Starting in 1850, a group of influential businessmen from the newly-created region of Woldshire began plannings for the first railway of the Principality. Stunned by the triumph of the iron horse in its sister nation, Britain, these pioneers put a lot of their capital in a railway intended to fuel the tool industry in Stow-on-the-Wold, and also the newly-established manufactures up in Yeovil. Their dream came true on March 14th, 1852.
An 1852 map of the Principality, showing the main transport industries, with the newly established Stow Railway Company
The Stow Railway Company was the first railway on the Principality of Island, and connected the industrious harbour of Stow-on-the-Wold, where the tools factories were, with the forests of Woldshire and sawmills in the Jerall Mountains that fueled this factories. It connected also with Yeovil, that housed the main consumers of these tools: the manufactures.
An engraving showing one of the first trains of the SRC, speeding upon the Stow embankment
The railway, being made by some of the richest capitalists on the island, was built with top-of-the-notch standards imported from the United Kingdom, and soonly became the envy of the Wessex noblemen, that still got power on this western region and owned most of its land.
The map also shows the main shipping lanes of the Principality, two of which dated back long before the National Rebellion of 1848. One of these was the Southeastern Shipping Lanes, based on the Peninsula region, that ran a profitous business shipping stone and bricks from the quarries in Lytham to the factories in Stow-on-the-Wold.
The other one was a passenger-only company, the Channel Ferry Company. It connected the southern regions with two main lines: Arundel to Ormskirk via Earley, and Portsmouth to Earley via Teignmouth and Ormskirk. It also had lines connecting Arundel and Earley (its main hub) to continental Europe, but aren't shown on the map because of its national approach.
Earley docks in an image from 1850
The newest shipping company was, in fact, a business that didn't have shipping as its main activity. Continental Steel was a company founded in 1848 with ore and coal mines expropiated to aristocrats. With this resources, the capitalists behind the company established a steel factory on the southern coast of Wessex, intended to sell its product to European manufacturers. The only line within national borders connected mines on Arundel and Earley to the aforementioned factory.
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