Chapter 516 A more powerful tool

At the edge of the industrial area in the eastern part of Cecil City, in a research room of the Machinery Manufacturing Institute, Gawain was gathering with Rebecca and Nicholas Egg.

The round iron star man floated in the center of the room. Beside him, a complex and exquisite metal model was floating with him. The metal model was obviously the chassis of the vehicle. It was made with high precision in Nicholas Egg With its processing capabilities, each of its gears and connecting rods have been restored with the most accurate accuracy, and various operation demonstrations are carried out with the traction of the magnetic field.

"This is the universal traction chassis after finalization - of course, it is just a model. How to implement it specifically requires the efforts of technicians," a voice with a hint of metallic vibrato came from the iron ball star's body, As he spoke, he rotated the model so that Gawain could see its internal details. "Based on the last design drawing, we re-adjusted the connection method between the Magic Network unit and the power spine, and added a layer of shock absorption. , this allows the chassis to adapt to more complex and harsh roads, and this shock-absorbing structure can be removed. After being removed, it can be replaced with an additional magic mesh unit to make the chassis more powerful, so that it can act as a vehicle in relatively flat areas. The tractor of the construction machinery is here to use."

Gao Wen looked at the model presented by Nicholas Egg, listened to the other party's explanation, and nodded slightly: "...Not bad."

There are no smooth and solid highways in this era, and there are no service areas or car repair shops in the vast wilderness between cities. Although since Rebecca toiled out cement, Cecil’s The road construction project has never stopped, but even with the convenience of magic, the current road facilities in the southern border are seriously imperfect - at this stage, only three roads in Cecil can be considered "modernized", among which the road from Cecil There is a wide cement avenue between Cecil City and Kant, and there is a similar road between Cecil and Tanzania. The road to the Glen area was just completed a few days ago, and other places , basically there are only the messy roads built by the nobles of the southern border.

Among these messy roads, the best situation is the "temporary road" from Tanzania to Hosman City, but that only allows mages and engineers with magic terminals to use " The "Fossils to Mud" and "Mud to Stone" techniques are just emergency flattening and reinforcement. It can be used temporarily to transport people and materials, but in the long run, its durability and scale are not enough for Gawain. It's substandard.

As a remnant of the old feudal system, "roads" are a big problem that stands in front of Gawain. The nobles have their own way in their own territories, and the roads they build are all kinds of. Not only the quality and scale are messy, but also Planning is also a mess. Sometimes, in order to prevent being robbed by neighboring nobles, they even specially destroy the area where the road between the two territories connects, using magic to create a large number of man-made potholes, sand and Quagmire, nowThe Southern Territory has been unified, and the former lords have withdrawn from the stage, but these irritating things have been left to Cecil's builders.

Fortunately, this world has incredible magic technology, and magic terminals specially used by ordinary engineers have also become popular. "With the assistance of various spells, the road construction project in the Southern Territory is progressing smoothly, but even so, considering the actual conditions in most remote areas and the situation outside the Southern Territory, the early magic vehicle chassis must still consider how to Deal with bad road conditions.

“The universal chassis should pay attention to maximum applicability, so we redesigned its size according to the current average width of most roads in the southern border—basically slightly narrowed,” Rebecca continued. When passing Nicholas Egg, he gestured while saying, "The widest point is no more than 1.8 meters..."

Gao Wenxin said that it was indeed the case - 1.8 meters, this is the largest double carriage in the world. The width of a horse, strictly speaking, is the maximum width of two horses plus a set of harness. Although the roads built by the nobles are of various kinds, their widths are roughly similar. Except for trails and country roads, the narrowest "official" roads will not be less than this number. If it is narrower than this, a large double carriage will It will be impassable.

Cecil's road construction is based on old roads, and the personnel and materials needed for road construction also rely on horse-drawn carriages. Therefore, each lane of the newly built cement road is also affected by this number. The impact is basically the width of a large two-wheel carriage plus a "safety margin" of about one meter. On this basis, the size of the magic vehicle must also meet the requirements of being able to drive safely on such a lane. Require.

As far as Gawain knows, something similar has happened on Earth - the width of the original carriage affected the standard of the road, the standard of the road affected the size of early cars and trains, and the size of cars and trains affected The size of all transportation tools, cargo boxes and other things based on early road and railway transportation...

Two completely different worlds finally reached the same destination at this point.

Suddenly, Gawain thought of his hometown that he had been away from for countless years, but Gawain could only sigh silently, and in his sigh, his thoughts gradually began to wander.

Magic carriages are now available. This is an epoch-making means of transportation. They are of course countless times more powerful than current carriages. With these powerful and tireless vehicles, the development of the Southern Territory will definitely move forward. A big step forward, but on their own they are still not enough.

