This was particularly true for the turnpikes, canals and railways that accompanied Britain’s rise as a global economic superpow er. National initiatives only emeiged later to better coordinate existing projects in line with the demands of a more sophisticated and integrated national economy. Conceived in 1830, Chevalier’s impressive plan7 was for a grand European transport system to connect the entire continent with rails, roads and shipping routes, whereby railway lines spanning over 60,000 km would traverse from the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (through northbound lines), linking them to eastbound destinations of Flanders at the North Sea via Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga and St Petersbuig to the Russian Pacific (Hogselius et al.,