On November 14, 1873, the African Southwest Railway was completed. With this great artery stretching west from Guinea and south to Pretoria now finished, Austria's rule in South Africa was thoroughly consolidated.
From surveying to completion, this strategic railway had taken more than a decade to build. It was Austria's most time-consuming, most difficult, and most expensive railway project to date.
Of course, only the main line had been completed. Even another twenty years might not be enough to finish all the branch lines along the route. The main problem was neither construction difficulty nor a lack of labor, but that the colonial governments had no money.
The African Continent was relatively underdeveloped, and government tax revenues were limited, unable to support large-scale railway construction. The main line had been built out of strategic necessity, funded by allocations from the central treasury.
This railway, stretching a full 7,476 kilometers, had cost 74.286 million Divine Shields in total. That meant the average construction cost per kilometer was nearly 10,000 Divine Shields—far beyond the cost of building railways in the homeland.
And that was with free labor available. To build this railway, the colonial government had conscripted more than a million laborers in succession, maintaining an enormous construction force of over two hundred thousand people year-round.
With the main line complete, the branch railways could only be built gradually. Lines with high economic or strategic value would be prioritized, while those of lesser value could remain on the drawing board for now.
The African Southwest Railway had set numerous records: the largest investment, the greatest amount of labor used, the longest distance, the most extensive development and application of new technologies...
If the labor force were converted into monetary value, another record could be added: the most expensive long-distance railway.
Perhaps building