Chapter 233: Simple Rail Transport

"The old high-pressure boilers used wrought iron pipes." A fat man squeezed his way over. "I've dismantled those antique boilers in our factory. There wasn't any steel; it was all soft iron. The fire tubes inside were made of wrought iron."

"Who are you?" Wang Luobin paused for a moment.

"I'm Xiao Gui, from the Mechanical Plant." The fat man looked helpless—being unrecognized by leadership was never a good thing.

"Do you think there's a problem with copying a high-pressure boiler?"

"Not big problems. It's just that we have many green hands here and few skilled ones; the work quality isn't great. In my opinion, we should start with a simple Lancashire boiler to let everyone practice—after all, Master Zhou is also new to riveting. Let's build something with lower requirements first so we don't have accidents." Xiao Gui spoke conservatively, though he didn't look worried at all.

"Alright, let's copy two Lancashire boilers first. Once we're skilled, we'll work on high-pressure ones," Wang Luobin said.

Solving the boiler problem meant solving half the steam engine problem. The critical component of a steam engine is the cylinder, a product that significantly tests the transmigrators' industrial processing level. Cylinders are actually machined using boring mills; the quality of the cylinder directly affects the steam engine's actual output power and safety.

The Mechanical Plant had already accumulated considerable experience with large boring mills through machining cannon barrels. Manufacturing cylinders this time posed no technical difficulties.

The first steam engine designed and manufactured by the transmigrators, the "Mozi-I," was a horizontal steam engine driven by a Lancashire boiler. Its steam-jacketed cylinder sat on a cast-iron base, with the slideways cast integrally with the base and bored out. The crankpin was connected to a hanging crank plate, and the outer end of the crankshaft was supported by an independent bearing. A governor automatically adjusted the degree of expansion based on the machine's load. The crankshaft had two eccentrics driving the main slide valve and the expansion valve. With a cylinder diameter of 311 mm and a stroke of 560 mm, it could generate 50 horsepower at a steam pressure of 4 kg/cm² and a speed of 95 rpm. This level was already on par with the small-power locomobiles brought by the transmigrators—though, of course, the locomobiles achieved this with smaller boiler volumes.

If they wanted to increase horsepower, they simply needed to enlarge the cylinder diameter and increase the stroke. Expanding the cylinder diameter to 560 mm and the stroke to 1000 mm, a steam engine of the same structure could output 185 horsepower, sufficient for most industrial applications.

As for the materials used for the boilers and steam engines, apart from a few parts using low-carbon steel, everything else was either cast iron or wrought iron—very suitable for the transmigrators' metallurgical level.

"Actually, there's still a lot of room for improvement," Xiao Gui commented on the design drawings drawn by Xiao Bailang. "For example, replacing slide valves with drop valves, or simply using cylindrical oscillating valves—but that will have to wait until our material and processing standards improve..."

"Processing standards represent no issue; we have so many modern machine tools and professional personnel."

Xiao Gui smiled. "None of us have done this specific work before; it's better to be careful. Proceed step by step. If accidents happen with boilers or steam engines, people will die. Everyone has worked in factories; don't forget safe production."

"That's right. If one isn't careful in a factory, casualties can happen at any time. The current apprentices are okay since kids accept things quickly, but the adult workers don't pay much attention and think we're making a fuss over nothing—sooner or later there will be an industrial accident." Jiang Ye agreed deeply.

"There's no helping it; people won't remember without learning lessons in blood." Zhan Wuya sighed and said, "Let's not talk more about this. Our policy for equipment production is: proceed step by step, make small, quick runs, and continuously improve. In terms of production technology, we are repeating the old path others have walked anyway; technological improvements have precedents to follow, so we won't go astray."

Starting with simple technical equipment and gradually increasing technical content and processing difficulty allowed them to quickly climb the tech tree while avoiding the risks brought by distinct "Great Leap Forward" style development.

Even very simple, primitive equipment could play an important, even indispensable role at this stage. Things like steam engines were far more useful than diesel engines right now.

Producing boilers and steam engines was like using a cheat code for the Transmigration Enterprise—it was the key of keys. No one dared to slack off. Ma Qianzhu ordered the projected Planning Committee to unconditionally approve all material and energy applications from the Industrial and Energy Committee. Wu De also beat his chest, promising to give as much manpower as requested. The Lingao General Construction Company organized shock-work construction to build factory buildings.

Although the Five-Year Plan included many different types of factories, most were actually just various workshops within the Bopu Industrial Zone. The layout of the industrial zone had undergone overall planning to fully utilize space and centralize the arrangement of various distinct pipelines. Between workshops and warehouses, concrete pedestrian paths were paved, along with simple tracks for transporting goods.

