Chapter 201: The Avalanche of Paper
The consequences of success arrived at Oriel Estate in heavy canvas sacks.
Literally.
Three mornings after Ernest’s inspection trip to Harrowfield, a horse-drawn royal postal carriage rattled through the estate gates carrying two bulky mailbags stuffed almost to bursting. A second carriage followed twenty minutes later, and by noon, Ernest’s private secretary had abandoned all pretense of fitting the incoming correspondence into the normal filing cabinets.
Letters, petitions, and legal briefs covered the long mahogany table outside his study.
There were formal business proposals, urgent requests for station stops, petitions for private sidings, applications for bulk freight tariffs, inquiries regarding daily passenger schedules, and elaborate submissions demanding entirely new trunk lines. Some came from wealthy merchant syndicates, others from town mayors, provincial governors, mine syndicates, agricultural cooperatives, textile manufacturers, large landowners, and regional chambers of commerce.
Everyone in the kingdom wanted the exact same thing: direct rail access.
Ernest stood at the head of the table, his hands resting on his hips as he stared at the growing mountain of paper.
His secretary approached from the corridor, carrying another tied bundle under her arm. "More have just arrived, my lord."
"How many?" Ernest asked.
"Twenty-three separate petitions."
"From today’s mid-day dispatch?"
"Since breakfast," she corrected gently.
Ernest rubbed his forehead, letting out a quiet sigh. "Stack them with the others."
She looked at the surface of the table. Every square inch of wood was already buried beneath layers of vellum and parchment. "Where, my lord?"
Ernest scanned the room. "The armchair."
She placed the bundle carefully on the upholstery.
Ernest picked up the top envelope from the newest pile: WESTERN TIMBER MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION.
He sliced open the seal. The association proposed a direct trunk line from Helmarte westward into the dense highland pine forests. They estimated that bulk rail transport would cut the delivered price of structural timber and mine props in the capital by nearly fifty percent within six months. To entice the railway, the timber merchants offered to deed right-of-way land for freight yards free of charge, several municipal councils along the route offered station plots, and one provincial assembly pledged to co-finance river bridge abutments.
Ernest set it aside in a consideration pile and reached for the next: SOUTHERN AGRICULTURAL UNION.
Grain elevators, cattle shipping pens, orchard produce, and market vegetables. The southern farmers wanted high-speed, same-day delivery to Helmarte’s central markets to eliminate spoilage.
Next: PORT AUTHORITY OF DUNWELL.
The port authority petitioned for a direct railway connection linking the coastal docks to the capital. The accompanying memorial was twelve pages long, complete with harbor soundings and cargo manifests.
Ernest read it with intense focus. Heavy industrial imports—specialized machinery, chemical reagents, and crude ores—currently arrived by ship, were laboriously unloaded onto horse wagons, and spent four to six days crawling inland over rutted turnpikes. A heavy freight railway could move cargo from the deep-water quays directly into Helmarte’s industrial basin in a matter of hours.
More importantly, the flow could reverse. High-tensile steel rails, steam engines, machine tools, processed goods, and northern coal could travel directly from inland factories to waiting cargo ships.
Ernest slowed his reading. That single proposal carried profound strategic implications. He set it down in a dedicated folder marked High Priority.
He moved to the next: an independent coal mining syndicate. Then a woolens cooperative. Then a provincial governor’s office. Then another port authority.
Then came a document from an agricultural market town of twelve thousand residents that had produced a forty-eight-page illuminated brief arguing that the future economic survival of the Kingdom of Belfast depended entirely on constructing a passenger terminal within its municipal borders.
Ernest flipped through the dense pages. "They included ten-year demographic projections."
His secretary nodded. "They also included topographical survey maps, my lord."
"Naturally."
"And signatures."
"How many signatures?"
"Six thousand four hundred."
Ernest looked at her. "More than half the adult population of the town signed this?"
"The town clerk organized a public assembly," she said.
Ernest set the petition down on the desk.
Building the Northern Line had been an arduous uphill battle because Ernest had needed to convince a skeptical King, a cautious Parliament, and conservative landowners that railways were viable. Building the subsequent lines was going to be difficult for the exact opposite reason: everyone in the kingdom was already utterly convinced, and every province demanded priority.
Shortly before eleven, Arthur Pendelton entered the study. He took two steps into the room, saw the sea of paper covering every table, chair, and windowsill, and stopped dead in his tracks.
"No," Arthur said firmly.
Ernest looked up from his ledger. "I have not uttered a single word, Arthur."
"I know," Arthur replied, pointing an accusing finger at the stacked correspondence. "That is precisely why I am establishing my position immediately. No."
"A remarkably articulate legal brief."
Arthur carefully stepped over a stack of municipal petitions and approached the desk. "You are looking at those papers and calculating how to construct all of them simultaneously."
"Obviously not simultaneously," Ernest said.
Arthur exhaled, his shoulders dropping slightly. "Good."
"At least not within the current fiscal quarter," Ernest added mildly.
Arthur’s expression instantly soured. "Ernest."
"What?"
"We own exactly one railway line," Arthur said, planting his hands on the edge of the desk. "A single railway."
"An extraordinarily profitable and fully utilized railway," Ernest noted.
"Which has been operating commercially for exactly ninety days! It is already running above maximum rated capacity, our rolling stock is backlogged, and our maintenance crews are working overtime."
"Which proves an overwhelming public and industrial demand," Ernest countered.
"It proves that we must stabilize, expand, and consolidate the assets we currently operate before you attempt to encase the entire kingdom in steel tracks!"
Ernest leaned back in his leather armchair. Arthur was, as usual, annoyingly practical.
Arthur began counting off points on his fingers. "We need twelve additional heavy freight locomotives."
"Already ordered from the machine works," Ernest said.
"We need two hundred more covered boxcars and coal hoppers."
"Fabrication capacity at the basin works has been doubled."
"We need more passenger coaches."
"The coach works is expanding its assembly line."
"We need larger freight handling yards at Helmarte and North Teucher."
"Samuel is drafting the yard expansion layouts this week."
"We need qualified, disciplined train crews."
Ernest paused, offering no immediate rebuttal.
Arthur smiled triumphantly. "Ah. There it is."
"We are training new firemen and drivers at the works," Ernest said.
"How quickly?" Arthur pressed. "You can forge a locomotive driving axle in three days, Ernest, but you cannot manufacture an experienced locomotive engineer who knows how to handle a twelve-car freight train on a one-percent wet grade in less than six months."
"I am well aware of our human resource constraints, Arthur."
"Are you?" Arthur dropped his own leather portfolio onto the desk with a heavy thud. "Because the locomotive works manager informed me this morning that you revised the production schedule from eight engines to ten."
"Ten is a more balanced manufacturing batch for the foundry patterns," Ernest explained smoothly.
Arthur closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Naturally. Why build eight when you can build ten and terrify the treasury?"