Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 300 The Track of Combat Preparation ([-])

In May, the East Coast wilderness is full of charming late autumn scenery.On the banks of the Merlin River (San Miguel River, named after the plum trees brought by the immigrants on the banks of the river), more than 500 newly arrived French immigrants are with the original local residents ([-] Ming people, [-] Charuyas) worked hard to build a pier trestle bridge.

The newly established Meilin Port Wharf by the Executive Committee will be an important transshipment station for domestic north-south transportation in the future.In the future planning of Meilin Port, it is not only an inner lake port, but also has a railway station.Both the Meilin Port Wharf and the railway station are directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Communications. There is a large-scale transshipment yard and storage base here for transshipment or temporary storage of materials traveling from south to north.

Rusted steel tracks extend from the wharf (and railroad station) yard, winding southwest and disappearing into the horizon.This steel track under construction is currently the well-known Mianmei Line (Miannong Township-Meilin Port) railway in the East Coast Republic. The total length of the railway is more than 80 kilometers, and the cost is extremely huge.Not only are two of the five major construction bureaus under the Ministry of Communications stationed here to carry out arduous railway construction projects, but even the First Machinery Factory, Pingan Iron and Steel Factory, Henan Wood Processing Factory, West Lake Wood Processing Factory, Dayuhe Arsenal, The northern arsenal, building materials company, inland water transport company, Ministry of the Army, Ministry of Internal Affairs and other units were mobilized to fully guarantee the construction of the entire railway.

And in the place next to the railway station, several huge factory buildings stand there alone.There is a wooden sign hanging at the entrance of the factory building, on which is written "South Vehicle Factory of the Ministry of Communications" in black ink.At this time, the gate of the factory was closed tightly, and several police officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs stood guard at the gate with guns, while inside the factory building, the roar of huge machines was ringing non-stop.

In the machining workshop of the South Vehicle Factory, several specially-made large lathes are making rumbling sounds driven by steam engines, and the high-speed rotating cutter head is turning the 12.5-meter steel rail fixed on the workbench to make it The accuracy is more in line with the requirements.This kind of turning work is extremely expensive, but why have people on the East Coast not found the existence of chromite?Without metals such as chromium, tungsten, and manganese, high-quality alloy cutter heads can only be a fantasy.

The processed steel rails are stacked next to them, and a dozen workers are transporting these rails to a wooden flat track carriage with the assistance of a small steam crane.Whenever a few steel rails are filled, the driver of the carriage will slowly leave the workshop with the carriage, drive along the track to the outside of the workshop, and then turn onto the part of the Mianmei Line Railway that has been laid, and transport the steel rails to the construction site in the south .Of course, some horse-drawn carriages pulling steel rails will also transport some of the steel rails to the wharf, and then with the assistance of steam tower cranes, the steel rails will be hoisted onto the small inland river steamer next to the temporary wooden trestle bridge.These steam steamers will transport the steel rails to the Miannongbao Wharf in the south, and then transport them to the construction site by rail carriages just like here, for the workers of the Fourth Bureau of Communications and Construction to lay the railway.

This kind of carriage specially designed for the track is produced by the carriage workshop of the South Vehicle Factory.There are many models of this track-specific carriage, including four-wheeled, six-wheeled, and even eight-wheeled heavy-duty carriages.Corresponding to the number of wheels, the number of horses should also increase proportionally.This series of carriages uniformly uses steel flanged wheels, and every two wheels are fixedly connected together by an axle, which is called a wheel set.The distance between the wheel sets is strictly controlled within the specified deviation (less than 1500mm gauge) to ensure that the wheels will not go off the track and derail.

Limited by the current processing level (lack of high-precision grinding machines) and material limitations, no bearings are used between the axle and the wheels, but traditional sliding friction is used.For this situation, the technicians of the Ministry of Communications have no good solution. They can only choose to add wax, grease and other lubricants to the axle for lubrication to reduce the wear and tear of the vehicle.

The bottom of the carriage is also creatively installed with some shock-absorbing springs.The spring is made of copper, after being heated at high temperature (850 degrees) for a period of time, it is quenched in vegetable oil at 40-60 degrees. 400 minutes), and finally into 450 degrees of water.The spring treated in this way has uniform and long-lasting elasticity, and can be used for a long time without losing its elasticity.Of course, it is still limited by the material problem-there is a lack of some rare metals, and it is impossible to make high-elastic alloy copper. The life of the spring made by this method is much shorter than that of modern ones.But it can only be like this at present, let's use it first, at least this is also a technology that is far ahead of this era.

