What caused the change?
Labs / History
Canals and Rails
Drag from any mine or town to another to dig a canal or lay a railway between them. Barges and wagons start moving at once, carrying coal and iron to Millbury Works and finished goods on to Port Haven. Canals are cheap to run but crawl; railways cost more per ton yet collapse the journey from days to hours — the same choice that reshaped the 1800s.
Labs / History / Canals and Rails
Canals and Rails
Drag from any mine or town to another to dig a canal or lay a railway between them. Barges and wagons start moving at once, carrying coal and iron to Millbury Works and finished goods on to Port Haven. Canals are cheap to run but crawl; railways cost more per ton yet collapse the journey from days to hours — the same choice that reshaped the 1800s.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
History is about change over time and the choices that shape it. This model helps you compare causes, consequences, and patterns without treating the past as a list of dates.
Explore
Try the model
Build —Freight —Delivery —Output —
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Replace the whole canal chain with railways. How many days does delivery drop by — and how much does the freight bill per ton climb?
- Turn on "colour by time to market". Which corner of the map stays darkest, and which new link brightens it the most?
- Erase the iron route to Millbury. Why does factory output collapse even while coal keeps flowing in?
- Push the coalfield output to 900 t/day. Does the mill make more goods, or does something else become the bottleneck?
- Can you reach Port Haven more cheaply through Kingsford or straight across — and does the fastest route also happen to be the cheapest one?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Build an explanation with a cause, a change, and a consequence. Then identify evidence from the model and one limitation of what the model can show.
Check
Before you leave
Who or what was affected?
What can this model not tell us?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.