Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 390: North-South Connection

At the foot of Jackdaw Ridge, there is a valley less than a mile away from the underground base on the south slope.

The ground that was originally covered with dense vegetation and rugged rocks has been completely cleared, and countless gravel and cement mortar have been evenly paved to form a wide road leading straight to the frontier area at the foot of the mountain.

At the end of this road extending towards the mountains, there are two huge caves side by side with a diameter of ten meters, which are obviously man-made.

Walking into the cave, you don't immediately fall into darkness. On the smooth and flat ceiling of the cave, there is a huge lighting magic stone installed every few meters. Metal energy pipes as thick as fingers are laid all along the ceiling, evenly connecting all the magic stones and continuously providing them with sufficient lighting energy.

This is the tunnel project that Harvey ordered to be built after a long time - it directly penetrates the Jackdaw Ridge Mountains and connects the Pioneer Territory and Jackdaw Town from north to south.

The entire mountain tunnel is about 3,000 meters long. The living shield machine took a full month to dig day and night while dragging the energy-gathering array, and it was only a week ago that it was finally opened.

All reinforcement construction and auxiliary repairs in the tunnel are carried out by hundreds of flexible climbing working multi-legged alchemists. This new type of alchemist is also an improvement and upgrade of the previous wolf spider beast. When dealing with dangerous work scenes such as high altitude and underground, its work efficiency is very significant.

After all, in an era with such backward construction technology, it is impossible for Harvey to dig out several straight and regular multi-lane modern traffic tunnels like in the world he lived in in his previous life.

The Ministry of Construction strictly followed Harvey's instructions, using miniature wolf spiders to enter the interior of Jackdaw Ridge through the cracks in the mountain, discovered several natural caves in the mountain, and then used a living shield machine to carefully connect and open them up, resulting in the winding "mountain tunnel" in front of us.

This alone has been called an incredible "miracle" by the people of the territory.

With the successful completion of this amazing project, the Ministry of Construction now has detailed data for calculation and reference for subsequent tunnel excavation work in the eastern basin, and its construction experience has also been enriched.

……

"Sir, I still don't understand." Construction Minister Haru, still looking dusty and dusty, stood shoulder to shoulder with Harvey at the cave entrance. "Why dig two parallel mountain tunnels, the dimensions of which are exactly the same?"

Harvey chuckled and explained, "What's so hard to understand? It's just different lanes."

"Different lanes?" Haru paused, muttering to himself, "Aren't the War Beast and the Magic Vehicle the only vehicles capable of traversing such a long mountain tunnel? Do they really have to take separate lanes?"

Captain Tommy came over and jokingly replied, "Perhaps one path is specifically for alchemical vehicles, and the other is for people to walk?"

"Walking? My goodness, this tunnel is a good five or six miles long..." A construction team leader who had just arrived to report to Harvey wiped the dust off his face and frowned. "Although it's a hundred times easier than crossing Jackdaw Ridge, it's still not easy to get through on foot. At least we'll need to ride a horse or drive a car..."

Harvey stood aside, smiling silently, waiting for the others to gather and discuss, speculating on the specific differences and functions of the two parallel tunnels. Two large alchemical camels slowly approached the construction site. The person in charge of the industrial park stepped out, approached Harvey, and bowed. "Lord, the first batch of railroad sample profiles has arrived. We can arrange for trial installation now!"

Harvey nodded, and a group of workers in gray uniforms immediately came forward and carefully lifted and stacked the piles of long metal objects pulled by the camels onto the ground.

"Mine cart tracks?" Haru immediately recognized the pile of thick iron bars before him. "Sir, you're planning to lay mine cart tracks in the tunnel? This...there aren't any mineral veins found in this mountain?"

Before Harvey could patiently explain, the experienced construction minister immediately discovered that the specifications and dimensions of this batch of mine car rails were obviously wrong, and the material was not like the mine car rails in the mine, which were wooden rails wrapped with iron sheets.

"Pure steel rails!"

No wonder a zipline is needed for lifting and unloading... Haru felt that the lord's "wasteful behavior" was simply unbelievable. If so much refined steel was used to cast weapons and alchemical beast carriers, who knows how many times the output could be increased. But now they are inexplicably turned into tracks of unknown use. Who wouldn't criticize it as a waste of money?

"The Ministry of Construction will first cooperate with the Ministry of Industry to complete the laying of approximately 500 meters of track," Harvey ordered bluntly, not intending to elaborate. "With the cooperation of the alchemy beasts, I believe you can complete it within a week at the earliest. Then, we can begin testing the track's stability and load-bearing capacity."

The Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Industry looked at each other, their expressions slightly bewildered - when it came to some of Harvey's magical inventions, the entire pioneering territory's huge production management departments had no way of figuring out the specific ins and outs.

Although they were already accustomed to the Lord's extraordinary methods, the thought of using refined steel to build tracks in a mountain tunnel still made the two department heads feel uneasy. How was this different from paving a road with real gold and silver? If the other production departments, which were always short of steel raw materials, knew about this, they would be beaten to death as "spendthrifts."

……

In fact, only the frontier territory of the wizard lord Harvey can afford the luxury of paving roads with fine steel rails.

Since the technology of blast furnace cast iron and steelmaking has been thoroughly popularized, the steel manufacturing industry, the cornerstone of the entire pioneer territory's industrial development, has finally completely broken away from the primitive workshop hammering forging. Coupled with the continuous output of high-quality iron ore in the territory's mining areas, the steel production of the entire pioneer territory has reached a terrifying level - the amount of steel produced in a month is several times more than the total amount of all cities in the central part of the entire southern continent.

But in Harvey's view, this is all natural - isn't it normal for the industrialized production concepts and technologies he brought from his previous life to surpass those handmade weapons workshops owned by nobles and princes?
As for the tracks that need to be laid in the tunnel for load-bearing tests, they are also advance preparations to verify Harvey's subsequent series of ideas.

The benefits and convenience gained from simply drilling a hole through the mountain to achieve north-south connectivity are not that great.

What Harvey really wants to achieve is to connect Grizzlie Castle, Jackdaw Town, Frontier Territory, and then to the east bank of the Ice River... and finally directly to the eastern basin that is yet to be developed, and connect the entire line with train tracks to form a complete railway transportation line!

(End of this chapter)