Capítulo 53: Chapter 131 Resources
A railway construction site in Austria.
"Damn it, what is this?" A sturdy young man sat on a sleeper and stared at the hard thing in his hand with his mouth open. "Is this meat?" He knocked it against the rails aside, and the two collided, making an extremely clear sound. "Is this a stone? How do you eat this?" He was a little worried that a few teeth would pop out if he bit into it.
The middle-aged man on the side smiled. "Are you new here? You have to take that meat back and cook it for hours to soak it."
The young man looked around and found that no one was chewing such "stones". Everyone was eating black bread and soup. "Uncle, what kind of meat is this, so hard?"
The uncle took a bite of black bread and said vaguely. "It's still imported, but it's a little older. I heard it's corned beef from the United States decades ago."
"American beef?" The young man muttered in disbelief. He never dreamed that beef could be so hard, almost as hard as a rock.
In fact, this uncle didn't know that this kind of meat was purchased from the United States by Wilhelm's catering company. It was a war preparation meat left over from the American Civil War. It has a history of more than 70 years. After being marinated and air-dried for a long time, these meats have not deteriorated, but the taste is very poor, which is completely different from fresh beef.
Fortunately, Americans have long been extremely disgusted with these things that are not only not delicious but also take up space. They are thinking about how to get rid of these things. When they heard that someone actually wanted to buy these meats, they couldn't wait to pay more than the price of cabbage. The price sold all these "ancient" war-prepared meat to the Germans.
The meat purchased was distributed to various places, where it became an additional subsidy in addition to the workers' normal wages.
The young man didn't think too much. He put away the piece of corned beef, gnawed on the brown bread, and drank a few mouthfuls of soup from time to time.
After finishing the meal like a storm, he burped comfortably.
After resting for a while, he heard a shrill whistle not far away.
The workers who were sitting, lying down, or leaning against each other stood up and got ready to start work.
With the roar of various machinery, the entire construction site became lively again. The team in front has already laid the roadbed and paved the gravel. What they need to do is to lay sleepers and fix the rails.
Trucks with suspended walls place rails one by one near the construction railway section. Workers laid the sleepers one by one on the stone foundation and fixed them. Finally, everyone worked together to move the rails to the sleepers and fix them, and a short section of railway was laid.
Taking advantage of the gap to prepare for the next rail, the young man looked in the direction he came from. He knew that this railway started from Vienna. Although he did not know how many kilometers it was paved, the shadow of the Alps could be seen in the distance ahead. If this railway didn't take any turns, it would go straight to the Alps.
Is it possible that this railway also needs to be built to the top of the Alps? Don't we also need to create a travel itinerary?
This is not impossible, after all, there have been precedents before. As early as 1889, Switzerland built one of the world's steepest railways on Mount Pilatus. The entire railway has an altitude of 1,629 meters, a total length of 2,070 meters, and an average slope of 42 degrees, which means that the train will rise by 1 meter for every 2 meters it advances.
Due to the technological conditions at the time and the terrain restrictions of Mount Pilatus, the construction of this railway can be said to be the most difficult in history. The materials for laying the roadbed were all transported by horses and manpower. There is a section of road that is full of cliffs, and the installation of rails and racks can only be done by people hanging safety ropes into the hard granite slabs.
Just as his mind was filled with random thoughts, a group of people were moving forward with difficulty in the steep Alps. Their mountaineering clothes had the logo of the resource exploration department of the German "Zeus" company on them.
The terrain here is too rugged and there are no roads at all. Let alone vehicles, even horses cannot get up. They can only rely on their legs. Everyone is also carrying heavy equipment, one step at a time.
After walking for an unknown amount of time, the bearded leader stopped and panted. "Take a break."
"Ouch!" Everyone sat on the ground, breathing heavily. Although everyone in their profession is a strong man, this journey has exhausted them.
After resting for a while, the bearded man took out the compass and map and looked at them carefully for a while, then stood up and looked around. "It should be here, everyone, prepare... God!" Before he finished speaking, his eyes suddenly focused, and he almost ran forward on his hands and feet.
"???" The people who were lighting a bonfire and preparing to make coffee were startled by his sudden move. They saw the bearded man running to a pile of rocks not far away, picking up a stone and looking at it carefully. His cheeks showed uncontrollable excitement, and even his voice trembled slightly. "Quick, everyone, come here!"
Everyone ran forward and couldn't help but widen their eyes when they saw the white and yellow stone in the bearded hand, and then looked at the same-quality ore on the ground under their feet. They were all connoisseurs and could tell what it was at a glance. "God, this is scheelite!!" Everyone cheered after the shock.
The bearded man shouted excitedly. "Quickly, start exploration and delineate the distribution of ores."
Metal tungsten is known as a strategic resource, and it has extremely important and widespread applications in the military, especially in modern military. According to literature, tungsten has been used in weapons as early as the Cold Weapon Age, and archaeologists have measured the composition of tungsten in unearthed ancient knives.
In modern times, the service life of steel barrels is not long. In order to extend the service life of the gun barrel, that is, to enhance the barrel's resistance to the corrosion caused by gunpowder burning, tungsten was added to gun steel as early as 1822.
By the time of World War I, German ordnance engineers had paid special attention to tungsten-containing gun barrels. There are data records that at that time, the Russian and French light machine guns could only fire about 6,000 rounds of bullets before being damaged, while the German light machine guns could fire 15,000 rounds of bullets, more than twice as much. Not surprisingly, tungsten production rose dramatically during the war. However, this still cannot meet the needs of the war, especially for Germany, which both lacks tungsten resources and is in urgent need of tungsten.
It cannot be said that the Germans had no foresight. They had stockpiled a considerable amount of tungsten ore before the war. But these tungsten ores simply cannot withstand the consumption of a world war. Although German metallurgists thought of finding tungsten from the waste residue of tin smelting, it was a drop in the bucket.
In the Original Time and Space The Austrian Mittersill tungsten mine was discovered in 1972. After it was put into production, open-pit mining was first started, and pit mining only started in 1986. In other words, you can mine open-pit tungsten mines for ten years without investing too much mining costs in the early stage. The most important thing is that it is the second largest tungsten mine in the world, with an annual mining capacity of 400,000 tons and an annual production of 1,800 tons of commercial metal tungsten. Even if only half of these quantities were mined during the war, it would still be enough for Germany to squander.
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