BUILDING rail in winter conditions is very, very difficult. Is that what you're talking about?
But OPERATING rail isn't. Even massive snow fall in mountains only blocks rail lines briefly in the Rockies of North America, and -40weather barely impedes operation of trains across the Canadian prairies (not that we get that much cold often).
I'm wondering where people are getting the 20mile/day figure. In our world, the best numbers ever achieved was 10 miles in one day, by a specially prepared Union Pacific team, with stockpiled supplies, etc.
20 miles a day, every day, building Breitspurbahn? I can't imagine it.
Heck, if I were the Sharonans, I'd build 'narrow gauge' (probably about what we'd consider standard gauge) rail on cheap roadbed to build a quick and dirty supply line to support the massive machinery, etc., needed to build a GOOD bed for the heavy track.
When Van Horne was building the CPR across the Canadian Prairies, he'd have horse scrapers turning over prairie sod, and build the rail on that - leaving the proper ballasting with rock and gravel to happen once the quick and dirty track was in. Doing that allowed the track builders to move about as fast as the surveyors surveying the track.
How the heck would surveyors manage to move fast enough to properly survey track with a hypothetical building rate of 20 miles a day!!!???
brnicholas wrote:Aegis99 wrote:I think you're forgetting that Fort Salby sits in Saudi Arabia, winter is not going to be a negative factor there. Meanwhile in Karys we know the link between portals is in the Caspian Depression, but not where in the Depression. That is important because you could be talking about the warmer southern regions, or the more Siberian north, but if I had to guess Weber was thinking more the southern reaches of the Depression which would experience that hotter climate as described in the books.
Though your other points are well taken about the nature of the logistics problem both sides face and the huge obstacle Arcana is going to face in reinforcing the frontier.
Thank you for questioning that, you drove me to look it up. It was the trip across Karys I was thinking of. The intro to HHNF gives us cities at the approximate location of each portal and the index at the end of the book gives us Earth equivalents for those cities. The route across Karys runs from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan to Astana, Kazakhstan. According to Wikipedia, Ashgabat doesn't fall below freezing much but Astana has an "extreme continental climate" and is the second coldest capital city in the world and famous for high winds. It sounds like Kansas. So you are right Sharona can start advancing whenever they feel they have the resources to do so but I doubt they can build the second half of that railroad until winter passes.
Nicholas