Day 492: golden rails

Day 492:

Gold is easier to turn into rails than iron, that’s for sure. And it’s kind of pretty, in a “wow look at this ostentatious mess” kind of way.

I made these rails with some divots in them to put some of the red rock dust in, hoping that it could work as a mild conducive explosion type thing on the wheels. It’d be easier if there was something — anything — that could measure magnetic fields, but I don’t even have a magnet to make a magnet out of so that I can make an electromagnet to make a motor out of. Or something.

Then I accidentally fell with a pocket full of the red stuff and all but shocked my own heart out,

So I’m treating the red rock with more respect, and introducing it to the gold rails in smaller quantities. Don’t want to shock my own socks off.

Oh! Speaking of which, I saw a sheep in my yard the other day! I mean other than the one I captured! But I couldn’t get this one to come into my pen. I might need to bribe them with something better than weeds when they’re standing in a field of weeds.

Day 491: whee?

Day 491:

I did some testing with the rails i’ve made and they’re definitely not conductive enough to use a spark from some of that red stone to move a wheel on one of my carts.

Oh, by the way, made some carts. Or rather, parts for carts. Mostly wood dipped in iron to make it stronger, heavy as your mom on a double-grav planet, but probably will withstand an explosion from an exploding giraffe-corgi. And some early wheel prototypes that were all crap and went back into the furnace.

The carts are going to be strong and durable and totally useless if I can’t move them. Because if I don’t power these things? No way even I can move them. And I’m  out of horses.

So I’m thinking instead of going with more explosive rock (seems like bad plan) I’ll try more conductive metal first. Which means I might finally have a use for all this gold.

Day 490: More rails

Day 490:

Now there are two duckens in my bedroom. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a hole in the wall that they’re sneaking through.

Making all these rails is a lot of work, but it seems to be working out. I’m laying the rails between some of the outbuildings and working on a mining cart design.

I’ve learned in my i’m-not-doing-the-math year plus here that one of the keys  to getting stuff done is sizing down to my own abilities. Railroad rails way back in the day were long I-bars of steel that it took multiple hardened men to carry.

Mine are about three feet long, at most, and probably half the gauge. Thus, carryable by your standard mining woman stranded on a rock in the middle of nowhere without even a ducking medpack to patch her up or a strong coffee to give her a boost.

So I’m getting better at this stuff.

But i’m very tired and I have twice as many eggs to deal with as yesterday.

Day 489: ugh

Day 489:

Did some rail stuff.

Had a ducken laying eggs on my bed all day, didn’t know it. Came back inside after a hard and backbreaking and hot amount of work, can’t go to bed until I clear the eggs off.

Less than pleased.

Day 488: Success! Rails!

Day 488:

The sand mould worked! I have mostly-straight rails of the length I wanted, and they didn’t explode, and they seem to be pretty stable!

Now I  just need to do that a few hundred more times.

Plus they take a loooooooong time to cool.

So I’m going to make more frames, to make more rails, and see where I get with that. It’ll give me something to do in the evenings that isn’t sewing ducken skins together to make leather.