Chapter 925 This will tire them to death
. The construction of the new guard line is relatively easy, especially the earthwork used to lay the roadbed. There are small hills everywhere around, and you can pick any of those small earth mounds nearby and flatten them.
Some supervisors took their own villages to dig soil in the surrounding areas, and then transported it to the construction site by horse-drawn carriages to lay the foundation. The soil from the drainage ditches on both sides of the roadbed can also be used to lay the foundation.
Because there are many people involved, there are 32 villages deployed in different processes. On the morning of the first day, all the people went to lay the foundation and built a two-kilometer section. This was just because they were not familiar with it at the beginning, so it seemed a bit slow.
In addition to the section of road extending from the open space in front of the locomotive factory, by the time it was dark in the evening and it was time to finish work, the entire engineering team had laid ten kilometers of roadbed.
After all, it was just a simple loess roadbed, and it was a single lane. The track width was only 75 centimeters, and the width of the sleepers was just over one meter. The roadbed below was wider on one side, so a total of two meters was enough, and there was no need to build extra width. After all, this was not a horse-drawn carriage. The train could only run along the track and could not swing back and forth.
At night, a group of tents had been set up in the wilderness next to the construction site. Some of them did not have tents, so they just piled up and laid straw mats, found a small mound and lay down, and the workers fell asleep.
Railway workers have always been the most miserable. This is just a railway on flat ground, and at most they have to sleep in the open air. If it is a railway in the mountains, digging tunnels and building bridges, it is not only bitter, but also dangerous. People may die because of something.
When the workers started work the next day, the engineering team was divided into four parts. One part continued to dig soil around, one part laid the foundation, one part tamped the ground, and the last part began to lay the rails.
There were six villages in the team that laid the rails. One village was responsible for placing the sleepers, two villages were responsible for nailing the spikes, and the remaining three villages were responsible for transporting the rails.
Because the rails were a hundred meters long and not far from the steel mill, Lin Fei asked the workers to carry the rails by manpower.
Several supervisors led the people from the three villages to the entrance of the steel mill, and when they saw the scene inside, they were stunned.
At the entrance of the steel mill, tens of thousands of rails were neatly stacked in the workshop. The steel was piled up like a hill. The iron that should have been very expensive in their impression was as worthless as the mud on the ground.
"Oh my goodness, are these all iron? Is this city the place where the Han tribe specializes in ironmaking? The black stones we dug before were used for ironmaking here?!" A teenager exclaimed in surprise.
The older worker on the side opened his mouth, not knowing what to say.
If they knew that the Han tribe had so much steel, they would never have dared to come and attack the Han tribe. If all the iron was made into weapons and armor, there would probably be more than enough for everyone in the Han tribe, right? What could they use to fight such a tribe?
If these steel were used to make farm tools, how much farmland could the Han tribe reclaim and how much food could it grow? How many people could it feed?
How could they fight a tribe that had no worries about food, could feed countless people, and could equip countless people with armor and steel knives?
Sorry, excuse me, there is no point in fighting! Even if they were all iron-headed, they probably didn't have as much iron as the Han tribe.
The factory kept sending out the noise of machines roaring, the sound of steam engines turning, the sound of orange-red ingots being squeezed, the sound of red rails being squeezed into shape, and then rolling down to the racks on the side to cool down naturally.
Looking at the rails being produced one after another, the 150 slave workers were shocked.
"Are we going to use these irons to pave the road? The Han tribe has so much iron that it can't be used up. Are we going to use it to pave the road?" Some people in the crowd couldn't help but complain.
"Okay, stop talking, line up and stand here, let's see how to get this stuff to the construction site." The foreman who led the team clapped his hands, and then directed the slaves to carry the rails.
At first, their idea was to form a pair of fifty people, put the rails on both sides, and then tie them with ropes and straddle the poles. Then fifty people lined up in a column, and everyone used the poles to carry two rails at the same time.
But when they lifted it up, they realized how hard it was. At a distance of 100 meters, there was only an average of more than one meter between each person. Two rails weighed 7,000 kilograms, and they were shared on the shoulders of these 50 people. On average, each person had to bear more than 100 kilograms of weight.
This is actually equivalent to each person carrying two baskets of food on a pole, and then lined up in a column and moved forward. Although it was more difficult, it was still possible for those who often did heavy work.
Moreover, once the rails are long enough, there will be no problem with turning, because as long as they are long enough, even rails can bend at will, so turning a corner is not a big problem.
After the first group of people carried two rails to the construction site, the second group quickly followed, and then the third group. One hundred and fifty people carried six rails to the construction site at the same time, all of them grimacing under the weight of the carrying poles.
