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To expedite the various projects in the Design Bureau of Graycastle, Roland adjusted his schedule and decided to have a nap for two to three hours every day after lunch. Therefore, he now entered the Dream World more frequently.
As a consequence, a group of God’s Punishment Warriors started to appear in the afternoon in the Castle District, which attracted a lot of onlookers.
With the help of the Design Bureau of Graycastle, his industrial projects went pretty well. By the last week of fall, the design of the tractor had been completed.
Before then, Anna was solely responsible for the manufacture and testing of all the projects in Neverwinter. Then, the plant took over the parts production and the assembly of the final models. The whole process was not only time-consuming process but sometimes it involved a lot of unnecessary work as well.
As Anna’s Blackfire worked far better than machine tools, workers in the plant, sometimes, could not always produce the parts created by Anna. A machine could produce thousands of parts at a time. However, it took a considerable amount of time to figure out which parts should be assigned to the plants and which to Anna for further processing. The plant could only mass produce the machines after a completed model was available.
In fact, this was the exact problem during the production process of the second generation steam engine. The pressure control valve looked pretty simple, but when it came to mass production, few were fit for its intended use. Because of the high defective rate, they had to start the production all over again, which thus resulted in a huge delay of more than half a month before a final product was successfully made.
But the Design Bureau of Graycastle in the Dream World had helped Anna finish all the preliminary work, from testing all the way to the design of the assembly line. They also determined whether ordinary machineries would be capable of producing certain parts. Given that, once Roland drafted the plan, the Ministry of Industry could immediately start on the production, which largely shortened the production process and reduced the cost.
Roland named this farming machine, which he had put great faith in, the
Harvest
.
Its five pairs of road wheels would run on Graycastle’s soil.
Nevertheless, Master Xie still had a lot to do. The current
Harvest
was nothing but a basic frame that could only serve as a tractor for farming operation. There was still a long way to go before it transformed into a war machine with five pairs of road wheels.
Roland hoped that this machine could meet all the army’s needs.
As for the telegraph machine, Qingqing soon recruited some workers, including fresh graduates and amateur radio technicians. But Roland had a hard time reading the circuit diagram, so he ordered the workers to change the diagram into an actual design plan. Even so, he was still quite slow at understanding it. Therefore, he managed to memorize the design and decided to study it with Anna later.
Apart from these two major projects, they had also made great progress in other war preparation projects in Neverwinter.
The first project was the road construction that connected the south and the north.
According to the letter from Horford Quinn to him, the Kingdom of Dawn had hired nearly 1,000 workers and built several plants to produce cement in two border cities. These plants produced hundreds of tons of cement every day for the road construction. The construction of the road between the Windswept Ridge and the Sparkling River was almost completed, and they had commenced to build the section around the Cage Mountain area. It was estimated that everything would be done within half a month.
Even with Lotus and Molly’s help, Roland had to admit that the Quinn Family was pretty efficient. Apparently, they had put a lot of efforts into it. As the road in the Eastern Region along the Redwater River directly led to the City of Evernight, they were now only one step away from transporting supplies to the front.
Also, the supplementary project, the
Hump
the steam-powered wheeled truck finally came into use.
The truck had a classic cab forward design, equipped with an engine and six wheels. Apart from a long nose (to accommodate a huge water tank) at the front, it was quite similar to a modern truck. It weighed around 10 tons, with a loading capacity of six tons. The truck could run on a hard-surfaced concrete road at a rate of 40 kilometers per hour for about 300 kilometers.
When necessary, the driver could fill the tank with rain, well water and even urine to increase the speed. Even if there was no water supply, the truck could still function pretty well between cities and rivers.
Unlike the armored train, each truck required at least two drivers, which meant that even if Neverwinter could produce a great number of trucks, there would not be enough people to operate them. Fortunately, they simply needed to found a driving school and train people to drive the trucks. There were no traffic rules whatsoever in this world, so the only task for the drivers would be getting the vehicle moving.
The last project was storage batteries.
Although this project was less technologically demanding, it was as important as the other ones.
Storage batteries could, for instance, power the taillights and headlights of the truck, which were also the only electric devices on the
Hump
. With lights, the truck could work day and night.
Electricity could also power up the biplanes and save the ground staff a lot of time. More importantly, if the engine of the plane was seized in the air, pilots could restart the plane again and thereby preserve the stability of the aircrafts.
The numerous immigrants recently relocating to Neverwinter further sped up and took the industrialization process in Neverwinter to a new level.
But Roland also understood that such rapid progress was not only attributed to the increase in the population. Had they still manufactured products in traditional workshops, it would have taken several years, let alone a few months, to train a layman into a proficient worker. However, in a modern plant, experienced workers would voluntarily teach new ones, as they relied on their apprentices to get promoted or a raise. They were always eager to teach everything they knew.
It only took a person one to two weeks to learn the basic machinery operation. Even if this person was illiterate, he could still imitate the steps and thus process parts fit for use.
The new production system and the implementation of universal education, as well as continuous research and development would all further expedite the industrialization in the urban area in the future.
Yet Roland had some bad news too.
Iron Axe reported that the First Army at the front felt it increasingly hard to cope with the demons, as the Red Mist had spread to the Cage Mountain area. Some people even claimed that Devilbeasts were seen in the Kingdom of Dawn.
Back in the battle on the Fertile Plains, Roland had noticed that the demons could run thousands of miles to pursue their enemies. Even a few Mad Demons could cause substantial damage to the rear.
Now, the few Devilbeasts seen in the sky might be very likely the demons’ scouts.
The First Army must send an equal force to the sky to suppress the assault.
Roland sighed quietly. Perhaps, it was time to dispatch the Witch Union and the Aerial Knights.
