Daming Military Empire

Chapter 155 Steam Train
After sending Shivela away, Zhu Cijiong suddenly remembered the problem of iron ore transportation. Fortunately, at sea, Shivira's own merchant ship sent it over, but after arriving at the port of Tianjinwei, he had to use a horse-drawn carriage to transfer to the capital.

The distance from Beijing to Tianjinwei port is not far, about 250 miles, and it takes more than three hours to get there quickly, but the problem is that the horse-drawn cart cannot be fast-moving, but can only walk slowly, so the horse-drawn cart is full of goods from Tianjin It takes at least two days to rush to the capital, and it takes almost three days including the loading and unloading time.

Moreover, on a dirt road like the Ming Dynasty, a horse-drawn cart could pull a thousand catties at most. If there was more, the road would be crushed, and the wheels of the horse-drawn cart would often get stuck in the mud pits, making it impossible to pull them out.

Calculated in this way, 200 million catties of iron ore will take 40 horse-drawn carts to pull for three days. If it is made into weapons and then sent to Liaodong by water, it will take almost [-] horse-drawn carts for three days, and there will be food and grass for [-] troops. For the transportation of supplies and money, the two thousand horse-drawn carriages basically have no rest for a whole month.

This is only the transportation of military supplies. If the economy develops, the transportation volume of goods will be a horror. I am afraid that tens of thousands of people will be transported back and forth in tens of thousands of carriages. Including the payment and loss, the transportation alone will cost 10 taels in a month!

How to do it?In fact, it is very simple, that is to develop a steam-powered train. In that case, make several locomotives, each of which pulls a few freight cars, and only a dozen people to drive the train can completely handle the transportation volume of tens of thousands of horses.Moreover, after the steam train technology is mature, passenger transport can be carried out. At that time, it will be much more convenient for ordinary people to travel between Beijing and Tianjin. Nothing stimulates local economies like building roads.

In fact, with the current level of development of steam power application technology in the Ming Dynasty, steam-powered trains can be built long ago. The reason why Zhu Cijiong didn't think about building trains in the past was mainly a matter of cost.

Not to mention the cost of the train, just talking about this railway, you need to know that the weight of one meter of standard track is more than 100 kilograms, and the two-way back and forth railway has four tracks in a row. Taking the distance between Beijing and Tianjin Wei as the calculation, 250 It is more than 12 meters in a row, and one meter of four in a row is more than 500 catties, and more than 12 meters is more than 60 catties. If converted into iron ore, it is 130 million catties of iron ore!Coupled with the sleepers and the labor for repairing the railway, this section of the railway alone will take several months and several 10 taels of silver!
In the past, there was no such a large transportation volume, so it was a waste of money to make it. Now it is different. With such a large transportation volume, it is not only a waste of money, but also a saving of money.

Now that the conditions are met, let's start 'research and development'. Zhu Cijiong has never seen the real steam-powered train. In his previous life, steam-powered trains have long been eliminated. The worst ones are internal combustion locomotives. The high-speed trains are all electric locomotives, but fortunately, many books introducing the history of technological development have mentioned steam-powered locomotives. He has also read a few articles introducing them. This steam-powered locomotive is not very complicated. He tried his best to recall Just remember the general structure at once.

Steam-powered locomotives are mainly composed of boilers, steam engines, frame running parts, and tenders. Needless to say, the boiler is mainly used to burn water into steam with coal. This is now very mature. There are many boilers in the Gong factory. From the simplest thing like a kettle at the beginning, it has been improved into a new type of boiler with safety valves, simple water level gauges, simple steam pressure gauges and other accessories. It is basically the same as modern boilers. It's about the same, fully enough for a steam-powered train.

The steam engine is actually a set of things that use pistons to drive the wheels to rotate, thereby driving the locomotive to run. This is similar to the cylinder, piston and transmission device used on the machine tool, only a little bigger. With Song Yingxing and his technology, this is no problem at all.

The running parts of the frame are not very complicated, mainly the driving wheels, the front and rear steering wheels, the spring damping device and the traction device of the rear wagon. This is not complicated for people who have seen trains, but those who have never seen trains It's a little difficult for people to imagine it out of thin air.

The last tender truck is even simpler, it is loaded with coal, water and some other spare parts, without any technical content.

Generally speaking, the only difficulty in 'developing' a steam-powered train now lies in the running parts of the frame, because Song Yingxing and the others have never seen a ready-made train, and without an intuitive concept, it is difficult to imagine it out of thin air.Of course, if Zhu Cijiong is asked to do it, this problem does not exist, but he is the emperor now, how can he do that 'rough work', so the most important problem now is to guide Song Yingxing and the others to make the running parts of the frame , the other three parts can be said to be ready-made, and it will be enough to superimpose them at that time.

