vrcanaries Chapter 85 Laying the Railway
Chapter 85 Laying the Railway
"Clang..."
A heavy gear covered in reddish-brown rust was slammed onto the wooden table with a dull thud.
Elliott wiped his hands with a rag, his face terribly grim.
"This is terrible."
He pointed to the machines in the corner whose dust covers had just been removed, "These people have no idea what mechanical maintenance is. The moisture in the sewers is too great; the core drive shafts and bases of the machines are all rusted. If you force them to be powered on, you'll only turn all the parts inside into scrap metal."
Lynn glanced at the cheap daggers the thugs had left on the ground: "Can't we just melt these weapons down and reforge them?"
"Too many impurities, the carbon content is far below industrial standards," Elliott said irritably. "Blueprints alone are useless. To restart the production line, we need to remanufacture a batch of high-strength drive shafts and load-bearing bases. What we lack now isn't technology, it's high-quality iron ore! Melting these broken short knives won't even provide enough for a single machine tool frame!"
Make bricks without straw.
The entire abandoned city has been mined by the natives for over a hundred years. Obtaining a large quantity of high-grade iron ore in a short period of time is virtually impossible.
Silence fell over the basement.
Just then, Lynn received a call request in his mind.
He pretended to put his finger to his ear and connect the call.
The signature loud voice of the roasted whole lamb immediately exploded in my mind, and in the background, I could even hear the frantic sound of the armored boars plowing the fields from Archer Village.
Lynn frowned at the shock and immediately squinted, lowering the volume in his mind.
"Boss! Little Snail just sent me an urgent text message via emblem, asking me to pass it on to you immediately!"
"He had someone contact you and then relay the message to me? Why didn't he contact me directly?"
"He was in a mine with a few newbies. His new account was completely cut off. Luckily, one of the newbies in the team had added me as a friend before I set off. He had someone run out and send me the message. The others are probably still exploring in the mine right now."
Lynn raised an eyebrow: "A mine? Has there been a new discovery?"
"We've struck it rich! The little snail and the newbies have discovered a huge natural cave at the end of the sewer breakwater!"
The sound of roasting the whole lamb cracked with excitement. "He asked me to tell you that the place not only has a strong wind, but also exposed mineral veins on both sides of the cliffs! High-grade ore, densely packed everywhere!"
Upon learning of the discovery of a natural mineral vein, Elliott didn't even have time to change out of his mud-stained, tattered shirt. He grabbed his engineering canvas bag and, following the newbie who had just returned to lead the way, plunged headfirst into the deeper sewers of the abandoned city.
Half an hour later.
Standing on the edge of the massive sewage breakwater, feeling the strong airflow blowing in his face, the young foreigner gasped.
However, his attention did not linger long on the bottomless, terrifying abyss; the exposed mineral veins on the rock walls on both sides of the breakwater completely captured his attention.
"Hematite! Extremely high quality!"
Elliott picked up a piece of broken rock from the ground and examined the metallic sheen on the fracture surface by the torchlight, his breathing becoming heavy.
But he soon realized a real problem.
How do we get it out?
"Carry it by hand?"
Elliott turned to look at the little snail and the newbies, only to be met with a bucket of cold water. "With the capacity of our backpacks, how many raw stones can we carry in one trip? Even if we called on everyone in Archer Village to work as laborers and transported the ore back to the surface black market on foot, we still wouldn't be able to cast the base of a single machine tool by next year!"
"Then what do you suggest?" Elliott couldn't think of a solution for the moment.
"Use local materials to build roads."
Elliott was a typical action-oriented person. After listening, he opened the engineering package and dumped several sets of scrap bearings, thick iron nails, and a roll of hemp rope that he had bought from the black market in the Pearl Harbor shipwreck area onto the ground. Then, he directed a few rookies to go back to the upper sewage pipes and dismantle those thick steel pipes that had long been abandoned and were even rusted through.
In less than two hours, he had hammered out a four-wheeled mining truck chassis with a simple differential structure.
"Finish!"
Elliott wiped the sweat from his brow and pointed to two long steel pipes on the ground. "If we use these as rails and lay them on the ground, we can create a gravity track by wedging them into the grooves that hold the wheels in place. There's a slope from here to the black market entrance, so we can easily convert it into a hand-cranked cable car line."