The southern border may not be big, but it is definitely not small. The long and narrow shape of the territory makes east-west transportation particularly difficult. Currently, in order to build four new industrial cities on the "cross axis", Gao Wen needs to deploy massive materials and personnel from various parts of the southern border, including ores from the Tanzania-Cecil region, timber from the Glen region, stones and materials from the Pebo region. Magical materials, as well as the huge number of immigrants brought about by the population relocation project, all of these currently basically rely on white water.It is carried by several river channels centered on the river. However, river transportation has natural limitations after all. As the scale of several cities becomes larger and larger, especially the "cross axis" begins to extend in the east and west directions, some are far away from the river channels. Sooner or later, the origin of raw materials will be on the right track, and Gao Wen must find a way to find a more efficient means of transportation.

The advantage of magic vehicles lies in their flexibility and convenience. They are quite useful when dealing with the transportation of short-distance and small quantities of goods. However, their power will definitely be stretched when dealing with the development pressure of the entire Southern Territory.

Of course, people in this world and this era probably don’t think so, because the magic car is already the most advanced and powerful means of transportation they have ever seen. However, Gawain has seen more powerful vehicles than the magic car. Cars are something even better - those kings of land transportation that run on rails, can transport tens of thousands of tons of cargo at a time, and are as powerful as the blood vessels of industrial society.

Train.

Compared with that thing, the transportation capacity of the magic vehicle in front of us will naturally pale in comparison.

In the final analysis, the magic vehicle is not entirely designed to solve the transportation problem in the southern border - it is just a supplement in this regard. Its real meaning is to start a subsequent major revolution in transportation. It is to replace traditional horse-drawn carriages, to manufacture agricultural machinery, to manufacture engineering machinery, and even to prepare for military chariots.

Gowen knew that the birth of trains on the earth was far earlier than practical cars powered by internal combustion engines (not counting the early experimental locomotives powered by steam engines). This is Because the technical starting point of the "silly, big, black and thick" steam engines used by trains on Earth is far lower than that of sophisticated, compact, and efficient internal combustion engines. At the same time, the various front-end technologies used in automobiles (tires, batteries, spark plugs, etc.) It has also gone through a relatively long period of development, all of which are determined by objective historical facts. However, in this world, the development rules of many things are destined to be different from those on Earth, and the order of many things is naturally different.

The steam engine could not be realized, but the rotor-type magic engine was born. A high-efficiency power source similar to an "internal combustion engine" or an "electric motor" appeared in the world. At the same time, due to The world's own technological accumulation and Gawain's conscious guidance have made the "Magic Car", a sophisticated and complex vehicle, appear in this world earlier than trains, but this does not mean that this world does not need trains.

In fact, the Southern Territory needs it now, and it also has the technical foundation to develop it.

After living here for so long, Gawain has already learned to abandon some old views and realize the true situation hidden under the dark and ignorant appearance of this special era - the technological reserves of this world are far beyond the It is richer than he imagined, and the starting point of technology is much higher than what he saw. However, these technologies are concentrated in the hands of a few people, or scattered in fragments in the hands of scattered intellectuals (this kind of "over-technical" Concentration” and “Technological Fragmentation”"The phenomenon was the result of the collapse of the ancient Gondor Empire), which caused the society here to seem far backward than its true technological height.

After thinking about this, Cecil's The speed of technology research and development is naturally not difficult to understand: many times, those technologies are not developed from scratch at all, but are just mass-producing existing "upper-level" technologies, or re-engineering broken technologies. To be honest, if a copy of Gawain's "scientific thought" were sent to a country with a strong foundation and abundant talents like Typhon, their development speed would only be faster than that of Cecil.

But even so, Gawain will still recognize and respect the talents and efforts of those researchers, and maintain the highest degree of trust in his research department. He knows that science is progressive—— As the broken pieces of technology continue to be reconstructed, and as the theories in the field of magic technology become more and more perfect, sooner or later, this land will get rid of the shadow of the ancient Gondor Empire and step into the great magisters of the Spark Age. An area that has never been touched before.

"Ancestor? Ancestor? "

Rebecca's voice suddenly came from the side, awakening Gawain from his thoughts.

"What are you thinking about? "

Rebecca came close to Gawain, with a look of concern and curiosity on her face.

Gawain realized that he had thought too much and too far just now, and he was already a little distracted. , so he quickly coughed twice to adjust his expression, and then said while thinking: "Rebecca, do you know, in fact, the magic vehicle is not the most powerful land transportation..."

Rebecca blinked: "Are you talking about...a larger magic vehicle? ! Use multiple rows of linked engines to tow a larger body? "

"...It's not the same. It is indeed a larger car, but its operating mechanism is completely different from the magic car," Gawain organized easy-to-understand words to describe That thing that has never appeared in this world, "You can imagine such a car: it has a 'magic engine' that is more than ten times, dozens of times, maybe even hundreds of times more powerful than the magic vehicle. This The magic engine pulled a dozen carriages running across the land..."

Rebecca's eyes widened: "How is that possible! The ground will collapse! And what about turning? What to do if you encounter bumps? "

"So it needs to run on tracks - the so-called tracks are grooves or guide rails made of steel laid on the ground. They can disperse the pressure caused by heavy carriages and reduce the friction of metal wheels. wear and improve train stability..."