Hearing this news, as fantastical as an Arabian Nights tale, everyone was stunned speechless. The Americans wanted to build the "Siberian Railway"? Had the sun risen in the west?
Everyone could barely accept that the Americans wanted to strengthen economic exchanges and cooperation between Russia and the Union. After all, the fractured Union was severely lacking markets for its goods.
Both were members of the world's periphery, with no conflict of interests between them, and Russo-American relations had been quite good in recent years. But for the Americans to want to build the "Siberian Railway" was simply laughable.
The Siberian Railway was that effective? It could even promote economic and trade cooperation between Russia and the Union, yet how had they never heard of that?
Everyone knew that when distances were not vastly different, rail transport cost far more than sea transport. And the Siberian Railway was no ordinary railway—its transport costs would be even higher.
Whether departing from the East Coast or the West Coast, it would be better to load goods directly onto ships and send them to the Russian Empire than to haul them all the way to the Far East for transshipment.
If they truly meant promoting economic trade between the two countries, there was indeed some basis for it. But it would not be trade between Siberia and the Union.
Unlike the Siberia of later generations, Siberia in this era was, apart from being vast, good for nothing.
The Siberian region covered more than thirteen million square kilometers, yet had fewer than seven million people. That figure already included Ottoman immigrants; otherwise, it could be cut in half.
Siberia only began developing after the railway opened. This was mainly thanks to Stalin's exile policies, which increased the local population.
With so few people scattered across