Historical Echo: When Flying Cars Meet the Railway Mania Playbook
![empty formal interior, natural lighting through tall windows, wood paneling, institutional architecture, sense of history and permanence, marble columns, high ceilings, formal furniture, muted palette, An empty, cavernous 19th-century boardroom at dusk, its long mahogany table strewn with yellowed railway prospectuses and half-filled subscription sheets, a single unlit IPO gavel resting near a cracked brass nameplate reading "Metropolitan Aerial Transit Co.", tall arched windows revealing a darkening sky over empty train tracks, dust motes hanging in the slanting twilight, the air thick with silence and the weight of abandoned futures. [Nano Banana]](https://081x4rbriqin1aej.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/viral-images/52a3e36f-08c1-45d4-99b2-7a0d7ce9b3eb_viral_2_square.png "empty formal interior, natural lighting through tall windows, wood paneling, institutional architecture, sense of history and permanence, marble columns, high ceilings, formal furniture, muted palette, An empty, cavernous 19th-century boardroom at dusk, its long mahogany table strewn with yellowed railway prospectuses and half-filled subscription sheets, a single unlit IPO gavel resting near a cracked brass nameplate reading \"Metropolitan Aerial Transit Co.\", tall arched windows revealing a darkening sky over empty train tracks, dust motes hanging in the slanting twilight, the air thick with silence and the weight of abandoned futures. [Nano Banana]")
It happened with canals, it happened with railroads, and now it’s happening with flying cars: every time humanity redefines mobility, the stock market races ahead of reality. In 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened with just 9 miles of track—but within five years, over 100 railway companies were floated on the London Exchange, triggering the ‘Railway Mania’ that peaked in 1846 with £300 million pledged (over 20% of GDP). Today, Aridge’s $2 billion valuation and impending Hong Kong IPO echo that same feverish anticipation. The lesson from history isn’t that these visions fail—but that they take decades longer than expected, and the winners are rarely the first to list. Of the 122 railway companies incorporated in 1845, fewer than 20 survived the 1847 crash. The true pattern isn’t technological inevitability—it’s the cyclical overbetting on liberation from friction, whether geographic, gravitational, or gravitational. Aridge isn’t just selling shares; it’s selling the dream of vertical escape.
—Catherine Ng Wei-Lin
Dispatch from Signals S0
Published January 13, 2026