AtD translation: masses

[Mike Jing]

P689.29-35   "The railroads seem to be the key. If one keeps looking at the
map while walking slowly backward across the room, at a certain precise
distance the structural principle leaps into visibility—how the different
lines connect, how they do not, where varying interests may want them to
connect, all of this defining patterns of flow, not only actual but also
invisible, potential, and such rates of change as how quickly one’s
relevant masses can be moved to a given frontier . . .

Is this what the word "masses" mean here:

*b.* *Military*. A close formation of troops, *esp.* one in which the
battalions, etc., are arranged one behind another.