Chapter 12: Supporting Facilities

“It’s not very useful. Or maybe for transporting people? The efficiency is not very high either. This cart can carry at most 10 people, right?” Wen Desi was not very satisfied.

“It can be used as an armed patrol car!” Wei Aiwen said. “Install armor on all four sides, and then mount a machine gun or something on top—”

“Let’s talk about it after the track is laid to Bopu.”

“There is a hardened road here as a foundation. To lay it to Bopu, we will have to use sleepers and formally lay the track.”

“Let’s just lay it! Anyway, it’s all 1435mm gauge, so there’s no problem of repeated construction and waste.”

“Let’s slow down on this matter. We don’t have that much steel to lay it. There are still one or two kilometers of track to be laid in the Bopu factory area—both metallurgy and heavy chemical industry need to transport heavy objects,” Ma Qianzhu shook his head. He knew very well in his heart that the inventory of pig iron, wrought iron, and steel was less than 20 tons as of yesterday. It could still cope with general industrial production. The pig iron transported from Guangdong would not arrive for another week. Without an iron mine in hand, he felt panicked. Always relying on sea imports—now he could understand better than anyone why the Japanese were so determined to occupy the Northeast back then, even when they were beaten to a pulp, they still wanted to hold on to “Manchukuo.”

Iron ore and blast furnaces, these two are the foundation of industry. Next, we need to let the long-range exploration team conduct a special survey, Ma Qianzhu thought.

“We also have modification kits for this self-propelled power.” Seeing that the leaders were not very interested in this rickshaw, Li Chiqi quickly directed people to assemble the things. Two foldable iron masts were installed on the flatbed car. After entering the track, the masts were erected, and at the same time, the sails were raised—the sails were rigid for easy deployment and retraction. After raising the sails, the efficiency would naturally be much greater than simply pedaling, with the help of wind propulsion and auxiliary riding.

The advantage of using a hard sail is that the wind efficiency is higher, and it is very easy to raise and lower. It does not require rigging, and there are no operational requirements, which is very practical for a flatcar.

“This is still a preliminary design. We have invited professionals who study fluid mechanics to conduct tests to obtain the best sail shape. In addition, we also want to try whether the efficiency of a soft sail is better.”

“You don’t need to try to know that a soft sail won’t work,” Wen Desi knew the advantages and disadvantages of hard and soft sails by heart. “You can’t even solve the problem of the rigging alone. Do these four people still have to operate the rigging?”

“I didn’t think about that.”

“The wind resources in Lingao are quite rich, but it’s still not very reliable to use it to drive a flatcar. Is there a more reliable power system?”

“Yes, this is a diesel-powered one. The experimental model uses a Changchai single-cylinder engine, and the effect of using it to pull a flatcar is not bad,” Li Chiqi pointed to the one in the distance. A Changchai single-cylinder engine was placed horizontally at the rear of the flatcar, with a simple gearbox, control lever, brake, and a hanging frame, which Li Chiqi said was for hanging lanterns—light bulbs were now “first-class industrial materials” and were products that could not be manufactured in a short time.

“If the steam engine can be miniaturized, we can also install a steam engine, as long as we increase the strength of the frame. The current materials are still a bit lacking.”

“Then we would have to hang a coal and water car. We might as well just build a small train,” Wen Desi said with a smile—in his heart, he was also a railway enthusiast.

“What do the leaders think of these vehicles? Do you want to add some more models?”

“The models are enough for now. Let’s grasp the details better,” Wen Desi pointed out. “For example, your pedal-powered one, there are no handrails around the four seats, and the diesel engine and gearbox are all bare, with no protection at all. This is a detail problem. We need to consider it more from the perspective of ergonomics—forget it, let’s find a professional to help us look at it.”

“That would be great,” Li Chiqi said. “Chief Wen, I heard that the Executive Committee wants to hire craftsmen from Europe?”

“We have this plan,” Wen Desi was stunned for a moment. “What kind of craftsmen do you need?”

“Yes, yes, it would be best to find me a wheelwright. Or you can find one for me from Guangdong,” Li Chiqi had been troubled by this matter for a long time. Wood wheel making was a very profound craft, and obviously no one in Lingao was good at it. The wheels of the captured handcarts were very crudely made, and even the roundness was not quite right. Li Chiqi and the others were now making their own wheels. Although the quality was good, probably because the process was not right, it took several days to make one wheel, and the product was also quite poor. Many of the vehicles they produced now used the wheels of rubber handcarts brought from another time and space.

“Alright, I’ll remember this,” Wen Desi said.

“That would be for the best. If I have enough wheels, I can mass-produce carriages,” Li Chiqi said excitedly, and showed them the 1:2 models of several new types of carriages he had recently made.

The several models made by Li Chiqi were all very mature 18th-19th century freight carriages in history. There was the very famous Scottish two-wheeled cart, which had a long and large body but was very light, and could be pulled by one horse. The two-wheeled freight cart could carry up to 1 ton for short-distance transport.

