On the edge of the industrial zone east of Cecil City, in a research room of the Machine-Building Institute, Gawain is getting together with Rebecca and Nicholas Egg.

A round iron ball floated in the center of the room, and beside him, an intricate and delicate metal model was floating with him, which was apparently the chassis of the vehicle, and with the high-precision machining power of the Nicholas Egg, every gear and connecting rod was restored with the most accurate reproduction, and various operation demonstrations were carried out with the traction of the magnetic field.

"This is the general-purpose traction chassis after the finalization - of course, it is just a model, and how to implement it will require the efforts of technicians," a voice with a hint of metallic trills came from the Iron Ball Star Man's body, and he said as he rotated the model so that Gawain could see the details inside it, "On the basis of the last design drawing, we have readjusted the connection between the magic net unit and the power ridge, and added a layer of shock absorption, which can allow the chassis to adapt to more complex and harsh roads, This shock-absorbing structure can be dismantled, and after being removed, it can be replaced with an additional magic net unit, so that the chassis output is greater, so that it can be used as a tractor for construction machinery in relatively flat areas. ”

Gawain looked at the model presented by Nicholas Egg, listened to the other party's explanation, and nodded lightly: "...... Not bad. ”

The magic guide car was born, and the first problem it had to face was the harsh road conditions and difficult maintenance in this era.

In this era, there were no smooth and sturdy highways, and there were no service areas and garages to be found in the vast fields between cities, although Cecil's road construction work has not stopped since Rebecca tossed out the cement, but even with the convenience of magic, the current road facilities in the south are seriously imperfect - at this stage, Cecil only has three roads that can be considered "modernized", including a wide cement avenue from Cecil City to Conder, There is also a similar road between Cecil and Tanzania, and the road to the Gülen region was completed just a few days ago, and other than that, there is basically only a messy road built by the nobles of the south.

The best of these messy roads is the "makeshift road" from Tanzania to Horsman City, but that is only an emergency leveling and reinforcement by the mages and engineers with the magic terminal using the "fossil to mud" and "mud to stone" techniques, which are temporarily used to transport people and supplies, but in the long run, it is not up to standard for Gawain in terms of durability and scale.

As a remnant of the former feudal division, the "road" is a big problem in front of Gawain, the nobles in their own territory to do their own way, the construction of a variety of roads, not only the quality and scale of the mess, but also the planning is a mess, sometimes in order to prevent the neighboring nobles from plundering, they even specifically in the area between the two territories where the road meets to destroy, with magic to shape a large number of artificial potholes, sand and quagmire, now the southern border has been unified, the former lords have withdrawn from the stage, But all this irritating stuff was left to Cecil's builders.

Fortunately, there is an incredible magic technology in this world, and the magic guide terminal for ordinary engineers has also been popularized, and with the assistance of various spells such as "fossil to mud", "turning mud into stone", and "weight reduction", the road construction project in the south is progressing quite smoothly, but even so, considering the actual situation in most remote areas and the situation outside the southern border, the early magic guide car chassis still has to consider how to deal with the bad road conditions.

"The universal chassis is about maximum usability, so we redesigned it to the average width of most roads in the south today – basically a little narrower," Rebecca said, gesturing as she took the Nicholas egg, "no more than 1.8 ......meters at its widest point"

Gao Wenxin said that this is indeed the case - one meter eight, which is the width of the world's largest troika, strictly speaking, the limit width of two horses and a set of harnesses. The roads built by the aristocracy were of a variety of shapes, but their width was roughly similar, and the narrowest "official" roads, with the exception of trails and country roads, would have fallen below this number - anything else would have been impassable by large troikas.

Cecil's road construction was carried out on the basis of the old road, and the personnel and materials needed to build the road also relied on horse-drawn carriages to transport, so each lane of the new cement road was also affected by this number, which was basically the width of a large two-horse carriage plus a "safety margin" of about one meter, and on this basis, the scale of the magic guide car must also meet the requirements of being able to drive safely in such lanes.

As far as Gawain knew, something similar happened on Earth - the original horse-drawn carriage width affected the standard of the road, the road standard affected the size of the early automobile and train, and the size of the car and train affected the size of all the means of transport, cargo boxes, and so on that were built on the basis of early road and rail traffic......

Two very different worlds, after all, have come to the same end at this point.

Suddenly remembered the hometown that had been absent for countless years, but Gawain could only sigh silently, and in the sigh, his thoughts gradually diverged.

With the magic cars, this is an epoch-making means of transportation, they are of course countless times stronger than the current carriages, with these powerful and tireless vehicles, the development of the south will definitely take a big step forward, but if they alone, it is still far from enough.

