Re: B Ark Colonist and Colonial Industry... [LONG[

----- Original Message -----
From: K.H.Ranitzsch <KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 2:04 PM
Subject: Re: B Ark Colonist and Colonial Industry... [LONG[

>
> > > > Roads are incredibly expensive to build and maintain.  Is there
> > > > any  reason not to use GEVs instead?
> > >
> > > Difficult terrain (woods, mountains)
> >
>
> Not your towns, certainly. But if your iron ore is one side of the
mountain
> range and the coal on the other side ? Or whatever set of raw
materials
you
> deem desirable and you have to combine them to process them.
>
If you want to shift your iron ore in bulk, you cannot beat a railway
for
shifting heavy loads with minimal expenditure of energy (the physics of
steel wheel on steel rail have only recently bean understood, even
though we
have had proper railways for 175 years). And if you don`t have the tech
support for more advanced methods of transport, a steam engine is very
rugged machine, simple to build and maintain, just requiring more
manhours
than more modern machines (by this I point out the fact that hobbyist
have
build miniture live steam locomotives at home using simple lathes and
tools
for years, and I am in awe at their skills).