Of course, these tracks couldn't run trains; they were just two rolled wrought-iron strips embedded directly into the concrete floor, with limited load-bearing capacity. Originally, the Machinery Group planned to use hardwood rails, but considering Lingao's climate—wood products easily rotted in the rainy season—they used wrought iron. It was cheaper than steel and tougher than cast-iron rails, making it a primary material for early railway tracks.

Originally, Zhan Wuya designed this kind of track simply to imitate the simple inter-workshop transport methods from his previous life—he had worked in a spray-painting workshop for a while, where large workpieces were loaded onto flatbed cars and pushed along tracks from the previous workshop. It saved manpower and time, with high efficiency.

However, when the "train enthusiasts" among the transmigrators saw the tracks, they couldn't help but feel their hearts flutter. Under the joint petition of a group of people, the Executive Committee was finally moved. Thus, what was originally just simple tracks between workshops turned into a complex "Track System."

In the new plan, the length of the tracks was greatly increased, and the connection range was more extensive: from Bairren City, the Farm, East Gate Market, to the hydroelectric station by the Wenlan River, the inland river wharves, Bairren Commune, extending all the way to the various workshops, warehouses, and office buildings within the factory zone. It could not only transport various equipment, raw materials, and goods but also transport personnel. A switch and an auxiliary track were set up every certain distance to allow vehicles to pass each other.

To master the vehicle running status and facilitate scheduling, a high platform was specially built as a general control console, installed with wired telephones and a light control system. In emergency states, a set of colored flag visual systems could be used, or they could connect directly to the broadcast system and control via loudspeakers.

"President Wen, these are several types of vehicles we designed for rail transport." In the Vehicle Workshop, Workshop Director Li Chiqi introduced several flatbed cars parked under the work shed to the main committee members. As a young man with a major in mechanics and automation, being able to hold such a critical post was primarily because his major was basically useless here, so he could fully devote his time to the tedious administrative work of a leadership position—unlike people like Jiang Ye, Zhou Bili, and Xiao Gui, who had skills in their hands and were too busy with technical breakthroughs, design, and product processing every day.

Of course, another reason he served as Director of the Vehicle Workshop was that he was a senior model enthusiast, particularly deep into full-structure vehicle models—he could be considered the person closest to vehicle manufacturing. Since the birth of the Vehicle Workshop, he hadn't let everyone down: he modified over a dozen wheelbarrows, manufactured and modified the first batch of two-wheeled freight carts, and recently produced the transmigrators' first four-wheeled carriage, the "Red Flag" model.

Wen Desi and the others looked at the flatbed rail cars under the shed. They all looked unremarkable, no different from the small flatbed rail cars used in factories in their memories. It was just that the vehicles before them used more wood materials.

"This is the basic flatbed freight model." Li Chiqi was wearing pitch-black mechanics overalls. He was a fat man with short curly hair and small eyes—after being in Lingao for so long, he hadn't gotten any thinner, just exceptionally solid.

"This flatbed model has a maximum load of 5 tons. unpowered, pushed by manpower, pulled by horses, or by a traction unit. If improved further, reaching a 15-ton load wouldn't be difficult."

"Traction unit? What kind of power?" Ma Qianzhu became interested. He remembered that rail flatcars used inside factories were generally electric. That was naturally impossible here.

"Well, we developed several models of traction units. As for which ones to select, we need the Industrial and Energy Committee to evaluate." Li Chiqi said, "On this basic model, we designed multiple detachable modification kits, including tank car transport types, bulk cargo transport types, extra-long item transport types, etc. By installing different kits, different functions can be realized."

"This design concept is good," Wen Desi approved.

Ma Qianzhu wasn't quite assured: "Are there problems with the vehicle bogies?"

"No problems. We overcame that difficulty when we developed the Red Flag carriage." Li Chiqi was confident. "The main problem limiting vehicle load now is that we aren't sure about the actual situation of the track load."

Wen Desi waved his hand: "No problem. Back then, the British used wooden rails and horse traction to haul several tons of coal per car. Our rail transport is built with concrete and steel materials, after all."

"This is the second vehicle type: the self-propelled flatbed car." The second model Li Chiqi introduced was exactly the same as the basic freight model, except that there were four seats at the four corners of the flatbed. Below the seats were some chains, wheels, and the like, and below each seat were pedals—obviously, it moved by human pedaling.

"This is actually quite nice, but is the driving force of four people cycling enough?"

"It's enough. When empty, it's very fast; we even installed a braking device. It's just very hard to start when fully loaded." Li Chiqi had already done tests. Once loaded with too much cargo, if there was no external force to help start it, the four people on the car couldn't pedal the pedals no matter what. "It takes about ten people pushing together to start it. Once started, it can move by pedaling."

Did they have to specially prepare ten people as "starters"? Obviously, this type of vehicle could only serve as a transport car or for transporting light items.

(End of Chapter)