Chapter 470: Furious Construction
The length of the aerial railway is 87 kilometers.
Along the way, it connects 4 cities, 13 farms and 7 mines.
This type of railway has another huge advantage, which is that it can be built very quickly, as long as the pipes, cables, node modules, track alloy plates, and corresponding construction airships are prepared in advance.
If there is sufficient material, there will be no problem in paving hundreds of kilometers in a month.
After all, this construction plan saves on foundation laying, concrete pouring and maintenance, which are time-consuming processes.
The core factors limiting the speed of overhead railway construction are actually the production time and scale of modular components and the number of construction airships.
Currently, Meroe Air Rail Group has a total of 37 supporting factories in the South Meroe region, employs 87,000 people, and is constructing 6 airships.
After Fan Haibo introduced these situations, he suggested: "Chairman, a new node will be started today, and it will start in about 30 minutes. I wonder if you are interested in watching it."
"Oh? Sure." Li Qingye nodded.
"I'll arrange the train right away." Fan Haibo's face flushed with excitement.
Li Qingye, Ma Pel and his party passed through the factory area and came to the elevator reserved for passengers, and took the elevator directly to the top of the station.
The station is actually the entire node. Juba Station is 183 meters high and the track runs at a height of 50 meters. In the 50-meter area, there are special loading and unloading equipment for loading and unloading containers.
The passenger area is located below the freight area, where there are several suspended passenger trains produced by the Meroe Skytrain Group.
“It’s quite spacious.”
"Yes, Chairman, we use a larger gauge."
The railway pipe gauge of Zhiren Company is 2 meters. In order to ensure that the load-carrying railway has sufficient width, the width of the alloy plate below is 6 meters.
Therefore, the width of the carriages of the heavy-duty freight trains above is usually 4 to 4.2 meters.
The width of the suspended passenger train below is 6.2 meters, because the track of the suspended passenger train is essentially that layer of alloy plate.
It uses a suspended method to ensure that the train will not fall, so the passenger train carriage must be wider than 6 meters.
The station's platforms have fully sealed high-strength floor-to-ceiling windows to protect against strong winds, heavy rain and the like.
Fan Haibo arranged a special tourist sightseeing train.
"Chairman, please come this way!" Fan Haibo and several security personnel entered the carriage first.
Then Li Qingye, Sangjibada Layal, Mapel and others walked in.
Since it is a sightseeing model, this train has a two-story design and only three carriages.
The upper level of the carriage is for resting, soft sleeping, shower room and toilet, while the lower level is the sightseeing restaurant.
Fan Haibo brought Li Qingye directly to the sightseeing restaurant. The restaurant floor was made of completely transparent material. Of course, it was one-way transparent, and people from the outside could not see what was going on inside.
After a while, the train started slowly.
Compared with commuter passenger trains, sightseeing trains are slower, at about 40 to 120 kilometers per hour. If it is a pure commuter model, the speed can reach 80 to 160 kilometers.
“This train uses nuclear batteries, right?”
Fan Haibo nodded and said, "The chairman has a keen eye. In order to increase the speed of our trains, we use nuclear batteries, but not cobalt-60 nuclear batteries, but carbon-14 nuclear batteries."
Li Qingye immediately thought of the key point: "Is it gold-based electric heating material?"
"Yes, this is also thanks to the gold mine of the Chad branch."
Li Qingye had just visited the Chad branch gold mine a few days ago.
Previously, the company's geological exploration department discovered several gold mines in the volcanic area in northern Chad , with a burial depth of about 450 to 800 meters and reserves of thousands of tons.
Therefore, the Chad branch concentrated its efforts on mining one of the rich mines, and currently can produce 5 to 7 tons of gold per month.
All of this gold is used to manufacture electric heating materials. Thanks to the Chad branch, the Meroe Rail Group is able to use gold-based electric heating materials to generate electricity.
In fact, there are quite a few gold mines in Africa, especially those veins buried below 200 meters, which are basically undeveloped.
As for the super gold mine in Antarctica, Sapiens is also mining it secretly. The Antarctic branch can now produce 30 to 40 tons of gold per month.
Of course, in order to avoid sudden changes that affect the Earth's magnetic field, gold mining in Antarctica only extracts gold, and the more massive iron and nickel components are not mined on a large scale.
Although the gold reserves in Africa are not as large as those in Antarctica, they can also alleviate the company's huge demand for gold.
Trains that generate their own electricity reduce the need for specialized distribution and transmission systems.
If the traditional electrified train solution is adopted, cables must be laid along the line and a set of special power distribution equipment must be prepared.
There is a disadvantage to doing this, which is that if the transmission system fails or is attacked, it may cause the entire line to be paralyzed.
Self-sustaining electric trains do not have this disadvantage, and the powerful electrical energy of nuclear batteries can further increase the train's operating speed.
"How do you solve the problem of ineffective work during the rest period of nuclear batteries?"
"We use molten salt heat storage and inbound power transmission to solve the problem of ineffective work of nuclear batteries."
"Molten salt heat storage? Inbound power transmission? Good ideas." As soon as Li Qingye heard these two terms, he knew how they solved the problem.
Half an hour later.
The sightseeing train arrived at Quanshui Station, 87 kilometers away.
The construction site is 8.9 kilometers west of the Quanshui Station. Take the elevator to the highest floor of the Quanshui Station, which is the top of the observation tower.
In the observation room at the top of the 181-meter-high tower, there is a long-distance telescope that Fan Haibo had someone bring over, which can see what is happening 8.9 kilometers away.
"Chairman, in five minutes, the first hollow pipe of the ground pile at node 10 will be deployed."
at the same time.
A construction airship at the bottom of the stratosphere is hanging a huge pipe. Construction workers are using laser positioning equipment to slowly adjust the position of the pipeline based on the pheromones and magnetic field anchor points marked by the location workers.
In fact, the direction only needs to be within a few dozen meters, but the construction workers who strive for perfection still adjust it very carefully.
He didn't press the release switch until he had aimed very accurately.
In an instant , the clamps securing the pipeline popped open, and the huge pipeline weighing 8,400 tons descended faster and faster. Even the strong winds in the troposphere could not change the direction of the pipeline.
A whistling sound came from a distance.
Li Qingye looked at the picture taken by the drone, then turned his head and looked at the node through the telescope.
Next second.
Boom! Under the acceleration of gravity, the weight instantly penetrated into the fragile stratum. The pipe was inserted about 240 meters underground, and a small shock wave was generated.
In the next half hour, the remaining three ground pile pipes were also dropped one after another and inserted very accurately into the four predetermined positions of the nodes.
Bang bang bang!
Li Qingye clapped his hands: "Not bad, it seems that your technology is worth further promotion."
"It is our honor to be recognized by the chairman." Fan Haibo was very happy.
After all, gaining Li Qingye's approval means that the overhead railway of the Meroe Skytrain Group will be supported by the head office instead of relying solely on the Meroe branch.
On the return sightseeing train, Li Qingye had a meal of the local specialty, beef and spinach stewed with peanuts, and sorghum pancakes, and ended his inspection in Zhudan.
Next stop, Darfur.
