User blog comment:Stormwell/Thoughts on Technology/@comment-1500935-20140210135550/@comment-1500935-20140212170012

I agree, the Sokolov technologies were still too early to use efficiently whale oil and were then running off pretty quickly. You can even say they were mostly for show, which other characters (mostly Piero :D) point out. But then in the history of science, efficiency always comes later, which explains the current energy crisis we're in.

And speaking of rails, I find weird that a single track use in fact four rails instead of two like usual trains. It seems a waste of metal, as the tracks were only used for industrial transport and commodity for the rich.