the winter began arrive across the continent. The women in Ben's life kept busy with their studies and cultivation and he began experimenting with the Railroad category in his Build Menu.
When Ben had made over ten new Mines his iron ore began to stockpile in unfathomable amounts. He was still supplying Aregard with free iron ore to sell to the Ciral Kingdom and this still wasn't enough to eat away at how much he had.
With so much iron ore in his Warehouse he decided to begin laying railroad tracks. Before he had begun he sat down with both the Aregard and Ciral king and explained his plan and what this new steam powered locomotive was capable of.
With the Railroad category he could build a train stop outside each of the kingdoms capitals. This would allow the kings and their subjects to securely move goods and people between the each stop at much quicker delivery times.
No longer would they have to poke along in a slow carts. They would be free from bandit attacks and being bogged down in heavy rains or snow. People could drag their good to the train stop just outside of each capital city and send it off to any of the allied capital city's excluding those in the reclusive western kingdoms.
The western Kingdoms had proven to turn away from the Avalon Kingdom so Ben treated them as if they no longer existed. He still kept his stores in their capital cities and used them to help fund his kingdoms needs.
Ben hadn't even realized what he had voluntarily started until he was half way into winter and still arranging railroad tracks, train stations, water towers, and train crossing where tacks and roads intersected.
He also built a train repair depot where trains could be towed back and worked on when they broke down or needed repairs.
There were also the many place he had to build double track junctions to allow trains to bypass one another.
The great thing was the system saved him loads of time. He only needed to draw out a line of track and it would build itself. It did not matter if it was six feet of snow, over a river, or threw a mountain. The system would automatically clear the obstacles tunnel through mountains or bridge rivers.
This was all a good learning experience It would not be long before Ben added three more kingdoms to the Avalon Kingdom. The kingdoms on the second continent are so much larger than the small kingdoms here that he wanted to also introduce locomotives there as well.
This would also help him out in the long run. It would allow his employees to take his business profits from each city and place them in the money train to be sent directly to Dragonshome. He would no longer be subjected to hopping across the continent from one establishment to the nest to collect his money!
Ben also knew due to this war that the northern kingdoms were not properly raising enough food to feed their subjects. If he were to increase the amount of farms he had in Roadara to raise triple the amount of food he could then have the farmers load it on trains to be sent to those northern regions one day.
Not only would he need to make changes around the food situation he was going to have to deal with the threats from the snow beasts. He would have to gently approach this problem first.
Before leading an army of troops up to fight them he wanted to find an out of the way place where he could fight a small band of them. This would allow him to judge their strengths and weaknesses.
Of course this all would need to be put on the back burner for now. So many things would have to transpire first before he could even begin to think about how to seal with the northern savage tribes of beast-men.
Ben waited a day for the first locomotive steam engine to come out of production.
This allowed him to begin production of his first locomotive. The following day it was sitting outside the Dragonshome Railroad Station.
The brand new iron horse was linked together with the cars he had had made to be pulled by his first steam engine locomotive.
After the completion of his first locomotive Ben received a notification.
[Auto_Notice] [You have unlocked a hidden structure now available in the build menu!]
[Railway Guild]: [Increases the speed and dependability of your locomotives.]
Ben built a Railway Guild in near his other guilds and found it not only gave him bonuses, it would allow him to hire staff to run or work on the trains.
Coupled behind the new locomotive were two empty box cars, two passenger cars and an armored car with a rotating turret on the roof that allowed people to fire guns or bows from inside the armored car.
Ben had a different plan for the train car turret he paid for Athena to use his custom build menu to mount a small ten pound rifled breech loading cannon inside the turret. If anyone ever attempted to block the rails and stop his trains they would learn how devastating explosive shells and canister grape shot are when it began raining down on them from the rear armored car.
Inside the rear armored car Ben made further adjustments on his own. Putting his Interior Designer profession to good use he transformed the interior of the armored car into a comfortable but luxuries space.
Plush carpet on the floors with high gloss patterned wood panels covering the walls. There was a spacious lounge area and a small office with a modern safe. This would eventually become his money car.
The people he hires to staff the armored car would continuously travel from city to city collecting his money and securing it in the safe. At the end of the line a squad of mounted knights would meet them at the Dragonshome Railroad Station to transfer the money into a large safe located in Rayner's office in the administrations building.
He excitedly walked around inspecting the new locomotive and cars before heading back up into Dragonshome. Now that he had his first "test train' it was time to give the new train a trial run.
From the Railway Guild Ben hired two level five locomotive engineers, two level five conductors, and four level five servants to work as passenger attendants.
He went to find Silvia, Natalia, and Mythia along with five of his experienced engineers who were trained on how to operate and fire cannons.
He had his staff familiarize themselves with the train while he and the girls sat in the armored car along with the cannon engineers. Ben unlatched and slid aside the steel plate shutters covering the armored car windows so they could all see outside as the train began to build up steam and move forward.
They were currently heading east and their first stop would be the Aregard capital, Goldcrest!