Castenea wrote:
I put a canal as very unlikely due to the fact that while the straight line distance is rather low, the topography is rather steep. Building a sea level canal through mountains requires a lot of earth moving.
The main advantage of a ship canal is that you do not need to break bulk, once you have to load and unload much if not all of the advantage of a canal over a rail road is lost. Due to the effects of currents and planetary rotation sea level will be different on the two sides of the isthmus. Locks for large ships require a lot of water, and while tropical mountains tend to get a lot of rain, collecting this water is a non-trivial engineering challenge.
Basically for less money than a canal, you can build a rail road that serves the same economic function. The rail road is likely to move goods and people faster than the canal.
note I said there's two likely paths, only one goes through the mountains
again, only RFC knows the geography of
his world and his wants for the story of course, but you certainly can get low lying valleys through mountain ranges that
might be useable.
However there is a low lying, but longer route through the region just South of the Styvyvn mountains.
Again though we don't know it's viability, as tons of hills, hard granite, too much unstable chalk/Karst etc could make it unusable
Railroads cannot carry warships...the ability to quickly move move naval vessels and transports could be the difference between success and failure.
so it's a project the Crown/navy would very likely fund at least in part.
This is a truly critical long term strategic issue, exactly like the Panama and Suez Canals. The American and British/French governments pushed those canals very hard for the needs of their Empires.
Again, check the maps.
having a Fleet based in Howell bay, Charis could then quickly move it East or West, where as at the moment, going West requires a hugely longer route.
Bulk shipping is still vastly superior to railroad for major routes.
Whole of Howell bay is surrounded by towns and factories, ocean transport for many things is just far more cost effective.
Rail is an secondary and road a tertiary transport system for them.
There's pros and cons for both rail and water, having both, helps.
Unloading/loading rail to ship takes time, money and...increases damages/theft. Having cargo in the ship start to finish is cheaper.
Charis already is using shipping containers, so communities not on transport-capable waterways could economically ship by rail to any suitable port. Win-win!
Having a major new port on the Cauldron coastline to deal with the canal would also allow improved settlement etc of the entire Western coast of Charis.
This kind of thing is often not considered.
if you have a major port, which will inevitably become a bustling metropolis as it's a international hub, it encourages an entire region around it in many ways: economic, culture, governance etc, if it's run well/benignly.
Thus settlements, production, food, profit are likely to boom.
Lack of transport and "hope" shall we say? cripples regions.
What does Charis gain from such an immensely costly project?
a
lot.
Seriously it would be one of the most useful and important construction projects, ever.
again, look at how Suez and Panama Canals affected things but this one would be even more critical.
With the new Silkiah canal, which will probably end up going through Dholar if I get things right from TFT?, round world shipping will absolutely boom!
More steam shipping and showing off more good points of engineering machinery, boosts the Narhman Plan (least bits we know of it), encouraging technological adoption, more wants for steam ships, steam shovels etc.
Once the canal is complete, surviving machinery, refurbished, can be sold (will require a mssive amount so you'd have plenty to sell), while Charis fields the
latest generation of steam machinery for its own projects.
note holding onto OLD machinery is usually not a good idea, less efficient etc and Charis plans to demonstrate and sell equipment.
Additionally as I noted, avoiding the very stormy sea areas around Charis would save ship owners a lot in repairs over time.
The Cape of Good Hope route, especially in Winter, causes a huge and extremely costly amount of damage to ships and cargo every year so the Suez route is for many, vastly superior and worth the costs.
Go check on it, even huge modern ships get their sides caved in by the colossal waves there :/
Tolls would soon (relatively) repay costs on a project like this as a final issue.