Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I am working on the railroads using the data from The Railroads of the Confederacy by Robert Black III, plus some other material. With respect to Diesel or Diesel-electric, that is borderline Tech Level 6, as lightweight Diesels for locomotives were really only developed in the 1930s under funding from the US Navy, which was looking for lightweight Diesels for submarines. Then both books say that the construction workers for the railroads were bought it from off-planet for construction, which means that the local Tech Level was not up to building the railroads, so was really Tech Level 3.
Then there is the problem of the population. The books list it as 1.9 million approximately, with 200,000 in the capital of Sadi. That leaves 1.7 million for the rest of the land area, which is approximately 20,106,000 square miles or 52,075,040 square kilometers. That gives one person per 11,8 square miles or 30.6 square kilometers. Alaska, for comparison, has a population of 738,432 per Wikipedia 2015 estimate, for 663,268 square miles or 1,717,856 square kilometers, giving 1.26 persons per square mile or 0.49 per square kilometer. That population is awfully thin and spread out to support even a Tech Level 4 society. The pre-Civil War South was an agricultural, agrarian society of roughly 9 million people, and really had problems building steam-powered equipment, or producing large amount of wrought iron rail for railroads. The map in the GDW version shows about 26,400 kilometers of railroad track, or 16,400 miles, which is an enormous amount of track for the given population. I will see what I can find on watering and wood stations, but based on Black's book, you are going to need about 16,000 or so persons just to maintain and operate the existing trackage, and the South did not have to worry a lot about snowfalls and icing conditions, are you are going to have in the southern areas of Mere.
Then there is the problem of the population. The books list it as 1.9 million approximately, with 200,000 in the capital of Sadi. That leaves 1.7 million for the rest of the land area, which is approximately 20,106,000 square miles or 52,075,040 square kilometers. That gives one person per 11,8 square miles or 30.6 square kilometers. Alaska, for comparison, has a population of 738,432 per Wikipedia 2015 estimate, for 663,268 square miles or 1,717,856 square kilometers, giving 1.26 persons per square mile or 0.49 per square kilometer. That population is awfully thin and spread out to support even a Tech Level 4 society. The pre-Civil War South was an agricultural, agrarian society of roughly 9 million people, and really had problems building steam-powered equipment, or producing large amount of wrought iron rail for railroads. The map in the GDW version shows about 26,400 kilometers of railroad track, or 16,400 miles, which is an enormous amount of track for the given population. I will see what I can find on watering and wood stations, but based on Black's book, you are going to need about 16,000 or so persons just to maintain and operate the existing trackage, and the South did not have to worry a lot about snowfalls and icing conditions, are you are going to have in the southern areas of Mere.