Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 18 Railway
That’s right, it’s a railway that is completely paved with rails and can run trains!
This wasn't because Li Qingsong had nothing to do. Instead, he had a very sufficient and necessary reason.

The reason is simple. This steel plant can produce about 270 tons of steel every day, which means at least 1000 tons of iron ore is needed every day.

This is just steel. The steel plant also needs to 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 he produces.

270 tons per day is 16.2 kWh 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 1.2 kilograms of tholin ore and 0.5 kilograms of oxygen ore, which adds up to 1.7 kilograms.

16.2 kWh of electricity requires about 300 tons of tolin ore and oxygen ore!

Together with iron ore, an average of at least 1300 tons of supplies 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 will not be enough.

Besides, even if there are enough tractors, there will still need to be enough drivers to operate them, which will be another expense for Li Qingsong.

After much deliberation, Li Qingsong decided to go all out and build a railway specifically for this purpose.

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 1300 tons is too much for a tractor, but for a train, it can be transported by just one train.

A single railway line can handle more than just one train. With good scheduling, it could even handle more than a dozen trains simultaneously. By then, the railway's carrying capacity would be far 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 can 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 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. A total of four stations are set up, 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 will be invested in the production of rails and connectors.

Although the steel plant cannot produce at full capacity at the moment, its current production capacity can almost meet the needs of building a railway.

800 clones were deployed in multiple locations and construction started simultaneously to speed up the construction progress.

One of the teams of clones arrived at a mountain where the railway tracks were going to 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 a hole directly, stuffed the explosives produced by the chemical plant into it several meters deep, and detonated it directly.

With a slight tremor in the earth, the huge rocks were directly shattered, and a gap was directly blown into the mountain. The clones swarmed over, each one like a strongman, carrying away all the huge rocks and throwing them elsewhere.

Anyway, the gravity on Luoshen is small, so it is very convenient to transport rocks.

For larger rocks, several people would work together. For even larger rocks, steam bulldozers, spewing black smoke, would be used to forcibly push them away.

Li Qingsong didn't have to worry about the placement of the gravel. He didn't have to go through the trouble of pulling it away and transporting it to a specific place like he did on Earth.

Anyway, no one cares about environmental protection here.

Under such circumstances, the work of opening the mountain and building the road proceeded smoothly and quickly.

Explosives roared on this side, and on the other side, dozens of clones gathered in front of a ravine on the surface of Luoshen Star.

The canyon is about one hundred meters wide. 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 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 requirement, the requirements for material performance 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 from the rock walls on both sides and supported the bridge through mechanical structure using a structure similar to an arch bridge.

This way of building would save 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 at the same time, plus the weight of the bridge itself, the total mass will not exceed about 4000 tons, and the weight is only a few hundred tons. After all, it is a steel structure, and it is impossible that it cannot support a weight of several hundred tons.

Laying the tracks was even more crude and simple.

Thanks to the extremely solid surface of Luoshen 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.

There's no need for road guardrails. 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 the No. 1 Machinery Factory.

Here, Li Qingsong wants to build two locomotives.

Moreover, it is no longer a steam-powered locomotive, but an electric one!

(End of this chapter)