The carriage brake is a treaded brake shoe made of cast iron.The brake shoe is opposite to the wheel tread through the transmission part. When the driver is about to reach the destination and needs to slow down or needs to stop in an emergency due to an accident, the brake shoe will be manually braked. At this time, the brake shoe will tightly hug the wheel under the action of the transmission part. , relying on friction to slow down or stop the vehicle.In this process, the huge kinetic energy of the vehicle is converted into huge heat energy through friction, and the temperature of both the wheels and the brake shoes will rise sharply.At this time, if the material is not very good, it is likely to go wrong, resulting in cracks on the surface of the wheel or brake shoe.However, in the eyes of several designers from the South Vehicle Factory, the speed of the existing rail carriages and early steam trains is not very high, and the speed is about tens of kilometers per hour. In this case, use Cast iron brake shoes are not a big problem.

The carriages are standard wooden carriages, regardless of the front and rear.There are many hooks on both sides, which are convenient for attaching the drawing reins of the draft horse.

At present, the Southern Vehicle Factory has produced eight experimental four-wheeled rail carriages, four of which were allocated to the south, and four were left in Merlin Port for trial operation.The results of the trial run are generally acceptable. The newly designed and produced vehicles will definitely have various problems at the beginning, but the technicians and craftsmen of the vehicle factory have eliminated them in time and carefully recorded them. The cause and frequency of each failure is recorded, so that the vehicle can be better improved in the future.

Torricelli, a senior researcher at the Academy of Natural Sciences and now officially naturalized as a citizen of the Eastern China Republic, was very surprised at the beginning that his cross-traveling colleagues had designed a freight rail carriage so exquisitely—or rather troublesome. puzzled.In his opinion, it is just a carriage for pulling goods, there is no need to make it so complicated, and many parts can be simplified in design.He couldn't understand why the time travelers made it so complicated, because the manufacturing cost would be higher, the maintenance would be troublesome, and of course there would be more failures.Because many parts have been added, the corresponding failure points have also increased, which is a very clear truth.

However, after Qi Yongjie, the designer of the time travel team and the director of the South Vehicle Factory, told him the highest instructions from the Executive Committee and the Government Council, Torricelli was immediately excited.Because Qi Yongjie told him that the executive committee decided to start trying to develop steam locomotives, using the steam engine as the locomotive to provide power, and at the same time connecting many carriages together to form a train, and the steam locomotive would pull the train forward.Because the steam locomotive can theoretically provide a lot of power, this kind of vehicle, which is called a "train" by the designers of the crossing, will be very efficient in carrying goods and people, and it can easily pull hundreds of tons of goods loose.

Torricelli was no blind philistine.On the contrary, he is very smart, with sharp vision and strong hands-on ability.He soon discovered that the current series of rail carriages produced by the South Vehicle Factory used quite a lot of legendary "train" technology, such as flange wheel technology, carriage damping spring technology, brake shoe brake device technology, As well as the coupler buffer technology used to connect the two carriages - this technology was personally participated by Torricelli a while ago. He and a group of locksmiths worked hard on the study for several months. After many designs, Manufacturing, trial, improvement, re-trial, and then improving such a painful but happy cycle process, finally developed a coupler buffer device that meets the requirements of the superior.

Of course, in Torricelli's view, there is still a long way to go to develop steam locomotives at this stage.The first thing to bear the brunt is the high-pressure steam engine used as the core to provide power. As far as the existing steam engine with a maximum cylinder pressure of 0.8 MPa is concerned, regardless of its performance and reliability, the output power may be a little too small. Some.It's not that this steam engine can't drive the train, but that it can only drive light-loaded trains. Once there are too many carriages or heavy goods, the speed of the train will be horribly slow.Therefore, in the final analysis, it is still necessary to continue to develop steam engines with greater output power-and on this point, the technicians in the boiler workshop of the First Machinery Factory have already begun to work hard.

In addition to the core high-pressure steam engine, the South Vehicle Factory also needs to overcome a series of technical obstacles.Such as steam locomotive frame, running mechanism (involving a series of technologies such as driving wheel, driven wheel, guide wheel, axle box, bogie, traction device, etc.), in addition to designing a tender.Moreover, the design of the steam engine may need to be optimized. Both the cylinder seal and the valve actuator must be reconsidered and optimized to maximize the output power of the steam engine.

In short, this is a long process, and there are countless technical difficulties that need to be overcome.If the current industrial crown-level thing like the train is really successfully developed, then it can almost be clearly announced that the industrial level of the East Coast Republic of China has once again reached a new level.Fortunately, Time Travelers are not in a hurry right now. Everyone is slowly researching and trial-producing. This is a long-term process of technology accumulation. I don’t believe it will take five, ten or even 20 years to break through these technical obstacles.

(End of this chapter)