House Valcas Locomotive and Rolling Stock By Imperator-Zor Watch

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In the past decade the Dark Elves had displayed interest in steamships, in particular after the onset of the escort war. They have also applied steam engines to aide in manufacturing to produce better weapons in cheaper quantities. The notion of using it for general transportation has been persued on a small scale with the construction of a few steam powered riverboats and similar low range coastal ships. Despite this their has been considerable reticence on the matter on land transportation. Arable land is at a premium in the Drow homelands and the creation of rail lines would mean getting the consent of multiple (typically quite conservative) warrior houses to drive track across their estates is no easy feet, leaving aside a general lack of enthusiasm for that field in general. As of 37 IA there has only been in two Drow states which have exhibited any real interest in steam powered locomotives. In Galthirith there has been some use of locomotives to enhance the existing tracks in and around mines since 30 IA (despite some explosion related setbacks). In Valnothron there has been modest interest in the field away from the homeland.



The Dark Elven colonies are on the whole less conservative than their homeland based counterparts. Many of the new Colonial Houses had emerged from The Discarded and the constraints of territory which had been such a prominent issue for the Dark Elvish homelands. As such in 32 IA the colonial House Dailrys (which had made arangements with several other houses) of decided to commission a railway leading from their large agricultural estate to the riverine port town of Talyrisvel forty six kilometers away and for three locomotive to work said line. House Dailrys had taken an unusual interest in infrastructural rail transportation and the potential that could be presented in the ability to transport it's produce and pigs to market in a couple of hours as opposed to the three and a half days that it took to send it by ox cart or herding them over the existing roads without a fair amount of the grain being consumed or mass being lost in transit. To house Valcas this was a side project and given lower priority than naval developments. Work on the route began in 32 IA with the clearing of the path and the creation of several new bridges and in Sping of 34 IA the first rails were laid. Work on the locomotive fleet began in 33 IA and despite an accident which resulted in the destruction of the first prototype during tests in 34 IA work continued without too much problems. There were hopes at the time to complete the project at some point in the latter half of 35 IA, but these were dashed with the onset of the war with resources being shifted to military ends and as the cost of raw materials steadily climbed. Even so in early 37 IA the railway was completed and the last of three functional locomotives were delivered, despite the fact that the project took much longer and consumed more resources than previously expected.



The locomotives were something of an oddity in their design. Most non Infrastructural attempts at building locomotives attempted to replicate the form of Infrastructural units. House Valcas instead elected to build a locomotives based around a design more akin to what is used on a ship. Notably it has a modified double expansion compound steam engine a fair amount of parts taken from riverboat production. The Number Four Locomotive is the most powerful of the batch, producing up to 73kw of power. As of it's first three months it burns charcoal as coal has become more of a premium item. It is set to a gauge of five Drow feet, or 1.55 meters.



So far these locomotives have proven to be effective on the first Dark Elven railway, even if their minimal cabins (little more than shelters) are not particularly comfortable for their slave operaters. The line has a total of four stations on which cargo is taken on and off along with a basic rail-yard at Talyrisvel. So far only two types of of car have been made for this line: the most common type are basic wagons with removable walls onto which cargo, pigs and slaves are loaded. The second (not depicted) is for Drow passengers and is more akin to a carriage, only two have been produced as opposed to some forty cargo wagons. So far the Dailrys Rail Line has done it's job well enough though given the costs in it's construction there is little desire to continue development, at least for the next few years.

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