There was also a four-wheeled freight carriage, pulled by two horses, which could carry 3-4 tons of goods. The model made by Li Chiqi was a Lincoln-style box-type four-wheeled carriage. It had a deep rectangular body with the side panels extending upwards at an angle. The structure of this carriage was very simple and suitable for copying.

“Now that several main roads are being paved with a hard surface, once it’s completed, it will be so convenient to transport materials with large four-wheeled carriages! It’s a qualitative leap in the history of transportation!”

The four-wheeled carriage was one of the transmigrators’ super divine artifacts. But neither Wen Desi nor Ma Qianzhu and the others had much interest in four-wheeled carriages—to mass-produce carriages on Hainan Island, they first had to mass-produce horses. Without horses, nothing could be discussed.

In their opinion, instead of making carriages, it was more practical to make more light and easy-to-use handcarts—on Hainan Island, people were much easier to find than horses, and they ate much simpler food than horses.

“You’d better develop more handcarts,” Mei Wan said, speaking the truth as soon as he opened his mouth. “Where are the horses to pull the carts now! The workers on the construction site are all carrying loads on their shoulders, and the efficiency is too low!”

“Yes, yes, I didn’t think of that—”

“Alright, it’s getting late. Let’s go and see the water supply project,” Ma Qianzhu unceremoniously interrupted Li Chiqi’s presentation of the design model of the “Russian-style machine gun carriage”—although Du Wen was very eager to hear it.

The next key supporting project was a large-scale water supply system. The original underground water collection pipe system could now only meet the daily water needs of the residents of Bairen City—mainly drinking water. It was unable to cope with the large-scale industrial water use in the future.

The scale of water supply for large-scale industrial use is much larger than that for domestic use. The water from the Wenlan River was fine for watering vegetable gardens or flushing toilets, but it was not qualified for industrial use. For this reason, a large water plant must be built.

The transmigrators had a simple large-scale water treatment facility in Bopu: using a sedimentation tank—sand filter pool method to purify the water quality, which could be used for factories and general domestic use. This method was very simple. One or more waterproof brick and stone pools were built, with a 60-90cm sand layer inside. The bottom of the sand layer was gravel, and the bottom of the pool was a drainage system with gaps between the bricks and stones to collect the filtered clean water. After the pool was filled with preliminarily settled river water, it flowed through the sand layer at a very slow speed, and the solid substances in the water were mainly retained on the surface of the sand. This kind of pool was simple and easy to implement, but the disadvantage was that the filtration speed was pitifully slow. In order to supply enough water, the area of the pool had to be increased. Every once in a while, the contaminated surface sand had to be cleaned, which was very labor-intensive. In the past, the water demand in Bopu was small, so this problem was not prominent. Large-scale use was unacceptable for the transmigrators, who were not rich in land and labor.

The difference between this new system and the traditional filter pool was that the water was transported from the lower part of the sand layer, and at the same time, a stirrer was installed on the upper end of the sand layer. This stirrer constantly stirred the sand to assist the washing work of the upward flowing water. The filtration speed was greatly accelerated—of course, the filtration effect could not be compared with that of a slow sand filter pool. Fortunately, the purpose of water treatment for a mechanical filtration system was purity rather than drinkability. It was very suitable for the transmigrators.

“This kind of water can only be used for industry?” Wu De asked.

“Except for not being drinkable, it can be used for general domestic water,” Tian Jiujiu introduced. This person, who majored in water supply and drainage, was finally doing his own profession.

“Then won’t we have to build a new waterworks in the future?”

“No need,” Tian Jiujiu said. “Actually, we just need to add some basic chemical treatment methods, such as adding alum—”

“Yes, I remember. In the past, when there was no running water, we would put alum in the water tank after fetching water, and it would become very clean after stirring.”

“After the chemical industry is established, we can also add bleaching powder, or use chlorine for disinfection.”

“Damn it,” Wu De scratched his scalp. “In the past, I dreamed of drinking pure natural water, and I was unhappy when I smelled chlorine. Now I feel uneasy when I don’t smell chlorine.”

“Where can we find chlorine?”

“Once the electrolytic salt tank in the chemical plant starts working, I’m afraid there will be no place to use the chlorine. We can just pass it directly into the water—”

“Are you trying to make everyone drink dilute hydrochloric acid? We have to use hypochlorite!”

Everyone laughed.

There was a set of this system in the Bairen industrial zone and the Bopu industrial zone to meet their respective industrial water needs. Tian Jiujiu set up a steam pumping station at the Bairen power station and in Bopu. In order to improve efficiency and reduce the frequency of changing the sand in the filter pool, the river water would first be allowed to settle in a sedimentation tank for one or two days to let various larger solid substances settle, and those identifiable floating objects would be manually removed.

The water treated by the rapid sand filter pool was stored in a water storage tank. The transmigrators used a simple pressure device: a steam pump continuously pumped water into a high-level water tower, and the gravity of the water tower was used to supply water to the factory.

The new water supply system could be built and used thanks to the better material foundation provided by the transmigrators’ machinery and metallurgical industry: it was the ability to mass-produce boilers, steam engines, and cast various small and medium-caliber cast iron water pipes and valves that made these basic industrial supporting facilities possible.