Part 42 (1/2)

We can lay asphalt roads using waste material (thick tar) from oil refining. We can also use liquid grades of oil to bind dirt roads, reducing dust clouds.

To make concrete roads, we need construction aggregate (e.g., crushed stone, gravel, slag, ash or sand), cement (to hold the aggregate together), and water. Portland cement can be made from limestone, clay and gypsum.

Road Construction Equipment

Pretty much all aspects of road construction can be done manually, with pickaxe and shovel, given enough laborers and time. However, mechanization became significant by the nineteenth century.

Manual clearing of a roadway involved use of saws to cut trees, chains and draft animals to pull out stumps, and picks and shovels to break and remove boulders. Nowadays, these tasks are performed mostly by bulldozers. If a road must be cut through hard rock, this can be done with explosives, or with ma.s.sive mobile drills and shovels. (The special needs of tunneling and bridging operations are best left to another essay.) Grading the roadbed can be done with bulldozers, sc.r.a.pers, graders, and dump trucks. Drainage ditches are dug by backhoes and trenchers. Stone may be broken on site by rock crushers, or rock fragments may be hauled from a quarry by dump trucks. The road base may be compacted by various kinds of rollers. Specialized pavers lay asphalt or concrete pavements over the base.

Thanks to that WVDOT garage, Grantville has an a.s.sortment of modern heavy equipment. In the post-RoF world, this equipment has two functions. First, it can be studied by up-timer and down-timer machinists with a view toward either duplicating it outright or, if need be, constructing a ”geared-down”

version. Secondly, it can be used for actual road maintenance and construction. My guess is that the latter use will be restricted to roads close to Grantville.

According to canon, in spring 1632, Boris Ivanovich Petrov observed a ”horse-drawn device” in use outside the Ring for road improvement. (Huff and Goodlett, ”b.u.t.terflies in the Kremlin: Part 1, A Russian n.o.ble,”Grantville Gazette , Volume 8). That description was a little vague, but the authors tell me that Boris had observed a ”Fresnosc.r.a.per” in action.

This was an 1883 device for smoothing out a road. It had a blade which could be tilted down to sc.r.a.pe up soil, pus.h.i.+ng it into a bowl. The blade could then be raised so that the load could be slid without excessive force. Finally, the bowl could be rotated to discharge the soil. The rotation was limited by an adjustable crossbar, thus controlling the thickness deposited.

Except where the ”legacy” equipment is in use, we can expect to see a gradual progression from manual to mechanized roadbuilding, and from use of a few general purpose machines (like tractors with various attachments) to the proliferation of specialized equipment. Equipment like sc.r.a.pers will at first be hauled by draft animals. However, they will ultimately evolve into self-propelled vehicles.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the USE needs to expand its road network. The first roads will necessarily rely heavily on local materials; and therefore may be macadam if they are traversing rocky country, and plank roads if they are piercing forest.

The Catch-22 of building asphalt highways is that we need the asphalt to make the highways, and we need the highways to transport the asphalt to the construction site. So we will probably start with graveled, stabilized soil, macadam, wood plank and concrete roads. Once we have road, rail or water links to an asphalt source, we can ”tar” the macadam roads so that they last longer, and ultimately upgrade the primary routes to asphalt.

While concrete roads don't require exotic materials, it may be desirable to defer building them until we have significant motor traffic. Rigid pavements are better suited to autos and trucks than to horses.

Roadbuilding isn't ”high tech,” but it is nonetheless of tremendous military and economic significance. Of course, road improvement is not going to be limited to the immediate vicinity of Grantville.Magdeburg is the chosen capital of the USE because of its superior location. Once it is serviced by modern roads, it will be the economic and political center of the USE. I would not be surprised if, a century after the Ring of Fire, people were wont to say, ”All roads lead toMagdeburg .”

References

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EncyclopediaAmericana ”Public Works,” subhead ”Roads and Highways,”Encyclopedia Britannica (modern).

”Highway Engineering,”Collier's Encyclopedia ”Asphalt,” ”Roads and Streets,” 1911Encyclopedia Britannica .

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Forbes, ”Roads to c 1900,” in Singer, et al., ed.,A History of Technology, Vol. IV,The Industrial Revolution, c. 1750c. 1850(Oxford U.P.: 1958).

Agg, ”Tractive Resistance and Related Characteristics of Roadway Surfaces,”Iowa State College of Agriculture Publ. # 36 (Feb. 6, 1924)(TL 295 A45).

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Clarke, Charles E., ”The Construction of Plank Roads: Plan, Materials, Cost, Durability, originally published in thePrairie State newspaper (Jersey County,IL)(Sept. 14, 1850), online at /~iljersey/JCHistory/JC-Plank.htm Stoddard, ”Riding on the Plank,” online at munity/history/tmile.htm [WHS] Watertown Historical Society, ”The Story of theWatertown Plank Road ,”

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Reader,MACADAM: The McAdam Family and Turnpike Roads, 17981861(1980).

Modern Roads WAPA Asphalt Pavement Guide, ”Asphalt Pavement History,”