The southern border is not big or small, but it is definitely not small, and its long and narrow territorial shape makes it extremely difficult to communicate east-west traffic. At present, in order to build four new industrial cities on the "Cross Axis", Gawain needs to deploy a large number of materials and personnel from all over the southern border, including ore from the Tanzan-Cecil region, timber from the Gülen region, stone and magic materials from the Peibo region, and the huge migration brought about by the population migration project, all of which are basically carried by several river transportation channels centered on the Baishui River, but river transportation has natural limitations after all, as the scale of several cities becomes larger and larger, especially the "cross axis" Sooner or later, some of the raw material sources far from the river shipping channel will be on track, and Gawain must find a way to find a more efficient means of transportation.

The advantage of the Magic Guide is that it is flexible and convenient, which is quite suitable for dealing with short-distance, small-scale cargo transportation, but when dealing with the development pressure of the entire southern border, their power will certainly be stretched.

Of course, people of this age in this world probably don't think so, because the magic guide car is already the most advanced and powerful means of transportation they have ever seen, but Gawain has seen something even better than the magic guide car - those who run on the railroad tracks, can transport thousands of tons of goods at a time, and are as powerful as the veins of industrial society.

Train.

Compared to that thing, the magic guide car in front of him would naturally be dwarfed in terms of transportation capacity.

In the final analysis, the magic guide car was not entirely born to solve the transportation problem in the south - it is only a supplement in this regard, and its real meaning is to start the subsequent major changes in the means of transportation, to replace the traditional horse-drawn carriage, to make agricultural machinery, to manufacture construction machinery, and even to prepare for military combat vehicles.

Gawain knows that the birth of trains on the earth is much earlier than the practical cars with internal combustion engines as the main power (not counting the early experimental locomotives powered by steam engines), because the "stupid big black and coarse" steam engine used by trains on the earth is far lower than the precise, compact and efficient internal combustion engine in terms of technical starting point, and at the same time, the various front-loading technologies used in automobiles (tires, batteries, spark plugs, etc.) have also experienced a relatively long period of development, all of which are determined by objective historical facts. But in this world, the law of development of many things is destined to be different from that of the earth, and the order of many things is naturally different.

The steam engine could not be realized, but the rotor type magic energy engine was born, and a high-efficiency power source similar to the "internal combustion engine" or "electric motor" appeared in this world by leaps and bounds, and at the same time, due to the accumulation of technology in the world itself and the conscious guidance of Gao Wen, the "magic car" This sophisticated and complex vehicle appeared in this world earlier than the train, but this does not mean that the world does not need trains.

In fact, now is the time when the South needs it, and it has the technical foundation to develop it.

Having lived here for so long, Gawain has long since learned to abandon some of the old opinions, and realized the reality of this particular era hidden under the dark and obscurantist façade - the technological reserves of this world are far richer than he imagined, and the technological starting point is far higher than what he sees, but these technologies are concentrated in the hands of a few people, or scattered in fragments in the hands of scattered intellectuals (this phenomenon of "technological over-concentration" and "technological fragmentation" is the result of the collapse of the ancient Gondor Empire). As a result, the society here seems far behind in terms of its true technological heights.

After thinking about this, it is not difficult to understand the speed of Cecil's technological research and development: in many cases, those technologies are not developed from scratch at all, but only the mass production of existing "upper" technologies, or the reconstruction and transformation of broken technologies, and even to be honest - if a copy of Gawain's "scientific ideas" is thrown into a country like Typhon with a strong foundation and many talents, they will only develop faster than Cecil.

But even so, Gawain recognized and respected the talents and efforts of those researchers, and maintained the highest degree of trust in his research department, knowing that science was gradual - as the shattered pieces of technology were reconstructed, and as the theories in the field of magical technology were perfected, sooner or later, the land would emerge from the shadow of the ancient Gondor Empire and step into a realm that even the Archmages of the Starfire Age had not set foot in.

"Ancestors? Ancestors? ”

Rebecca's voice suddenly came from the side, waking Gawain from his thoughts.

"What are you thinking?"

Rebecca approached Gawain with a look of concern and curiosity on her face.

Gao Wen realized that he had thought too much and too far ahead just now, and he was already a little distracted, so he quickly coughed twice to adjust his expression, and then said while thinking: "Rebecca, do you know, in fact, the magic guide car is not the most powerful land vehicle......

Rebecca blinked, "You mean...... A bigger magic car?! Hauling a bigger body with a multi-row engine? ”

“…… It's different, it's a bigger car, but its operating mechanism is completely different from that of the magic car," Gawain organized an easy-to-understand vocabulary to describe something that had never been seen in this world, "You can imagine such a car: it has a 'magic engine' that is ten, dozens, or even hundreds of times more powerful than the magic car, and this magic engine pulls more than a dozen carriages across the land......"

Rebecca's eyes widened: "How is that possible!" The ground will fall! And what about turning? What should I do if I encounter bumps? ”

"So it needs to run on rails – which are grooves or rails laid on the ground made of steel, which disperse the pressure of heavy carriages, reduce wear on metal wheels, and improve train stability......"