"The order from above is clear, that is, to advance from you into the mountains and set up a new settlement to take on the large number of immigrants from the East who are coming." Petrov lit a pipe and said slowly.

"In the mountains? Which side of the mountain? The mountains are full of Guarani! If you want to change me, I will definitely not go. The captain of the Mingren production team from Henan shook his head and said: "The children have been fighting with those Guarani barbarians for two years, although the damage is very small, but they are tired, and now they want their wives and children to rest on the hot kang." ”

"Our village is not the first batch." Petrov spat out a milky white smoke ring and said, "I heard that it was the Delikafont that came first." The First Bureau of Communications and Construction has already sent people to the front station, and now there are about 1,000 South African laborers who have come to build settlements along the river. ”

"Sure enough, it's along the Kamakuang River, and from here to the mountains, there are forests everywhere, and people can walk on both sides of the river." The captain of the production team said, "But haven't we explored that river?" Although the river is quite wide, only slightly larger boats can be carried during the wet season, and small flat-bottomed boats of more than ten tons can be carried on ordinary days. Moreover, the siltation in many places in the river is relatively serious, and if people are sent to clear the dredging, the amount of work will be large. ”

"No matter how big the project is, it's easier than building a road or a railway in an undeveloped forest and grassland." "Moreover, I heard that a dredger came from the south a while ago and dredged the river very efficiently. ”

In fact, as Petrov said, the Hyundai Special Shipyard began construction of a completely new design dredger not long after the construction of a new 1,150-ton steam engine sailing ship in the second half of last year. The dredger is made of new Chinese red sandalwood throughout. Fat body size. It is 42 meters long, 11 meters wide and has a draft of 1.6 meters. Use a 2 cubic meter grab bucket to dig up silt, pebbles, etc. from the bottom of the water.

The principle is to install a rotatable steam boom above the bow deck – much like the one used on the quay, and when the silt is excavated, an iron grab is lowered by hinges attached to the pulleys at the top of the boom. The grapple sinks to the bottom of the water due to its own gravity to grab the dirt. At this time, the ship's workers will start the steam winch, pull the hinges fixed to the grab, make the grab tight, and then rise out of the water.

After the grab is lifted out of the water by the steam winch, the worker who operates the steam boom will turn the steam boom into the mud tank (or accompanying mud barge) at the amidships. The sludge is dumped in and then transferred back to the excavation site for the next dredging job. The vessel has a shallow draft, high efficiency and strong adaptability, can dig more than 40 cubic meters (about 120 tons) of silt per hour, and can work 24 hours a day (without the machine breakdown), with an efficiency comparable to 2,500-3,000 river diggers.

In order to prevent accidents on the ship during the work - mainly the ship rolls over, the two sides of the ship are deliberately built into a slope shape, and the bottom iron is loaded in it to reduce the center of gravity of the ship and limit the roll of the ship to less than 5 degrees as much as possible. In this regard. The people of the East Coast have learned their lessons.

Prior to this dredger, Hyundai had built a dredger. However, the center of gravity of the ship was too high, and there was no anti-roll design, and when the grab was digging on the side of the ship, it coincided with the swell and strong winds hitting at the same time, and the result was that the ship overturned. The Ministry of Communications later spent a huge amount of money to salvage the ship, but in the end, the ship was dismantled, and the losses were heavy. Therefore, when designing the new boat, the technicians of Hyundai Factory paid special attention to the safe rocking performance of the boat, and in addition to the above measures, four 500-kilogram positioning anchors were installed on each of the four corners of the ship to further stabilize the hull.

The ship is powered by a 62.8-horsepower Popeye series steam engine, single-propeller propulsion, and the speed is 3 knots. Wei Hua, the director of the Hyundai plant, and Zhang Xiao, the chief engineer, also accompanied several officials from the Ministry of Communications to watch the dredger's work, but of course they did not sit on the dredger, named "Qingtang Jun No. 1" - they did not want to be left in the soup because the ship overturned, but sat on a 1,200-ton migrant ship "Rocket", which had just been completed.

In the second half of last year, Hyundai added a new slipway after recruiting a new group of personnel, and then began construction of a third such special ship for immigrants. It was just completed a while ago, and then it was pulled out with this dredger and taken to the lake for sea trials. Now the three slipways of the factory are basically full, except for one slipway that is being steam for a certain main warship, and the other two slipways are currently on the new 1,150-ton steam engine sailboat, which will be completed by the end of May, and then join the sequence of Blackwater's temporary dispatch fleet to the East to transport migrants.

