Chapter 24

It took another year, but the railroad finally reached far enough south to connect with several towns in what would have become Mexico. The people there were very interested in taking on the manufacture of the items made from cactus. They were particularly pleased to be told the secret of making tampons, but they were ready to take on the other items made from cactus fiber.

The bank in Doug's Town, laughingly named The Central Bank by Doug (he thought that was such a pretentious and pompous name), loaned the people the money at 2% interest to buy from Doug's Town the materials necessary to construct their "factories." He also charged a nominal fee for the processing secrets, since he knew that those secrets would eventually make a fortune for the people of the towns doing the manufacturing. He wanted to turn the bank into a profit center as soon as possible.

There was so much rail traffic that Charles was talking about the relative advantages of putting in double track. The track on the western side of the roadbed would carry southbound trains, and the track on the eastern side would carry northbound trains. There were some near wrecks between trains going in opposite directions because of poor communication along the route. Double track would eliminate head-on collisions, but it would not solve all of the problems. The problem was that they simply did not have enough bronze to make that much rail; Doug and Mist of the Mountains wanted to build other routes, as well as extend the present route, so they were opposed to the double track scheme.

Charles asked for ideas from his army of engineers, and somebody pointed out that adequate signaling would allow them to operate trains both ways in safety. That's when some serious brainstorming was undertaken and they came up with the scheme of placing signal stations and passing tracks every 20 miles. The idea was that the first train to reach a station would be held there until the station master received a signal that the next 20 miles was clear of traffic. When the appropriate signal was received, the train would be released to travel another 20 miles. The station master was never to assume that the line was clear; instead, he was to assume that the track was occupied until he received specific word that the track was clear.

OK, half the problem was solved, but they still had not solved the communication problem between stations. That was when somebody reminded the committee of the signal mirrors that they had used militarily for years. They were reliable for over 5 miles of communication distance, so they would need three intermediate signaling relay points between each pair of stations. They could relay the messages very quickly, so the communication problem was solved. They simply needed to work out some fool proof wording for the busy and the all clear messages so that there would be no foul ups. Once they had some experience with the signaling system, they probably could even start running trains at night and markedly shorten the running time of the trains between terminals.

It was going to be a problem getting that many people hired and trained to operate the stations and the relay points, but that was a problem for Evening Star to resolve along with all of her other manpower chores. However, she figured she could find the people if they made the living conditions at the stations and the relay points attractive enough, and if they paid enough, they could attract young newlyweds to staff these outposts. Her rational was that they would be so interested in each other's company that they would not miss the company of a lot of other people.

The railroad was becoming such an important part of the growth of trade that Charles was busy working on finding ways to increase the pulling capacity of the locomotive. They had made a significant improvement in hauling capacity just by switching to the metal rails instead of the plain ground, but he wanted to go a step further. The obvious thing to do was to mount a more powerful motor on the locomotive, and that was what he was currently working on. Charles had constructed a 12-cylinder engine which appeared to be three or four times as powerful as the current engine, and he was anxious to try it out.

Doug and Mist of the Mountains approved the diversion of enough materials to allow Charles to construct a one-mile test loop of track to use as a proving ground for his railroad developments. When this loop was ready, Charles rolled out his latest locomotive and tried it out. The most obvious feature of the new locomotive was that it was larger and heavier than the previous model, and it was much faster. It looked funny, too: it had two wheels in the front, but it had four driving wheels in the rear; Doug called it a 2-4-0 and laughed. Nobody else had the background to catch the reference, so they just chalked it up to Doug's weird sense of humor and let it go.

This locomotive was able to pull ten trailers loaded with 3,500 pound each, and do it at a speed more than double the previous locomotive which Doug had dubbed a 2-2-0. A 35,000 pound load was a fantastic achievement and exceeded the current need, but everybody who counted expected that they would soon want the added capacity. Nothing was without its cost, though, this engine did burn fuel at twice the rate of the smaller one.

Speaking of a fuel problem, they were going through animal fat at a prodigious rate. Doug knew that it was only a matter of time before they needed to tap into the world of petroleum products, both for fuel and as a raw material for manufacturing. The nearest sources that he knew of were in Texas and Oklahoma. Soon, he was going to have to send out an exploration party to locate some. It looked like it was going to have to be the next season.

They really badly needed a better way to explore unknown country. Doug sorely wished for a helicopter and somebody to fly it. Since that was a ridiculous impossibility, he looked for a substitute. The most obvious answer was a balloon, hot air for simplicities sake. One day he was doodling around with the idea on a large chalk board he had installed in his office. Charles came in to talk about something else, but promptly forgot all about it when Doug explained what he was doing.

When Doug explained that he was considering a hot-air balloon, Charles suggested that his heat pump could provide the hot air and the pump could be driven by a small diesel engine of one or two cylinders. They started brainstorming ways of making the aircraft travel in the desired direction and came up with the idea of hanging a gondola from a balloon, and putting either a propeller or a jet in the gondola to push it through the air.

Charles suggested that they could make the balloon from thin camel hair cloth and paint uncured casein resin on the inside to hold the air in. He actually ran out of Doug's office to begin work on this absolutely mind-blowing project. It took Charles about 3 months to come up with a design for the balloon part of the airship, and he planned to use a wicker basket as a temporary gondola. The prototype balloon was finished by the next spring and plans were made to try it out as soon as the spring winds died down to a safe level.

The balloon was set up outside near the entrance to their living cavern and anchored to a sturdy post. The heat pump was started and the warm air was fed into the envelope. It took only an hour to get the balloon to lift off the ground to the delighted cheers and applause of the hundreds of spectators (it was impossible to keep a test like this a secret, besides, there was no reason to want to). The balloon was anchored about 10 feet off the ground and it hung there after the heat pump was turned off ... And it hung there ... And it hung there. Finally, after the novelty had worn off and most of the spectators had left to go back to work, the balloon settled slowly to the ground.

Doug and Charles consulted for a few minutes and decided that the envelope had to have a way to vent the hot air if it was going to come back to the ground in a controlled manner. Charles retired to his design table and was ready the next day with a modification that would let some of the hot air out and then seal back off at the pilot's command. This time, he rode in the gondola and bounced up and down between 10 and 30 feet at his whim.