"Mr. Fawkes, thank you for your guidance and help me see where I'm going next." Roland got up and shook Fat Fox's hand gratefully, then said goodbye to Matvey and Sophie, and teleported directly from the airship back to Krasbourg.

When I got home, it was almost noon, and Roland simply gave himself a half-day off. However, he could not be idle at home, and after lunch, he began to write a report to His Majesty the King and the Cabinet on the construction of the railway.

In this report, Roland details the progress on the construction site, acknowledging the achievements but also pointing to the problems, and the most urgent problem to be solved today is not the construction of the railway itself.

With railways, locomotives and platforms, is the rail transportation system established?

Of course, it's not that simple. At least one important link remains to be addressed, and that is the complex scheduling and communication on the railway line.

The so-called railway dispatching, simply put, is to ensure the orderly operation of trains on the railway, make appropriate overall arrangements, and maximize the carrying capacity on the basis of avoiding traffic accidents. If there is no effective scheduling arrangement on the railway, there is a risk of serious traffic accidents such as train delays and even more serious derailments and collisions.

To avoid the above accidents, the first thing is to ask the train to run on time and the driver to strictly adhere to the schedule. The reason why Roland attaches great importance to the watch industry is also to pave the way for railway scheduling, if trains and platforms do not even have accurate clocks, let alone any scheduling.

It's not enough to have a strict timetable, because trains will inevitably encounter unexpected situations during actual operation. For example, if a train breaks down halfway and is forced to break down, if the next train does not know anything about it and still goes on the road according to the scheduled departure time, it is very likely that the train that breaks down halfway, even if it does not hit head-on, will inevitably be forced to stop, causing a chain of blockages.

In order to cope with unexpected situations, it is necessary to maintain close communication links between the train and the platforms. The train journey is often hundreds of thousands of miles, if it breaks down in the barren mountains and mountains, how can the driver get in touch with the dispatcher?

Write a letter to send over?

It's certainly just a joke.

Roland didn't want to make jokes about railway dispatching, so he had to master an efficient instant messaging technology. On Earth, the railroad is dispatched by telegraph and telephone, while in Vares, the railroad is usually dispatched using communication magic.

Now there is only one main railway line in the Far East, and the dispatch is relatively simple, but the daily cost of casting spells is also a huge amount of money. In the future, when the railway network is built all over the country, it will no longer be possible to use such an expensive and clumsy dispatching method, otherwise it will not be enough for all the spell casters in the country to be dispatchers. Efforts must be made to find a simpler and cheaper means of communication that would make the average person with a little training competent enough for the important position of railway dispatcher.

Roland put down his pen and looked out the window with his hands on his cheeks, his thoughts flying back to his hometown.

On Earth, anyone who knows anything about the history of railways will recognize the fact that railways and telegraph are two symbiotic businesses.

The development of railways provided a vast demand market for the telegraph business; The telegraph service provides the most basic security guarantee for railway operation.

Telegraph lines along the railroad were ideal, as the railroad used telegraph to manage traffic, so the stationmaster of each telegraph station could also be a local telegrapher. Carnegie, the famous American "steel king" and "railroad tycoon", was a messenger (telegrapher) on the railroad who was responsible for taking telegrams before his career.

In this closely knit symbiotic relationship, the telegraph even dominated for a time, and the reason is obvious: without the railway, telegraph communication could have sought other markets, but without telegraph and subsequent telephone technology, trains traveling thousands of miles would not dare to leave the station easily.

The telegraph had a tremendous impact on 19th-century human society on Earth – at least no less than the railroad. Outside of rail traffic, such as in the military, political, and commercial spheres, the telegraph's enormous role was even more striking, as was its role in coordinating international financial and commodity markets.

Unlike railways, there was no equivalent alternative to the telegraph. Railways need to compete fiercely with road transport, shipping, and air transport, and before the invention of the telegraph, the closest means of communication to it were only carrier pigeons and flag words, and all the means of communication invented by mankind in the past thousands of years have become nothing compared to the communication revolution brought about by the telegraph!

Roland withdrew his gaze from the window, and his thoughts flew back to Vares from his homeland on Earth, to the hot land where he currently works and lives.

In contrast to the rapid development of railways in the Far East, the traditional means of communication are becoming increasingly outdated and unable to meet the needs of transportation development. So, is there a way to create a modern communication network along the railway lines of the Far East?

Roland is not a technographer, as a liberal arts traveler, he does not have the ability to copy the communication technology on the earth to Vares, so he can only find another way, trying to use the unique civilization product of this world - magic - to replace the communication technology on the earth.

In fact, Varess has no shortage of spells and magicians that are as convenient as those of communication tools on Earth. In the case of the "advanced communication stone" commonly used by Roland, it is actually a magic mobile phone with a constant 4-ring "short message technique". Convenience is convenient, but unfortunately it is too expensive, and the cost of tens of thousands of gold coins is by no means affordable for ordinary people.

It is not difficult to use magic to replace technology with telegraph, telephone and fax, but the difficulty is to reduce the cost of technology for commercialization.

If a magical communication network could be built that ordinary people could afford, Roland would be able to build a national postal system based on it, which would then be upgraded to a national broadcasting system, with train platforms integrating newspaper stations, radio stations, and post offices. At first glance, these seemingly incredible blueprints are not so far away, but the biggest difficulty lies in the most basic technical links.

It is clear that he can't solve the above problem with his own spell-casting ability, so who should he ask for advice?

Roland naturally thought of a place where he was surrounded by legendary mages and many high-level spellcasters, a witch girl who was eagerly waiting for him to visit, and a large library from the previous era waiting for him to consult the civilization heritage of the ancient Arcane Empire in the field of magical communication.

"'Fat Fox' is right, it's time to go to Beacon Hill." After thinking about it, Roland made arrangements for his itinerary tomorrow.