Machine Guns in Safehold

thinkstoomuch wrote:

Theemile wrote:Actually, light rail/tac rail would probably make more sense at this point than automobiles, yes it would be terrain limited, but closer to the technological limits of Safehold. Rail lines would probably start by paralleling the canals(because they are already cleared and graded), multiplying their utility and allowing heavy winter transport, then branching out from there as possible.

Railroads eat steel or iron. Not my area of speciality but I'll give it a shot.

It has been a while since I read up on it the Grantville Gazette so all these figures are off the cuff.

Say you use 5 pound rail(for tacrail, SWAG). Full size started ~40 pound. That is 5 pounds to the yard. You need 2 rails (technically not really) so in one mile you need 1,760 pounds of steel/iron. Or roughly 1 ton to the mile. Remember this is off the cuff. Might be off by an order of magnitude or even more. Probably higher.

What was the tonnage of the King Herald VII again? How far will that get me?

I guess you could go with strap rails, just don't ask me to ride it. References in GG21 is strap rail for a full size line was 15 pounds to a yard.

While it is in their technical capability the production side is problematic.


One other thing on trucks, all those wonderful instructions on how to make roads in the Writ. If you go to rubber tires, even hard rubber, Throw them away. 20-30 miles an hour there will be no road in a short time of intense military use.

Of course it could be an odd way to break the Writ now that I think about it.

Have fun,
T2M

Duck6actual wrote:Some early rail roads used wooden rails, not as efficient or durable as metal but when you need to lay track quickly and only need it for a short period then wood becomes a viable material

dan92677 wrote:Think how the enemy would react to a battery of 3 or 4 round per second explosive shelled hand cranked cannons, say 20 or 30mm (1 inch)!

Dan Jones

enutt wrote:I'm not sure I agree with all your points, but I've seen the logistics discussion previously, and it does have some merit based upon the details in the book. What doesn't make sense is why ammo production is centered in Old Charis. Ideally, it should be moved, at least in part, to Siddarmark as this would shorten the supply line as well as provide an increase in manufacturing capacity. Arguably, foundries in Siddarmark could get repurposed to ammunition production faster than to rifle or artillery production as the materials, equipment, and processes are easier.

Point 2 is possibly valid, however the Inner Circle has access to Terran archives that would suggest the use of automatic weapons. Merlin certainly knows the historically important role that crew-served automatic weaponry has played in every war since the 1880's.

Point 3 may be accurate under certain conditions, but artillery loses effectiveness in the point-defense role, in close terrain (i.e. the Kyplynger Forest, cities), or when weather conditions do not permit spotting. It also lacks mobility when on the advance (with the notable exception of the infantry "angle guns" aka mortars being used by the ICA. In fact, it's effectiveness to date has been either on the defense (Thesmar, Sylman Gap) or against fixed enemy emplacements when on the attack, and always against massed infantry. Once the ICA faces the MHOGAA in open terrain using the new rifles and adopting the dispersed infantry doctrine, artillery is going to be far less effective.

Weird Harold wrote:

Duck6actual wrote:Some early rail roads used wooden rails, not as efficient or durable as metal but when you need to lay track quickly and only need it for a short period then wood becomes a viable material

Very few early railroads used 4-6-0 high-pressure Locomotives, though. The "automotive" described in HFQ would destroy wooden rails before it completed its first passage-- and that's just the engine described, an actual train wouldn't make out of the marshaling yard on wooden rails.

saber964 wrote:Actually some early RR used wooden rails covered by steel straps ...

Weird Harold wrote:

saber964 wrote:Actually some early RR used wooden rails covered by steel straps ...

Yes, I'm aware of strap-rail, but my point was that Safehold's very first steam "automotive" is already too big for wood or strap-rail to be useful. Even wrought-iron rails won't hold up very long to the weight of locomotive that Safehold is starting with; they've completely skipped over 90% of "early railroads."

Duck6actual wrote:But for a tac rail the engine doesn't have to be as big, probably better if it didn't do you wouldn't have to stock so much coal

Hell's Foundations Quiver
MARCH
YEAR OF GOD 897

.IX.
The Delthak Works, Barony of High Rock, Kingdom of Old Charis, Charisian Empire wrote:
For all its size, it had a curiously unfinished—or perhaps the word he wanted was “crude”—appearance compared to the imagery of last-generation steam locomotives from Old Earth with which Owl had provided him. By the same token, though, it looked far sleeker and much more sophisticated than its early-nineteenth-century predecessors ever had. It was built in what would have been called a 2-4-0 configuration back on Old Earth, with a two-wheeled front bogey followed by two paired drive wheels powered by two twenty-one-inch-diameter drive cylinders with a thirty-inch stroke. Unlike the marine engines which were Praigyr’s first true love, the automotive used a fire tube arrangement, with the hot gases from the furnace carried through a water-filled boiler. It was, however, designed to run at rather higher pressure and temperature than most Old Earth locomotives prior to the twentieth century, and it incorporated both a superheater (tubes in which boiler steam passed through the hot furnace gasses in front of the boiler proper, which further heated it to produce “dry steam” for the cylinders) and a blast pipe using waste steam to boost the firebox draught to increase its efficiency. The superheater had been one of Praigyr’s ideas, based on his work with the marine engines, but the blast pipe had been Howsmyn’s suggestion, based on input from Owl and Doctor Dahnel Vyrnyr’s suggestions. There was enormous room for improvement in the efficiency of both, since Vyrnyr’s development of pressure dynamics was still at a very early stage, and there were still a few problems with the poppet valves which admitted steam to the cylinders. Despite that, the current design would produce about sixty-one dragonpower (over fifteen hundred Old Earth horsepower) by Owl’s calculations and was probably already on a par with those of the last two decades or so of the nineteenth century.

Weird Harold wrote:
True, but Charis shows no sign of using Tac-rail. The only "Automotive" in textev is:

Hell's Foundations Quiver
MARCH
YEAR OF GOD 897

.IX.
The Delthak Works, Barony of High Rock, Kingdom of Old Charis, Charisian Empire wrote:
For all its size, it had a curiously unfinished—or perhaps the word he wanted was “crude”—appearance compared to the imagery of last-generation steam locomotives from Old Earth with which Owl had provided him. By the same token, though, it looked far sleeker and much more sophisticated than its early-nineteenth-century predecessors ever had. It was built in what would have been called a 2-4-0 configuration back on Old Earth, with a two-wheeled front bogey followed by two paired drive wheels powered by two twenty-one-inch-diameter drive cylinders with a thirty-inch stroke. Unlike the marine engines which were Praigyr’s first true love, the automotive used a fire tube arrangement, with the hot gases from the furnace carried through a water-filled boiler. It was, however, designed to run at rather higher pressure and temperature than most Old Earth locomotives prior to the twentieth century, and it incorporated both a superheater (tubes in which boiler steam passed through the hot furnace gasses in front of the boiler proper, which further heated it to produce “dry steam” for the cylinders) and a blast pipe using waste steam to boost the firebox draught to increase its efficiency. The superheater had been one of Praigyr’s ideas, based on his work with the marine engines, but the blast pipe had been Howsmyn’s suggestion, based on input from Owl and Doctor Dahnel Vyrnyr’s suggestions. There was enormous room for improvement in the efficiency of both, since Vyrnyr’s development of pressure dynamics was still at a very early stage, and there were still a few problems with the poppet valves which admitted steam to the cylinders. Despite that, the current design would produce about sixty-one dragonpower (over fifteen hundred Old Earth horsepower) by Owl’s calculations and was probably already on a par with those of the last two decades or so of the nineteenth century.