walletta
King
If you get rails built, IIRC you should get +1 commerce in every railed tile. Depending on how closely-spaced your cities are, even a minimal network which only connects your cities may then (with your Libs+Unis) be enough to get you 50% more beakers per turn, which would then drop RepParts research-time to 6-7T. Entirely railing your core should get you comfortably to 4T-research (even for AtomTheory, if you don't take it with ToE) -- and if not, then railing your fully irrigated farm-zone(s) will also increase those towns' food-harvest by 2-3FPT, allowing you to run at least 1 more Geek (i.e. +3BPT) per farm.
So what are you waiting for? Go and get that Coal! Joanie doesn't deserve to keep it!
Ha ha! The generals are presently falling out among themselves about whether it should be Carthage after all. I have no negative front with Carthage whereas France can come at me from multiple directions and having no rail network means I have to set aside resources for defence. No coal really stinks!