The Age of High-Speed Trains

Because the influenza had not greatly affected Spain, most of 1918 had brought good news for the country.

Spain's industrial and economic development had not been affected by the influenza in the slightest, while military and civilian technology had also made tremendous progress.

The first thing worth mentioning was the train speed that had plagued Spain for so long.

Speaking of trains, Europeans were no longer unfamiliar with them. The first train had appeared in 1825, nearly a century ago.

Over that century, trains had developed rapidly. Both their operating speeds and carrying capacities had improved by leaps and bounds compared to a hundred years earlier.

Relatively speaking, however, Spanish trains ran far more slowly than those elsewhere in Europe.

The primary reason was the Meseta Central, which occupied more than half of Spain's territory and severely hindered train speeds.

After the Spanish Empire was established, the Meseta Central still accounted for more than half of the Empire's land. Naturally, trains traveling through plateaus and mountainous regions were much slower than those running across plains.

Beyond that, Spain's broad-gauge railways had also slowed train speeds to a certain extent.

The wider the railway tracks, the greater the train's carrying capacity. A train could haul more cargo or passengers, and without any major change in power, its speed would naturally decrease.

According to data from 1918, the average operating speed of passenger trains across european countries was 60 miles per hour, or roughly 97 kilometers per hour.

That was the speed of passenger trains. Freight trains were somewhat slower, but they could generally still reach speeds above 70 kilometers per hour.

Spain's trains, by contrast, ran at approximately 80 kilometers per hour for passenger service, while freight trains dropped to 60 kilometers per hour.

Though the difference might only have been