"The speed of dredging is still very slow." Wei Hua looked at the grab of "Qingtang Army No. 1" and slowly rose out of the water under the action of the hinges, and said to Zhang Xiao who was standing beside him: "I remember that modern dredgers, with the same volume of grabs, can dig 120-150 cubic meters of silt per hour, which is much faster than this." ”

"Boss, you don't look at how powerful the diesel engines used in those ships in later generations are." Zhang Xiao whispered helplessly, "It's already very good that we can make such a high-output steam engine with this volume of cylinders, and there is really not much room for improvement, unless the safety standards are lowered, or the steel mill simply solves the material problem of the cylinder wall for us." Otherwise, this Popeye steam engine would be like this. Let's make do with it, I see that the Tang Army is not bad, it can dig forty or fifty cubic meters of silt per hour, and if it runs well, fifty or sixty is not impossible, which can top the workload of thousands of people. ”

There was a muffled "bang", and a cloud of silt fell in the mud compartment behind the bow, and there were a few small fish jumping around in the mud unwillingly. After unloading the silt, the dredging boom is rotated to the original working position under the drive of the steam engine, and then the grab bucket slowly falls into the river water by its own weight when the hinge is loosened, and the silt is grabbed again.

"The volume of the grab mud is 2 cubic meters, the volume of the stone is 1.5 cubic meters, the working radius is 9 meters, the maximum digging depth is 20 meters, the carrying capacity is 15 people, and it can resist surges with a height of no more than 1 meter." Zhang Xiao continued to explain that he didn't know how many times he had read the data when he was designing, so he naturally came up with it at his fingertips: "In three to four months, a boat can almost dredge the channel of the river from Dafengbao to the proposed new settlement upstream." This section of the downstream waterway is already wide and deep, but the workload is not large. After dredging, the water depth in the lower reaches of the Kamakuang River is less than 80 kilometers, and there is no problem with sailing during the wet season, even if it is a dry season, if it is a 72-ton inland river flat-bottomed transport ship that is currently ready to be applied in large quantities, the problem of taking the central channel should not be big. All in all, this dredger has been a great help in opening up the hinterland. ”

Zhang Xiao's words are not nonsense. According to the plan for the development of inland areas formulated by the Executive Committee, after the arrival of new immigrants, they will advance to the inland areas from the north and south. In the north, the Duck Lake basin is mainly developed into the hilly area to the west, while in the south it is mainly to cross the West Ridge and advance towards the Negro River. Expanding inland, it is naturally most convenient to set up settlements along the river, firstly because it is convenient to get water for irrigation, and secondly, because it is more efficient to transport supplies if there is a river.

Now there are many rivers that need to be dredged and widened in China, such as the Kamakuang River in front of you and the Xiaoxi River in the south; the Ping'an River, the Yakuyi River, and the Coal River in the north; the Two Lakes Canal, which connects two large lakes; the Merlin River at Port Merlin that flows into Lake Millinn, and the Chuy River near Fort Chui; The Dayu River, known as the golden waterway, and the Yi River, which is of great significance to the people on the east bank. These rivers carry a certain amount of sediment from the water that flows downstream, which makes the riverbed gradually raised, which is very unfavorable for boats. Therefore, regular dredging is very important.

But this is very unrealistic in terms of the current dire human resources of the East Coast Republic of China, and in such a situation, the dredger came into being. The boats are as efficient as thousands of river workers, and they can work at any time of the day without waiting for the dry winter to dam the river upstream. And the draft is very shallow, that is, some small streams and rivers can also be opened as long as the width is enough, which is definitely a river and port dredging tool tailored for the people on the east bank, and has immeasurable significance for domestic shipping and flood control.

"Sure enough, science and technology are the primary productive forces, especially for us, which is not bad at all." After watching it for a long time, a bureaucrat from the Ministry of Communications said with relief: "Originally, I wanted to recruit laborers from South Africa to clear the dredging, but now that I have the Qingtang Army, I don't think there is any need for this." In this case, I think that the ships that transport supplies to the upstream base can be replaced by a larger 72-ton one, which is twice as efficient as the 35-ton one. ”

Wei Hua and Zhang Xiao looked at each other and smiled, it was really not easy to satisfy these gentlemen from the Ministry of Communications. A new settlement is now being built on the upper reaches of the Camakang River, northwest of the later town of Kristal on the river, and the construction of castles, dwellings, aqueducts, etc., has been completed. After the new batch of immigrants from the East arrived, the East Coasters will move the first batch of 1,000 people to settle down and pioneer the land, and push their territory westward little by little. (To be continued......)