However, ideals are often far from reality.
When the group worked together to place the two heavy steel pipes parallel to each other on the rock strata at the edge of the breakwater, a problem arose. The ground at the entrance to the ant cave was full of uneven, native rock with varying hardness and undulating surfaces.
Elliott refused to believe it and insisted on lifting the minecart chassis onto the platform.
As soon as the wheel was put under pressure, the steel pipe on the left side, which was suspended in the air at the bottom, tilted violently upwards. With a metallic scraping sound, the mine cart chassis derailed on the spot and crashed heavily into a nearby puddle, splashing Elliott with mud and water.
"Shit! This uneven ground makes it impossible to lay hard rails!" Elliott kicked the steel pipe in frustration, making his toes ache.
Just as this mechanical expert was scratching his head and even preparing to give up on the orbital design, the newbie player in the team who had been holding a broken wooden stick and whose ID was "Let's Go See the Meteor Hammer" quietly stepped forward.
"I need to borrow some materials."
Amidst the puzzled gazes of the crowd, Meteor Hammer crouched down, pulled a piece of hemp rope from the pile of scattered parts, and tightly tied a heavy lump of scrap iron to one end of the rope, creating a primitive lead hammer.
Then, he took out a flat-bottomed glass beaker that he usually used to hold the blood-red medicine and poured half a cup of water into it.
He carried the meteor hammer to a protruding rock at the edge of the breakwater and placed the beaker of water steadily on it. He stared at the angle of the water's inclination and shook his head.
"Mechanic, your car is fine, but that's not how you build roads."
The meteor hammer looked quite professional; he pointed to the two bare, scrap steel pipes on the ground.
"Laying hard tracks directly on the original rock makes it impossible to control the stress points, and the vehicle will inevitably overturn as soon as it moves. If you want to drive wheeled heavy-duty vehicles, you must first level the surface."
Elliott was stunned: "Leveling? This is all granite, not even a single explosive charge, how are we supposed to level it?"
"Fill in the foundation." Meteor Hammer hung the plumb bob in his hand on the protrusion of the rock wall as a vertical reference, picked up a piece of white limestone from the ground, and quickly drew several equidistant cross marks on the uneven ground.
"We can't just put the pipe in directly. We have to lay a layer of gravel, or ballast, first to distribute the pressure from the minecart. Then we lay load-bearing timber on top of the gravel, and finally fix your steel pipe to the timber."
He raised his head, his gaze sweeping over the people present, and immediately assumed the role of a construction site foreman.
"Snail, you have high attack power, go chop some scrap wood and cut it into sleepers one meter apart. The rest of you, take baskets and collect rubble from the side, and fill the holes according to the lines I drew. Mechanic, you prepare some large iron nails. Once the wood is laid, you're in charge of hammering the steel pipes firmly into the wood."
It is logical, well-founded, and convincing!
"What are you all standing there for? Let's get to work!"
With a shout from the meteor hammer, the entire breakwater transformed into a bustling construction site.
Efficiency has increased exponentially.
The climbing snail, wielding its fine iron spear, cleaved the old, heavy-duty pillars brought down from the upper level into evenly spaced sleepers. The newbies transformed into ruthless transport machines, filling the hollows and crevices of the rocks with pebbles of varying sizes.
Elliott, holding a large iron hammer, aimed at the scrap steel pipe stuck in the sleeper and slammed down the long nails used for fixing it.
"clang!"
"clang!"
"clang!"
The dull, rough clanging of metal echoed continuously in the empty, deep ant hole.
The most primal, violent noises of industrial civilization, along with the intense light emitted by burning torches, spread recklessly into the depths of darkness, carried by powerful underground air currents.
The sound was so loud that it almost drowned out all the subtle noises around it.
The simple gravity track has only been laid for less than twenty meters.
Elliott, who was hammering nails, stopped what he was doing. He straightened up hesitantly and listened carefully.
In the intervals between the metallic clanging sounds, a dense rustling sound was climbing up from the endless darkness at the bottom of the abyss, getting closer and closer to the edge of the breakwater.
A nauseating, pungent smell, like fermenting rotting flesh, began to permeate the air.