How to guide it?Zhu Cijiong racked his brains and finally came up with a simple thing, which is the flat rail car used to transfer parts in general mechanical assembly workshops.This thing is really simple and couldn't be simpler, just four iron wheels with a big flat plate on it.But this thing is similar to a train, because this kind of flat car is also stuck on the iron track. Of course, the track is not a real train track, but two square steel or angle steel buried in the ground.

Don't look at the simplicity of this flat rail car, if you add a few push wheels in the middle, it will look similar to the bottom of the train!
Thinking of this, Zhu Cijiong no longer hesitated, and directly called Song Yingxing over.

Song Yingxing thought that there was some major project, but when Zhu Cijiong saw him, he just smiled and asked, "Chang Geng, it is quite troublesome to move the gun barrel from one machine tool to another machine tool or from one workshop to another workshop. "

He was taken aback when he heard the words, isn’t it troublesome? Even though things that weigh hundreds of thousands of kilograms can be hoisted onto the trolley with a gourd, it is a laborious effort to push them. One or two people can’t move them at all, and three or four people are needed. Go together.However, this is just a trivial matter, why does the emperor suddenly care about this?

He replied cautiously: "Going back to the emperor is indeed a bit troublesome. It's too heavy. If one person pushes it, you can't even lift the handle of the cart. You need two people to lift it, and one or two people to push it."

Zhu Cijiong nodded and said, "Well, I've thought of a way for you, come take a look."

As he spoke, he took out a piece of white paper and drew a sketch on it, which was a flat plate with four wheels.Then he explained: "This is a flatbed cart with iron wheels. If you pull a single barrel, you can make it smaller, and then install a handle half a person's height on it, so you don't need to lift it up when you pull it. If you pull a bunch of The gun barrel should be bigger, but the stone floor probably cannot bear such a heavy weight, so two square iron bars must be buried on the ground, and the inner surface of the wheel should protrude a little to prevent the flatbed wheel from detaching from the iron bars, understand? "

Song Yingxing looked at it carefully, nodded and said: "I understand, but please forgive my stupidity, how thick should this plate be, iron or wood, and how thick should this iron bar be?"

Zhu Cijiong probably thought about it for a while, and replied: "It is enough to use a two-inch thick wooden board, you will not pile hundreds of thousands of catties on it, right? As for the iron bars, use two-inch square iron bars for tens of thousands of catties. enough."

Song Yingxing said eagerly: "I don't know if the emperor has anything else to do, if not, then I will do it now."

Zhu Cijiong waved his hand and said, "Go ahead, it's done, give it a try and let me know how it works."

Song Yingxing immediately resigned in a hurry. In fact, he had also thought about this problem. However, in ancient times, pure iron was rarely used as wheels, and the stone slabs in the workshop were not thick. He was afraid that the stone slabs would be crushed if he used iron wheels , so his direction was wrong at the beginning. He used a four-wheeled cart made of large wooden wheels. Used in the workshop.

You must know that the ancient wooden wheels were almost all large wheels with a diameter of more than one meter. A four-wheeled car was at least three meters long and one meter wide, and it could only carry one or two gun barrels. If there were more wheels, it would not be able to bear it. up.He is currently casting one hundred barrels in one batch, so at least fifty such large vehicles will be made in the workshop. In that case, the aisle will be basically blocked, which will affect the efficiency, so he gave up after trying. It's better to work hard than to block the workshop.

This time is different, according to what the emperor said, it is enough to push a small cart with one or two gun barrels to make four palm-sized iron wheels, and as long as the wheels are made wider, the stone slab will not be crushed. As long as it is more than one meter long and just enough to put down the gun barrels, even fifty vehicles will not take up much space. As for the large track flatbed car, it seems that according to the emperor's statement, it is also possible to put forty or fifty gun barrels at a time. Yes, I just don’t know if I can push it or not.

Song Yingxing was originally interested in these things that help increase productivity, otherwise he would not have edited "Tiangong Kaiwu", so after the emperor proposed this plan, he couldn't wait to go back and try it out.

Things such as wheels and square iron are very simple. Cast a rough shape, and then turn a few knives, mill a few knives and basically take shape. It is not difficult to find a two-inch thick board, and the bearings are also ready-made, so the next day he Just get everything ready, and the assembly is a bit troublesome. After all, it is the first time to do it, and there will always be some small problems in the connection of various parts.But this is not a problem for him, who told him that there are many beds and many people, so on the third day he made both the small flatbed car and the track flatbed car.

He first tried a small flatbed truck. It didn’t take much effort to pull a [-]-jin [-]-style howitzer tube by himself. It took more effort to pull two tubes alone, but he could barely pull it. The cart with four wooden wheels is different, one person can barely move one barrel, but two barrels require two people. In these two aspects, the small cart with four iron wheels is completely superior. Considering its small size, Song Yingxing decided that all workshops should be equipped with this kind of cart.

(End of this chapter)