Based on his visions, Francisco began by sketching the train as he had seen it in the future—sleek, narrow, and sharp, like a dart cutting through the land. He drew it again and again, refining its shape, streamlining the front, narrowing the body, imagining how the wind would break against its iron skin. On paper, it was magnificent.
In reality, it was impossible.
He realized this slowly, with the creeping dread of a man who knows the truth but keeps hoping the numbers will lie. Iron and steel, as they existed now, simply could not support such a design. Even setting aside engineering limitations, the raw material alone made it absurd. Britain—glorious, smoke-crowned Britain, with its furnaces burning day and night—produced barely a hundred tons of steel a year. To build even a single machine of this scale, he would need to purchase nearly all of it for three years straight. No empire, no matter how powerful, would allow that.
And the engine itself was worse.
