Warlord: King of All Clans

The steam engine research team, consisting of forty human craftsmen and sixty ogre craftsmen, began to power the steam locomotive after some inspection.

The exquisite and delicious high-quality fuel stone was thrown into the boiler, and immediately a raging flame emerged, and then thick smoke began to emerge from the chimney in front.

As the heat continued, the body of the steam locomotive began to vibrate, and the stabilizing magic circle engraved on the surface responded by emitting a faint ochre light, which quickly offset the vibration.

During this time, a large group of dogs climbed onto the locomotive, holding wrenches and hammers in their hands, shouting excitedly.

“Beep! Beep!”

"Dinosaur carrying wolf! Dinosaur carrying wolf!"

Of course, these are all sounds they simulated with their mouths. The steam locomotive does not start that fast.

The human craftsmen scolded them and tried to pull them down.

This time, Fesa stood on the side of the human race, but Freya stood on the side of the kobolds, and the two sides almost got into a fight.

After a long while, most of the kobolds were driven off the train, and the preparation of the steam locomotive was just completed.

Fraser climbed onto the cab himself and pulled the control switch. The hot steam from the boiler rushed into the cylinder, driving the piston, converting it into mechanical energy and transmitting it to the driving wheel below, finally pulling the entire steam locomotive forward.

The heavy steam locomotive moved at a snail's pace, slowly accelerating along the track.

Several human craftsmen followed on horseback, changing their pace from pacing to a jog.

This steam locomotive experiment also attracted a lot of onlookers, who cheered loudly when they saw that this huge machine could move forward spontaneously without being pulled by horses.

But apart from a few people like Leo, few people know what it means.

As for Norin, she was used to seeing the world in the imperial capital and had even ridden on an alchemical airship flying in the sky. Such alchemical machinery did not shock her.

However, Noreen was particularly moved by the fact that such a product could appear in the North, which has always represented barbarism and backwardness.

She watched the steam locomotive going farther and farther, and began to think about Leo's future, and advised, "Leo, it must be very expensive to develop a steam locomotive like this, right?"

"Hewan has limited population and financial resources now, so it's a bit out of date to study these things. The situation is urgent now, and there may be foreign invasions at any time. It's better to train more soldiers and produce muskets and artillery."

Leo knew that Noreen meant well. After all, in her eyes, the steam locomotive was bulky and slow, but she didn't know that it would replace thousands of draft horses in the future.

Just like the dwarven musket in the Imperial Capital Museum, not many people could imagine that once it breaks through a certain critical value, it will be able to dominate the mortal army.

So Leo just nodded, "I'll take care of it."

When the steam locomotive left the sight, entered the western forest, and headed towards the Kobold Valley, Leo thought of something, "Master Vader, is the braking system of the steam locomotive also completed? This is a big project, and you are progressing very quickly."

Wade's face changed instantly. "Now we still rely mainly on closing the boiler valve to slow down... As for braking... it can be a little, but not much. It should... probably... be useful, right?"

But the problem they were worried about did not occur, and news soon came from the front.

This successfully running steam locomotive was too heavy and it crushed the railroad sleepers halfway, causing it to overturn. The dog-headed man on the train reacted quickly and jumped out of the train in time to escape.

Freya flew back staggeringly carrying the first train driver, Fesha.

Her little yellow duck's wings have grown bigger and can even lift Fraser, who weighs over 100 pounds, to fly at low altitude.

The two people who survived the disaster were not afraid at all and said in unison: "It's fun! It's really fun!"

Leo held his forehead with his hand. "For the next steam locomotive, please think carefully before experimenting. Research results are important, but safety is also important."

Master Vader bowed his head quickly, "Yes, Lord."

After the steam locomotive experiment was successful, there were secondary and tertiary optimizations until its performance exceeded that of the Hewan rail carriage.

There is still a long time before it is put into use, but Leo is not in a hurry. Now whether it is coal mining, coke ironmaking or laying of railroad tracks, it all takes time to operate.

After watching the steam locomotive experiment, Leo left the river bend peninsula and went to inspect the blast furnace ironworks downstream.

The fuel stones imported from the west have been successfully used to produce coke. Valeri personally tested them with a small iron furnace and confirmed that they would not cause a decline in the quality of River Bay steel.

The first batch of coke will be put into use this month, and Leo will also go to supervise it, or just watch the fun.

A new ironworks was built last year on the Hewan Avenue between Hewan Peninsula and Hekou Town. However, the blast furnace that has been built is still the previous small charcoal blast furnace.

This is already the top level of iron smelting technology in the North. Now Hewan has simply replaced the charcoal fuel with coke.

And even taller coke blast furnaces are under construction.

This is a building that exceeds the level of Hewan craftsmen, and it is still being built as we go along. Whether it can be successfully operated depends on its actual use.

Valeri was also at the ironworks, and when he saw Leo, he pointed toward the blast furnace in front.

As Leo approached, scalding heat hit him in the face. The small blast furnace in front was opening, and flowing orange-red molten iron flowed along the ridges into another furnace.

Valeri said excitedly: "This is a rotary refining furnace, a new technology of the Imperial Capital Alchemy Workshop. With it, blacksmiths no longer have to process pig iron ingots, but can directly use wrought iron ingots."

"If the furnace workers have good skills, they can directly produce steel ingots or cast ironware."

In the past, the small blast furnace in the river bend could only produce iron ingots, which needed to be refined and processed by blacksmiths in small crucibles before they could become wrought iron and steel.

This is also the current situation of 90% of the iron smelting industry in the Orlantis Empire. Only the magic alchemy workshops in several large cities in the southern border have the ability to directly produce wrought iron ingots and steel ingots.

Now Hewan has also mastered this technology. The liquid pig iron just out of the furnace only needs to pass through the rotary refining furnace once to become high-quality wrought iron and soft steel, which directly saves a lot of manpower and fuel.

Leo nodded, "Very good."

He didn't need to say that these technologies and even the original equipment were all transported back from the imperial capital with great effort.

Valeri's work focuses on civilian industry, and his understanding of the military industry is not as good as Leo's.

What he didn't know was that the rotary refining furnace did more than just save one step in the iron smelting process.

The current cannons in Hewan are mainly made of copper.

Not to mention the Gnoll Centurion, there is almost no threshold for city-level forces, and they can build it with anything.

The Ten Thousand Man Cannon requires the intervention of a super wizard, and there is no need for it at the moment.

The regular thousand-man cannons, that is, twelve-pound cannons, are basically bronze and brass cannons.

With the current copper mine production in Hewan, an average of two thousand-man-long guns can be produced per month.

The gunners in the artillery workshop naturally also thought about casting cannons with pig iron.

However, the pig iron produced in Hewan before was of low quality. After being cast into cannons, it was extremely difficult to process and could hardly be put on a boring machine. Moreover, its performance was also unstable.

In order to prevent the barrel from exploding, the caliber of a 3,000-jin cast iron cannon must match that of a 1,500-jin brass cannon.

However, wrought iron and steel with better quality require small crucibles and hammers from blacksmiths and can never be produced on a large scale.

Now that we have a rotary refining furnace, the quality of molten iron has been improved again. It can be used in conjunction with a steam-powered gun barrel lathe to cast higher quality wrought iron gun barrels in one piece, greatly reducing the weight of the artillery and allowing the Hewan artillery to transform from a copper cannon to an iron cannon.

Compared with the expensive brass cannon, once the wrought iron cannon is successfully developed, even if five or ten cannons are produced in a month, it will not affect the development of Hewan.