Faculty of Physics, School of Metallurgy.

This is a stranger place than the hardware school, because it is full of furnaces, and various smelting tests are carried out every day, and whenever you go in, you will be hot and sweaty.

Moreover, it is quite dirty inside, and the dust formed by the handling and smelting of coal and ore cannot be swept clean, no matter how much it is cleaned.

Normally, Yang Cong rarely comes to such a place, he is not afraid of stolen goods, nor is he afraid of heat, but it is not necessary.

However, in the past few days, he has been running here every day, and even, sometimes, squatting here for a day, making himself like a coal worker, covered in black ash.

The reason why he runs here all day long is mainly because there is still a lack of something to build a steam locomotive, and if there is no such thing, even if the steam locomotive is built, I am afraid that there will be a big problem.

This thing is actually very common in later generations, and people are no longer surprised, so Yang Cong ignored its existence, but after experiencing a "rare" wind and rain, Yang Cong finally remembered the importance of this thing.

This thing is glass, if there is no glass in the carriage, when it rains, I can't imagine what the scene is inside, you can't always seal the whole carriage No, if you don't seal it, the rain will drift in, so how can you sit people?

The front of the car is even more terrible, in order to have a wide line of sight, the front of the car is impossible to seal, once it rains, the driver is drenched into the soup chicken is a trivial matter, in case people's eyes are blurred by the rain, what if the car goes into the ditch?

Therefore, this glass must be there, otherwise, the steam locomotive built will not be able to sit on people when it rains, let alone drive.

At first, he thought that after the ordinary river sand was washed, he could burn transparent glass, but as a result, it was like coffee toffee, which was very beautiful when it solidified, but it was not transparent at all.

Fortunately, some experienced craftsmen could see at a glance that he wanted to use quartz to make things.

Quartz is not very rare, and it is not difficult to find ore, and soon, Yang Cong found a pile of quartz stones and smashed them.

As a result, it is still not ideal, and the glass burned out is like milk candy, although it is a little transparent, but it is not clear what is on the other side.

What's going on here?

He and Wang Xuan convened a group of artisan children to discuss for a long time, and then they came to the conclusion that it was very likely that the temperature was not enough.

At this time, whether it is a coal fire or charcoal, the temperature that can be reached is actually limited, and many craftsmen have to manually blow air into it to achieve the required temperature when firing things.

For example, if a blacksmith wants to soften a large piece of iron, it is not enough to bury it in the burning coal pile, but also to use a blower to blow the air into the burning coal pile.

Now that the reason has been found, it is easy to do, as soon as the blower goes up, it heats the crucible of the fired glass, and sure enough, the fired glass quickly shows a transparent color, but it is not very pure, and there are many milk-like lines in it.

This naturally couldn't be difficult for Yang Cong, and he and Wang Xuan designed a super-large automatic blower.

The general blower is about two feet, and it is more difficult for a strong man to pull it up, so there is always a situation where the wind is not enough or unbalanced when people pull.

The blower they designed was directly one person high, driven by two one-foot steam engines, and the wind was strong and long-lasting, and quite balanced.

As soon as the blower was designed, the fired glass finally barely met the requirements, and then it was finally possible to build steam locomotives in batches and lay railways.

However, soon Yang Cong encountered another problem, after Hu Zongxian took office, he quickly complained to him that the materials were not enough!

The lack of material does not mean that there is no iron ore or no wood, the main problem is that these two things have to be processed into rails and sleepers before they can be used.

After Hu Zongxian became the governor of the three provinces, it was naturally very simple to gather labor, and the expropriation of land was naturally very simple, the governor personally supervised, and there were holy wills, who dared to disobey the county, the prefecture, and the prefect, that is, it was necessary for people to have people, to have land, to dig roadbeds, and to fill in stones very quickly, anyway, these are manual work, and the people are used to doing it.

However, the roadbed was dug and the stones were filled, and the problem came.

Hu Zongxian's side is mobilizing all the state capitals along the way to work hard, even if a state capital only recruits a few thousand laborers, it is tens of thousands of laborers working hard, digging the roadbed, filling in the stones, how hard it can take, tens of thousands of people at the same time, at least dozens of miles of roadbed can be built a day, the problem sleepers and railroad tracks, dozens of miles of sleepers and railroad tracks is not a little bit.

One mile is calculated according to thirty rails, ten miles is 300 rails, fifty miles is 1,500 rails, and as for sleepers, at least tens of thousands are needed!

This guy, the disciples of the Physics Academy can't make so many sleepers and railroad rails even in one day, and it takes a lot of space to build this thing, otherwise it won't be enough to put iron ore and logs alone.

In desperation, Yang Cong had to apply to Jiajing again and requisition thousands of acres of land to the west of Yuyuantan, which was specially used to hoard materials and make railroad tracks and sleepers.

However, then, there are still problems.

Yang Cong realized that it was really not ordinary to build a railway of more than 2,000 miles in two years, and he was so unprepared that he rolled up his sleeves and went up, which seemed a bit too hasty.

This land acquisition is easy to say, once the emperor decrees, whether you want to or not, you have to quickly vacate the land, this iron ore, coal and timber is also easy to say, the west of the capital is just near Xuanfu Town, the iron ore and coal mines over there are ready-made, and the people are ordered to dig and transport it, as for the timber, the Yang family still lacks this bit of wood, and it will be pulled by boat.

The main problem is still a processing problem, you have to turn iron ore and logs into rails and sleepers to use it!

Producing thousands of rails a day, what kind of concept is that, it is not enough to recruit all the blacksmiths and casters near the capital!

This rail is not the molten iron boiled into the mold poured into it, after the casting has to be smoothed out of the two sides, and the preparation of abrasives is also very laborious, a zhang long precision casting mold, the general caster can make one or two in a day.

In other words, even if all the blacksmiths and casters near the capital are recruited, they can build hundreds of rails in a day.

It is even more difficult to produce tens of thousands of sleepers a day, and there are hundreds of carpenters near the capital, pulling them all over and sawing them hard, which is also a drop in the bucket.

In these years, there is no sawing machine for sawing wood, such a large wooden square as a sleeper, only two people pull a big saw, one side and one side slowly saw, two carpenters work together, the strength of milk is used, a few sleepers can be sawed out a day is good.

That is to say, even if hundreds of carpenters are recruited, they can only sawn out more than a thousand sleepers a day, and no more will work, after all, manpower is limited, and it cannot be the same as a machine.

In a word, in a word, rushing into battle, there are many problems.

So, how do you solve so many problems?