Thanzayat Railway

The Thanzayat Railway was the first mlenian project of mass transportation. It connects the regions of Mortemer and Vin-Dan, and is still the most important form of transport between the two countries.

The name is derived from the Thanzayat mountain, the highest terrain feature along the tracks, which supposedly can be seen simultaneously from both Mortemer and Vin-Dan.

History
Plans of building a railway route from Mortemer to Vin-Dan came up in the short period of peace between the two countries (see History of Mor-Vin-War).

After short period of negotiations between 1738 and 1739, Hieronymus Findorff was chosen as Lead Engineer for the project. Despite, or maybe even because he was neither from Mortemer and Vin-Dan, his dedication to the earliest stages of the project and his intense knowledge of the selected region made his choice acceptable for both sides.

Work on the railway started in 1740, even though the final funding was not agreed at that time. Findorff still got permission to employ several separate work crews to start on different sections of the rail track. The main crews began working on the two starting points of the track and made quick progress. Other specialized crews started on preparing difficult parts of the planned tracks, like building tunnels through the Endiva Mountains. Here the first problems of the planned course of the track emerged.

Aroused by the start of heavy construction working in their home area, a tribe of Envidian natives started protesting against the construction works. Their claim, that the endivian mountains were part of a holy area of their Forthian religion found open ears in the capitals of both Mortemer and Vin-Dan, leading to open protests of religious support groups. When Findorff started negotiations with the natives and disappeared for nearly two months in 1741, national military troops were moved into position to force the natives to surrender.

However, Findorff reappeared mysteriously in September 1741 and presented an alternative railtrack through the holy endivian land, that was acceptable to all parties. Part of this new course of tracks was the Circling Mountain, where the railway leads around Enktara Mountain in an elliptic curve.

Only in modern times, aerial photography revealed, that the actual course of the tracks significantly deviates from the planned tracks in many places, the greatest gap being more than 3 km. Observers find the real course of tracks to be far more aesthetical than the planned one, calling it the Egel Anun ("Elegant Handwriting of the Gods" in local endivian speech).

Relevance
The Thanzayat Railway is still the main means of transportation between Mortemer and Vin-Dan, being run by the TRW Rails Company. Still abiding Findorffs agreement with the endivian tribes, the companies motto remains "To Rail Forth".