That’s right, it’s a railway that is completely paved with rails and can run trains! This was not because Li Qingsong had nothing to do, but because he had sufficient and necessary reasons. The reason is simple. This steel plant can produce about 270 tons of steel every day, which means at least 1,000 tons of iron ore is needed every day. This is just steel. The steel plant must also be equipped with a corresponding power plant. There is no coal on Luoshen, and Thorin's stuff cannot be used to make steel, so all steelmaking activities must be replaced by electricity. This means that it is bound to be a big power consumer. It has been calculated that Li Qingsong consumes about 600 kilowatt-hours of electricity for every ton of steel produced. 270 tons per day is 162,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity! Its power consumption could even exceed that of the entire current main base. Such a huge amount of electricity consumption cannot be obtained from the existing power grid. If the load fluctuates too much, the power grid will collapse.
A dedicated power plant must be built to power it. At present, for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated, Li Qingsong needs to consume kilograms of tholin ore and kilograms of oxygen ore, which adds up to kilograms. 162,000 kWh of electricity requires about 300 tons of tholin ore and oxygen ore! Together with iron ore, on average at least 1,300 tons of materials need to be supplied to steel mills and power plants every day. If we use tractors to transport so many supplies, even if we put all the existing tractors into use, they still will not be enough. Besides, even if there are enough tractors, there will need to be enough drivers to operate them, which will be another expense for Li Qingsong. After much thought, Li Qingsong decided to go all out and build a special railway. This railway will not only connect the No. 1 iron mine, but also several nearby oxygen mines, and can even extend to several surrounding Tolin enrichment points, copper mines and aluminum mines. By then, just by building a few more branch lines, they can all be connected. The mass of 1,300 tons is too much for a tractor, but for a train, it can be transported in one train. A railway can run more than one train. If the scheduling is good, more than a dozen trains can run at the same time. By then, the transportation capacity of this railway will be more than just a few thousand tons. Not only can the current steel mills and power plants fully meet the demand, even if Li Qingsong builds more steel mills and power plants in the future, more gold, silver, copper and aluminum smelting plants will be able to meet the demand! This railway is imperative. Li Qingsong has completed the preliminary exploration work. The knowledge required to build a railway is sufficient by learning the basic principles from the Deep Space Spacecraft and accumulating them through the hard work and work experience of the clones. Now everything is ready, we just need to create it. The total length of this railway is 33 kilometers, passing through three hillsides and two gullies. There are a total of four stations, namely the main base starting station, the iron ore terminal station, and the intermediate oxygen mine station and Tolin station. From now on, Li Qingsong's main production force is all invested in the production of rails and connecting parts. Although the steel plant cannot operate at full capacity at the moment, its current production capacity can almost meet the needs of building a railway. 800 clones started construction at several locations simultaneously to speed up the construction progress.
One team of clones arrived at a mountain where the railway track would pass. This mountain is about 100 meters high and is just a small slope on Luoshen. The clones first used electric heating equipment to remove all solid gases on its surface, then drilled holes directly, stuffed the explosives produced by the chemical plant into it several meters deep, and detonated it directly. Along with a slight tremor of the earth, huge rocks were directly cracked and a gap was blown out in the mountain. The clones swarmed forward, each one like a strongman, moving all the huge rocks away and throwing them somewhere else. Anyway, the gravity on Luoshen is small, so it is very convenient to transport rocks. For bigger rocks, several people would work together. For even bigger rocks, steam bulldozers spewing black smoke would be used to forcibly push them away. Li Qingsong didn't have to worry about the stacking of the gravel. He didn't have to go through the trouble of pulling them away and transporting them to a specific place like he did on Earth. Anyway, no one cares about environmental protection here. Under such circumstances, the work of opening mountains and building roads proceeded smoothly and quickly. While explosives roared on this side, dozens of clones gathered in front of a ravine on the surface of Luoshen Star on the other side. The width of this canyon is about one hundred meters. If we want to bypass it, the length of the railway will need to be extended by more than ten kilometers. Li Qingsong didn't want to go through so much trouble, so he just built a bridge. Li Qingsong cannot build a modern bridge like the ones on Earth that have undergone rigorous demonstration, strict mechanical design, and use special high-performance materials. But it doesn’t matter. The gravity on Luoshen is low, so the load-bearing capacity of the same bridge on Luoshen can be increased by more than ten times. With the same load-bearing requirements, the requirements for material properties and construction technology will be reduced by more than ten times. It's just to support the train. With this weight, a simple steel frame will be enough. This is what Li Qingsong thought and did. He didn't even build steel pillars from the bottom of the canyon to support the bridge. Instead, he simply fixed some steel frames on the rock walls on both sides and supported the bridge through mechanical structure, using a structure similar to an arch bridge. This saves time and steel. After all, our own steel production capacity is not high now. As for whether the performance is up to standard and whether it can support bridges and trains, there is absolutely no problem. Even if two fully loaded trains pass through it at the same time, plus the weight of the bridge itself, the total mass will not exceed about 4,000 tons, and the weight is only a few hundred tons. After all, it is a steel structure, it is impossible that it cannot support a weight of several hundred tons. The laying of railroad tracks was even more crude. Thanks to the fact that the surface of Luoshen Star was frozen extremely solid due to the low temperature, Li Qingsong did not need to do any road hardening work except the initial leveling work. He simply laid the four rails of the two railways on the supports, fixed them, and then fixed the two rails in pairs every few dozen meters. It not only saves trouble, but also saves steel. Road guardrails are even less useful. There are no people or animals running around on Luoshen. In a construction style that was all practicality-oriented, work on bridges, railways, and mountain roads progressed rapidly.
Everything here went smoothly, and Li Qingsong devoted considerable attention to Machinery Factory No. 1. Here, Li Qingsong wants to build two locomotives. Moreover, it was no longer a steam-powered locomotive, but an electric one!
