That's right, it's a railway with tracks laid out for trains!
This wasn't Tom doing it for no reason; there were very sufficient and necessary reasons.
The reason is simple: this Steel Plant can produce about 270 tons of steel daily, which means it needs at least 1,000 tons of iron ore daily.
And this is just for steel; the Steel Plant also needs a corresponding power plant.
There is no coal on Loshen Star, and tolin cannot be used for steelmaking, so all steelmaking activities must use electricity.
This means it is bound to be a major power consumer.
According to calculations, Tom consumes about 600 kilowatt-hours of electricity for every ton of steel produced.
270 tons a day means 162,000 kilowatt-hours!
Its power consumption can even exceed that of the entire Main Base currently.
Such a massive amount of electricity cannot be drawn from the existing power grid; the load fluctuation would be too great, and the grid would collapse.
A dedicated power plant must be built to supply it with electricity.
At this stage, for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated, Tom needs to consume 1.2 kilograms of thorin ore and 0.5 kilograms of oxygen ore, totaling 1.7 kilograms.
162,000 kilowatt-hours would require approximately 300 tons of thorin ore and oxygen ore!
Adding that to the iron ore, an average of at least 1,300 tons of materials needs to be supplied to the Steel Plant and power plant daily.
If such a large amount of materials were transported by tractors, even if all existing tractors were used, it would not be enough.
Furthermore, even if there were enough tractors, there would need to be enough drivers to operate them, which would be another expense for Tom.
After much thought, Tom decided to go all out and simply build a dedicated railway.
This railway would not only connect to the No. 1 Iron Mine but also to several nearby oxygen ore sites, and could even extend to several surrounding tolin rich areas, copper mines, and aluminum mines; then, with just a few more branch lines, they could all be connected.
While 1,300 tons is too much for tractors, for a train, a single train could transport it.
More than one train can run on a single railway. With good dispatching, a dozen trains could run simultaneously. By then, the railway's capacity would be far more than a mere few thousand tons.
Not only can the current Steel Plant and power plant fully meet demand, but even if Tom builds more Steel Plants, power plants, and more gold, silver, copper, and aluminum smelting factories in the future, the demand can still be met!
This railway is imperative.
Tom has already completed the preliminary survey work.
The knowledge required to build a railway, acquired by learning basic principles from the Deep Space Spaceship and accumulated through the diligent labor and work experience of the Clones, is also entirely sufficient.
Everything is ready now; all that's left is to build it.
The total length of this railway is 33 kilometers, passing through 3 hills and two gullies, with a total of 4 stations: the Main Base starting station, the Iron Mine terminal station, and the intermediate oxygen ore Station and tolin Station.
From now on, Tom's main production forces are all dedicated to the production of steel rails and connectors.
Although the Steel Plant cannot operate at full capacity currently, its present production capacity is roughly sufficient to meet the needs for building a railway.
800 Clones are working on multiple fronts, starting construction simultaneously from several locations to accelerate progress.
One team of Clones arrived before a mountain that the railway was to pass through.
This mountain is about 100 meters high, considered just a small hill on Loshen Star.
The Clones first used electric heating equipment to clear various solid gases from its surface, then drilled holes directly, stuffing explosives produced by the chemical plant several meters deep inside, and detonated them directly.
Accompanied by a slight tremor of the earth, huge rocks were directly fractured, and a gap was blasted into the mountain.
The Clones swarmed forward, each like a strongman, moving all those huge rocks away and throwing them elsewhere.
Anyway, gravity is low on Loshen Star, so moving rocks is very convenient.
Larger rocks were moved by several people working together. Even larger ones would be handled by steam bulldozers spewing black smoke, forcibly pushing them away.
Tom does not need to consider the problem of stacking these gravel; he does not need to go to the trouble of hauling them away to specific places as one would on Earth.
Anyway, no one here cares about environmental protection.
Under these circumstances, the work of cutting through mountains and building roads proceeded very smoothly and quickly.
While explosives roared here, on the other side, dozens of Clones gathered before a gully on Loshen Star's surface.
This gully is about a hundred meters wide; if the railway were to bypass it, its length would need to be extended by a full dozen kilometers.
Tom did not want such trouble, so he simply built a bridge.
Tom cannot build a modern bridge like those on Earth, which undergo rigorous argumentation, precise mechanical design, and use specialized high-performance materials.
But that's okay; gravity is low on Loshen Star, so the load capacity of an identical bridge on Loshen Star can increase by more than ten times out of thin air.
The same load requirements also mean that the demands on material performance and construction technology will be reduced by more than ten times out of thin air.
To support a train, this weight is easily handled by simply constructing a steel frame.
Tom thought so, and he acted accordingly.
He did not even build steel columns from the bottom of the gully to support the bridge but merely fixed some steel frames from the rock walls on both sides, using a mechanical structure similar to an arch bridge to support this bridge.
This saves more time and more steel. After all, his current steel production capacity is not high.
As for whether the performance is up to standard and whether it can support the bridge and trains, that is absolutely no problem.
Even if two fully loaded trains pass simultaneously, plus the bridge's self-weight, the total mass would be at most about 4,000 tons, with the weight being only a few hundred tons. After all, it is a steel structure; it is impossible for it not to support even a few hundred tons of weight.
Track laying is even simpler and more direct.
Thanks to Loshen Star's surface being extremely solid due to low temperatures, Tom does not need to do any road hardening work beyond the initial leveling.
He simply lays the four rails of the two railways on supports, fixes them, and then every few tens of meters, fixes the two rails together.
This is not only convenient but also saves steel.
Road barriers are even less necessary. There are no people or animals running around on Loshen Star.
In a construction style where everything is guided by practicality, the work on bridges, tracks, and cutting through mountains progressed rapidly.
While progress was smooth here, a considerable portion of Tom's attention was focused on the No. 1 Machinery Plant.
Here, Tom is going to build two locomotives.
And, they will no longer be steam-powered engines, but electrified ones!