After seeing this situation, several foremen and supervisors could not help but discuss it.
"I say, isn't it a bit too heavy to carry two poles at a time? Don't let people get tired to death."
"No, it's not that heavy actually. Even if the farmers in the village carry two baskets of grain, it's about this weight. It's just that the rails are too long and everyone must keep basically the same pace, otherwise it will be a bit difficult to walk. The weight alone is not a problem. Don't forget there are so many people!"
"No, no, no, it looks mysterious to me. It's not obvious for one or two trips, but it won't work after a long time. How many poles are we tasked to transport today?
The roadbed was paved for ten kilometers yesterday. There are twenty poles for one kilometer, and two hundred poles for ten kilometers. If they keep carrying them like this, they will be exhausted to death.
And don't forget, this is getting farther and farther. If so many people are tired to death, our punishment is a small matter, but if the progress of the project is delayed, none of us will have a good result."
"Then what do you say we should do? We can't let two of them carry one pole, right? It's such a waste of manpower, and how long will it take to carry it?" Another foreman retorted.
"In my opinion, forget about this trip. Anyway, we just need to carry it to the entrance of the locomotive factory, which is only a few hundred meters in total. The next trip, each village will carry one rail. For a hundred meters of rail, one person will carry two meters, and half of it will stand on each side. In this
way, we don't even need a shoulder pole, and we can still keep balance. After laying one kilometer, we will ask Director Lin if we can drive the train out directly and use the train to pull the rails and sleepers. We will lay and transport them forward at the same time. What do you think?
You don't really want to rely on these hundreds of people to carry thousands of pounds of rails a hundred kilometers away, do you? That would be really tiring."
Several people thought about it and nodded in agreement. This is a good idea, and it saves running back and forth. I just don't know if the sample car used for the experiment can really take on the task of transporting building materials.
The foreman and the supervisors discussed it and left the supervisor here to be responsible for the subsequent transportation of the rails. The foremen went to find Lin Fei, the person in charge of the project, who is also the director of the Power Research Institute.
On the other side, at the break of the rails at the entrance of the locomotive factory, the workers responsible for laying the sleepers were also busy. They pulled a horse-drawn carriage to pull carts of black sleepers from a nearby warehouse.
All these sleepers were transported from the shipyard in Liuyang County. The wood used was pine wood harvested from several surrounding counties. The wood was then cut into sections using the equipment in the shipyard, and then the bark was peeled off and dried. After drying, it was cut into wooden squares according to the specifications of the sleepers using a steam table saw, and finally the sleepers were uniformly heat-treated.
That is, the surface of the sleepers was burned black to the extent of carbonization. Basically, it was almost done by just roasting it with fire. After this treatment, the sleepers are not easy to mold and deteriorate, can be anti-corrosive to a certain extent, and can prevent insect infestation.
In fact, it is best to brush the surface of the real sleepers with asphalt for anti-corrosion treatment. However, the existing asphalt in the Han tribe is extracted from the coal tar of the coking plant as a by-product. The output is not large, and now it is directly used for waterproofing of shipbuilding. There is basically no extra asphalt for the Han tribe to brush the sleepers, so they have to use the surface carbonization method for anti-corrosion treatment.
The durability of the wood after fire is still quite high, just like the wooden telephone poles on the street when I was a child, which are basically black and burned. They are exposed to the wind and rain on the roadside for decades. I dare not say how long they will last, but they are guaranteed to last for 20 to 30 years.
These sleepers with blackened surfaces are calculated according to 1.6 times the gauge. Each one is 1.2 meters long, 20 centimeters wide, and 16 centimeters high. The two ends are 10 centimeters away from the edge. Wrap them with wire twice and tighten them to prevent the sleepers from cracking due to nailing in the spikes.
When laying the sleepers, the density of the sleepers should be higher and the spacing should be smaller for long-distance routes between stations because the trains run at high speeds. One sleeper should be placed every 35 centimeters. If it is inside a station, the spacing can be expanded to 40 centimeters. Anyway, the trains have to slow down when entering the station, so it doesn’t matter if the sleepers are sparse.
If laid at this density, 1,818 sleepers are needed for each kilometer of the main line. Although the number is large, it is not difficult to lay them. There is no technical difficulty. You just need to lay them out as a whole. It’s just that loading and unloading the cars back and forth is a bit tiring.
By the time the three villages carrying the rails brought over the six rails, the people in the village responsible for laying the sleepers had already arranged the sleepers within the nearest kilometer.
(2/3)
(End of this chapter)
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