87 km of length of overhead railway.

Along the way, 4 cities, 13 farms, and 7 mines are connected.

Another great advantage of this kind of railway is that it can be built very quickly, as long as pipes, cables, node modules, track alloy plates, and corresponding construction airships are prepared in advance.

With sufficient materials, there are no problems in laying hundreds of kilometers in a month.

After all, this set of construction solutions saves the process of laying the foundation, concrete pouring and curing, which require a relatively long time-consuming process.

The core factors limiting the speed of overhead railway construction are the production time and scale of modular components, as well as the number of airships under construction.

At present, Meroe Air Rail Group has a total of 37 supporting factories in South Meroe, employing 87,000 people and constructing 6 airships.

After Fan Haibo introduced these situations, he proposed: "Chairman, there will be a new node to start construction today, which will start in about 30 minutes, I don't know if you are interested in observing it." ”

"Oh? OK. Li Qingye nodded.

"I'll arrange the train right away." Fan Haibo's face was flushed with excitement.

Li Qingye and Ma Peier passed through the factory area, came to the elevator exclusive to passengers, and took the elevator directly to the top of the station.

The station is actually the whole node, Juba station has a maximum of 183 meters, the track running height is 50 meters, and in the area of 50 meters, there are special loading and unloading equipment for loading and unloading containers.

The passenger area, on the other hand, is below the freight area, where there are several suspended passenger trains produced by the Meroe Air Rail Group itself.

"It's spacious."

"Yes, chairman, we use a relatively large track gauge."

The gauge of the railway pipe of Homo sapiens is 2 meters, and in order to ensure that the load-bearing railway has sufficient width, the width of the alloy plate below is 6 meters.

Therefore, the width of the carriage of the freight train above is usually 4~4.2 meters.

The width of the suspended passenger train below is 6.2 meters, because the track of the suspended passenger train is essentially that layer of alloy plates.

It is suspended to ensure that the train does not fall, so the passenger train carriage must be wider than 6 meters.

The platform, which is fully sealed with high-strength floor-to-ceiling windows, is designed to protect against strong winds and heavy rains.

Fan Haibo arranged a special tourist train.

"Chairman, please come here!" Fan Haibo and several security personnel entered the carriage first

And then Li Qingye and Sanchi Bada? Lyar, Maper and others walked in.

Since it is a sightseeing model, the train is designed with two levels of carriages and only three carriages.

The upper floor of the carriage is a soft sleeper, shower room, and toilet, and the lower floor is a tourist restaurant.

Fan Haibo took Li Qingye directly to the tourist restaurant, the floor of the restaurant is composed of completely transparent materials, of course, this is one-way transparent, and the outside cannot see the situation inside.

After a while, the train started slowly.

Compared with the commuter type of passenger train, the speed of the sightseeing model is slower, about 40~120 kilometers per hour, and if it is a simple commuter model, the speed can reach 80~160 kilometers.

"This train is using nuclear batteries, right?"

Fan Haibo nodded: "The chairman is as wise as a torch, in order to increase the speed, our trains use nuclear batteries, but not cobalt-60 nuclear batteries, but carbon-14 nuclear batteries." ”

Li Qingye immediately thought of the key point: "Did you use gold-based electric heating materials?" ”

"That's right, thanks to the gold mines of the Chad branch."

As for the gold mine of the Chad branch, Li Qingye had just visited it a few days ago.

Previously, the company's geological exploration department discovered several gold deposits in the volcanic area north of Chad, that is, the burial depth is about 450~800 meters, and the reserves are thousands of tons.

Therefore, the Chad branch concentrated its efforts and mined one of the rich mines, which can currently produce 5~7 tons of gold per month.

All this gold is used to make electric heating materials, and the Meroe Air Rail Group is also stained with the light of the Chad branch, so that it can use gold-based electric heating materials to generate electricity.

In fact, there are a lot of gold mines in Africa, especially those veins buried below 200 meters, which are basically unexplored.

As for the super gold mine in Antarctica, Homo sapiens is also secretly mining, and the Antarctic branch can now produce 30~40 tons of gold per month.

Of course, in order to avoid sudden changes affecting the geomagnetic field, the gold mines in Antarctica only extract gold, and for the larger iron-nickel component, there is no large-scale mining.

Gold mines in Africa, while not as rich as Antarctica, could also alleviate the company's huge demand for gold.

Trains that generate their own electricity have fewer specialized distribution and transmission systems.

In the case of a conventional electrified train solution, cables must be routed along the line and a special power distribution equipment must be prepared.

One disadvantage of this is that if the transmission system fails, or if it is attacked, it can lead to the paralysis of the entire line.

The electric self-sustaining train does not have this shortcoming, and the surging power of the nuclear battery can further improve the speed of the train.

"How do you solve the ineffective work of the rest period of the nuclear battery?"

"We use molten salt heat storage and inbound power transmission to solve the disadvantages of ineffective work of nuclear batteries."

"Molten salt heat storage? Inbound transmission? Nice idea. As soon as Li Qingye heard these two terms, he knew how they had solved it.

Half an hour later.

The sightseeing train arrived at Quanshui Station, 87 kilometers away.

The construction site is located 8.9 kilometers west of Izumi Station, and you can go up to the top of the station by elevator, which is the top of the observation tower.

In the station's 181-meter-high tower top observation room, there is also a long-distance telescope brought by Fan Haibo, who can see the situation 8.9 kilometers away.

"Chairman, in five minutes, the first ground pile hollow pipe at node 10 will be put down."

Meanwhile.

At the bottom of the stratosphere, a construction airship is hoisting a huge pipeline, and the construction crew is slowly adjusting the orientation of the pipeline according to the pheromone and magnetic field anchor points marked by the fixed-point personnel, using laser positioning equipment.

In fact, the orientation should not be corrected by a few tens of meters, but the construction staff who strive for perfection are still very careful to adjust.

It wasn't until he was aiming very accurately that he pressed the drop switch.

In an instant, the clamp holding the pipe popped open, and the huge 8,400-ton pipe descended faster and faster, and even tropospheric winds could not change the orientation of the pipeline.

The sound of whistling came from afar.

Li Qingye looked at the picture taken by the drone, and then turned his head to look at the node through the binocular.

The next second.

Rumble! The weight, accelerated by gravity, instantly inserts into the fragile formation, and the pipe is inserted about 240 meters underground, triggering a small shock wave.

In the next half hour, the remaining three ground pile pipes were also cast one after another, and they were inserted into the four predetermined positions of the nodes very precisely.

Bang Bang Bang!

Li Qingye applauded: "Yes, it seems that your technology is worth further promoting." ”

"It is our honor to be recognized by the chairman." Van Haibo was very happy.

After all, being recognized by Li Qingye means that the overhead railway of Meroe Air Rail Group can be supported by the head office and does not need to be supported by the Meroe branch alone.

On the sightseeing train on the way back, Li Qingye ate the local peanut stew, beef stew, spinach, and sorghum pancakes, and ended his inspection in Zhu Dan.

Next stop, Darfur.