One afternoon, I was browsing my engineering library in my head, hunting for more information on steam engines, especially those used for railroad locomotives. I could see titles but not open books I hadn't read. I ran into this all the time, and it was frustrating.
"Trench Trains in World War I" caught my eye. I should have slapped myself up the side of my head. I was so driven to modernize Cornwall to twenty-first railroad standards that I neglected an intermediate step that would solve some of my problems.
In World War 1, they used very narrow-gauge tracks to take supplies to the trench lines. Some of these were as narrow as 12 inches, most were of 18 to 30 inches, depending on the trench size.
Small steam engines were used on these miniature railroads. The cars were light since the tracks could not hold much weight. A loaded car might weigh 1000 pounds as opposed to the 20 or more tons a modern railcar would weigh.
The tracks themselves could be moved very easily as there was little ballast and simple ties to support the tracks. Many times, bombardment would destroy these tracks, and they would be replaced overnight.
While far from commercial standards in the 21st century, they got the job done. Moving men and material up to the trenches and even through them.
After the war, these became popular rides in zoos and amusement parks for small children. I grew up next to an amusement park in Ohio and spent most of my summer days roaming the park.
I got very good at working the edge of the rides that threw people around. I would find pennies, nickels, dimes, and once even a 50-cent piece. I would promptly spend these on a ten-cent ride. One of my favorites was the narrow-gauge railroad, which would take you around the park.
While I was agonizing over building a railroad, I never gave this type of train a thought. Once I was on this train of thought, no pun intended, I realized even the track I wanted was more than I needed.
Up until the Civil War, tracks were wooden with a metal flange on top. The flange prevented wear on the wooden portion and gave the metal on metal a low coefficient of friction. The wheels were wooden with a metal band shrunk on to save wear and tear.
I did a mental review of what I was trying to achieve with the steam engine. First was the railroad engine. That was backward from the original steam engines. The first was to pump water out of mines even though none of our mines were that deep yet.
I needed an engine that could generate sixty horsepower. This would enable the locomotive to start and pull ten cars carrying twenty troops each. Five trains with ten cars each would move a thousand men. There would be two more trains to carry the support supplies.
This force could defeat any army in what would have been Great Britain.
There are two basic types of steam engines: reciprocating and compound. Since either would produce the necessary horsepower, I started with the simpler one-cylinder reciprocating engine.
In the future, we would go to the more efficient double-acting compound engine.
In a double-acting engine, steam from the boiler is admitted alternately to each side of the piston. In a simple steam engine, the expansion of the steam takes place in only one-cylinder.
In a steam engine, hot steam, usually supplied by a boiler, expands under pressure, and part of the heat energy is converted into work. For maximum engine efficiency, the steam may be condensed in a separate apparatus, a condenser, at comparatively low temperature and pressure.
The steam may be further heated by passing it through a superheater from the boiler to the engine.
A common superheater is a group of parallel pipes with their surfaces exposed to the hot gases in the boiler furnace.
The biggest obstacle we faced was losing steam pressure through the connecting points. Which was the main reason I traded the Chinese for asbestos. It was an excellent packing material for each joint and was highly heat resistant.
That, plus using the Baldwin metal steam fitting joint, captured enough steam power to raise the output of our small steam engine from thirty horsepower to sixty horsepower. By scaling up, we could achieve more. For now I was only interested in an engine that was good enough, not the best. Improvements would come later.
When taken down to the bare minimum, my first railroad would be relatively easy to put into operation.
We could already make a small steam engine. The engine's metal housing could be cast in one piece. The same went for all the piping and cylinders.
The most complicated part of the engine was the pressure valve. Calibrating the gauges to set the relief valve took weeks of trial and error.
Making the tracks was easy. A heavy L-shaped flange was nailed to the inside top of a ten-foot-long six-by-six bulk of wood. Two of these 'rails' were then fastened to cross ties. These track sections were built in Own-nap and hauled to the railhead for installation.
Our first test track was laid on the highway from Owen-nap to Saltash. Later, we would build a right of away with ballast, but we wanted to have proof of principle as soon as possible.
