Five days after Vicente's return to Millfall...
In one of the city's outer areas, where several buildings stored the resources of local families were located, a group of local workers was painting a large metal building.
The Millfall train station was ready to function, but it needed to look good to attract local attention.
Vicente wanted this project to succeed and to be able to create thousands of kilometers of track in the province, but for that to happen, he would need customers willing to pay for his services.
The decoration and beauty of his stations' facades would matter!
But while workers were doing their jobs outside the station, the sound of hammers hitting metal could be heard from inside the three-story building.
On the ground level of this place was a group of men in blacksmith's outfits, very sweaty and dirty, as they worked together to finish assembling a large metal vehicle.
This vehicle was long but relatively narrow. While it was more than 12 meters long, it was only 2.5 meters wide. It was 4.3 meters high from the ground to its highest point and had several curved lines on its front, while it was fairly simple and straight at the rear.
That was no ordinary train, like those that existed as soon as trains were created during the Industrial Revolution on Earth. That was a train that would run on magnetic powers, so its structure was much more refined than that of the old earth trains.
But Vicente liked a rustic look, so the train also didn't look entirely like the more modern trains of the world he left behind before being reborn in Polaris Realm.
Anyway, while he, Benson, and the other blacksmiths were finishing assembling the main component of their train, Shelby and some of Vicente's other local contacts were hanging around.
This woman had just entered Vicente's train station, which had a main entrance that led to the second floor instead of the ground floor loading and unloading area, and the service entrance, through which wagons could directly access the loading and unloading area, where Vice was now standing.
After following the second floor, where there were offices and observation areas where Vicente's subordinates could close deals with those interested in his train company's services in the future, she came to the flight of stairs that led to the front where the trains departed from.
From there, she saw where Vicente was working and a vehicle identical to the one the blacksmiths were finishing building, which had two railcars that looked like giant metal buckets attached to them.
Vicente's trains didn't have rear ends. Their rear depended on the direction of travel. They were like subway trains. Going to Martell Village, the rear would be the train Vicente and his men were finishing the building. But coming from the village to Millfall, the rear would be the part of the vehicle that was in the starting position now.
Seeing that structure which, when complete, would be 40 meters long in total, Shelby and Molly couldn't help but smile as they opened their mouths.
"Interesting. These things are very different from anything we've ever seen." The orange-haired woman commented to the red-haired woman next to her.
They had heard that Vicente was in the city, but they didn't know exactly what this project was about. However, it wouldn't be long before they understood.
Not long after they arrived there, Vicente and his companions finished what they were doing when he connected the last freight car to that train.
As they finished, the blacksmiths there watched their project finally completed, eager to put it to the test.
Vicente asked those men to rest, telling them that in an hour, they would be leaving for Martell Village to test what they had built after more than a month of effort.
Vicente saw Shelby and Molly standing there and went over to greet them.
"What's that?" Molly asked him.
"That's a train. Do you want to test it with us? We're going to Martell Village, and then we'll come back." Vicente smiled as he invited the two.
"We have some appointments later..." Shelby was saying when Vicente interrupted her.
"This train should be able to get to and from Martell Village in about three hours at full load," he said, describing what would differentiate his work from ordinary wagons.
If they were fully loaded, wagons would take a whole day to make this trip. On the other hand, Vicente's train could carry the equivalent of 20 wagons itself.
For the time being, it wasn't big enough to carry more things because it was just an experiment. But in the future, he intended to build something capable of carrying resources that would require 100 wagons to do the same.
The greater the capacity of his trains, the more use he could make of the men needed to drive the train and protect the resources.
Molly and Shelby were surprised, but they both believed Vicente.
"Then we can accompany you. I'm curious to know what you intend to do with it."
"Earn coins and speed up the movement of resources throughout the kingdom and province." Vicente got straight to the point.
"So these empty things are for storing resources?" Shelby asked before seeing him nod in the affirmative and ask him something else. "How much would you charge to carry resources by train?"
"I don't know that yet. That is an experiment for my group to understand what needs to be changed for this project to be replicated across the province and also for us to understand the operating costs.
But I know that for a journey between Millfall and Martell Village, a merchant like me would spend around 10 silver coins per wagon, including feeding the horses and paying the guards.
For people to be interested in my trains, they would have to be financially worthwhile for them. So just the one-way trip from my train to the village or here would have to cost less than 2 gold coins."
That didn't sound like much. But while a wagon would take a whole day to get from one of these two destinations to the other, Vicente's train could go to and from these two places 8 times in a single day. So if he charged 2 gold coins per trip, he could collect 32 gold coins daily.
That was a lot!
Vicente didn't know the costs of operating the trains, but he did know that with 32 gold coins, he could pay the daily wages of several Mages. He wouldn't need that many Mages to be on his trains, so he was sure that he could profit from this operation.
Best of all, this wasn't even his main objective. So the profit would just be a plus point that he would gain from trying to speed up the movement of resources around the kingdom!