The first track was a success and useful in moving cannon from Tom Smith's foundry to the shipyard in Saltash.
The best part was the whistle. It was loud enough to stampede a herd of cattle. I had to pay damages to several farmers, but it was worth it to hear the whistle scream.
The whistle could be heard for miles and became part of our early warning system for every Keep and watchtower. We could rouse the entire countryside in short order.
All the kids loved the whistles, too. Whenever a train would pass them by, they would pump their arms for the engineer to let it fly. It got so bad we had to put a stop to it.
One of the worst offenders was a certain young lady related to me. Having the run of the village, she would go to the train station and talk her way on board the engine to pull the whistle cord.
I had to give strict orders to her bodyguard that this was to stop. From Janet Farmer’s look, I realized she was a willing accomplice.
I was getting to be a spoilsport. At least the sheep, goats, and cattle would thank me. I don’t think the pigs cared.
This breakthrough in my thinking about the steam engine made the next step obvious. Make a steam turbine that would allow us to generate a useable amount of electricity.
Steam turbines are more compact and usually permit higher temperatures and greater expansion ratios than reciprocating steam engines. The turbine is the universal means to generate large quantities of electric power with steam.
With electricity, we could make a spark gap radio. A practical spark gap transmitter consists of these parts:
A high-voltage transformer transforms the low-voltage electricity from the power source to jump across the spark gap. The transformer charges the capacitor. In low-power transmitters powered by batteries, we would use an induction coil.
There are resonant circuits that create electrical oscillations when excited by the spark. A resonant circuit consists of a capacitor, which stores high-voltage electricity from the transformer, and a coil of wire, called an inductor or tuning coil, connected. The capacitance and inductance values determine the frequency of the radio waves produced.
An antenna, a metal conductor such as an elevated wire, radiates the power in the oscillating electric currents from the resonant circuit into space as radio waves.
A telegraph key to switch the transmitter on and off to communicate messages by Morse code. We could send a message about two hundred miles. A more powerful station could transmit three to six thousand miles. Since we didn’t need it at this point, I didn’t invest in the larger station.
Thinking of Constantinople, I considered it, but it wasn’t worth the effort at this time. Although I did fund a research project for the more powerful station, I wasn't pushing it.
It was fun listening to all the rumors about the antenna towers our researchers were investigating.
Even though every Keep had a small system installed, I didn't have the semaphore stations abandoned. They were an obvious target and a waste of the enemy's resources. The wireless transmitters were a state secret.
Their existence was explained by telling a few people they were a targeting system for a cannon, which would be installed at a later date. We put these antennas in for advanced testing.
Going off on a tangent, Morse Code made me think of my Boy Scout Days. My next dictating session was to copy the original Boy Scout Handbook. From there, a couple of my army scouts and Lady Eleanor's book-writing team translated it into something that could be understood in Cornwall. Thus, the Cornish scouts were born.
Their motto was "Be Prepared." Upon promotion to Eagle Scout, the new Eagle was told in secret the initials BP were for the original founder of the scouting movement, Baden Powell. Some heroes shouldn't and wouldn't be written out of the history books.
The only difference between the original organization and ours was that girls were allowed in from the start. There were female scouts in our army, so there was good reason to start them out young.
It did require extra chaperons on camping trips. Kids being kids and all.
Almost every kid who entered the Scouts made Eagle. Unlike in my day and age, they all had family support and didn't have the distraction of a driver's license, so they stayed in the program.
Even children raised by a single parent or orphans were adopted by members of the local military garrison. The kids got the additional support they needed. And the soldiers got extra time off from their work.
After a while, we noticed single mothers were marrying child support soldiers. This was considered a win by all concerned. When I told Eleanor we had created a dating service, it led to many questions.
The next thing I knew, her women writers were including dating services in their novels, and soon after, the first Cornish Dating Service was established. It didn't take them long to have branches in every village.
Eleanor and her writers formed a company and sold shares. The first was in Cornwall. The older generation bemoaned this new-fangled state of affairs. Their marriages had been arranged by their parents. What was good enough for them was good enough for their children.