To get into the part of the Sector Sixty Western Locomotive Repository the team had to carefully get rid of the airlock pressure that had been keeping the place sealed off. The big bronze doors were really heavy and strong with iron stiffeners to help hold them in place. These doors were locked tight with a pressure difference of negative four point six pounds per square inch compared to the outside air. Kael wanted to make sure the doors did not get damaged when they were opened so he put in a device to equalize the air pressure. This device used two brass valves to let air into the room.It took seventy-two minutes for the air pressure to balance out. When it finally did Tors team used jacks to push the big steel pins out of the way and the bronze doors swung open. The inside of the repository was well preserved, with no rust or damage on the steel machine tools. The team found three locomotive frames, each made of strong carbon steel plates and cast steel blocks. These frames were

The train had to be changed a lot to go from the portal of the Sector Sixty-Nine repository to the upper part of the Volcanic Shelf. The Volcanic Shelf was a job. The people who worked on the train like Marcus had to make some changes to the trains engines. They had to do this because the air was thinner at the top of the Volcanic Shelf. The trains boiler had to be changed so it could keep running.The Volcanic Shelf was made of black rock and soft ash. The hard rock was good for the trains tracks. The soft ash was not. It could make the tracks move around which was bad. So Kael and his team had to put down tracks that would not move. They used steel beams and iron ties to make the tracks strong.The team had to remove a lot of ash from the Volcanic Shelf. They used machines and a lot of hard work to do this. Once the ash was removed they could put down the tracks. The tracks were made of steel beams and iron ties. They were very strong. Could hold a lot of weight.The team also had t

The area where Sector Seventy-Eight meets Sector Seventy-Nine has a big change in the earths surface. As Locomotive Unit Three hauled the construction fleet past Mile Marker One Thousand and Twenty-Two the hard basalt rock gave way to a shiny plain of black obsidian glass and dark volcanic rock. This area, called the Shelf has unique problems that challenge the machines and the tracks. The surface of the glass plain is very smooth, polished by winds and it gets very hot during the day. It's also very slippery for the locomotives wheels.* The first big problem happened within two leagues of entering the sector. The obsidian dust caused the wheel flanges of the leading cars to wear out fast.* The fine glass particles rose from the rail heads in clouds that got into the journal boxes and threatened to damage the axles.* Kael directed the crews to use a continuous oil-wash system on the forward wheel sets.* This system used a stream of oil mixed with graphite grease to protect the mov

Locomotive Unit Four entered the part of Sector Eighty-Four. This marked a change from the uniform gypsum platforms that were in the lower basins of the previous territory. As the seventy-foot rail sections moved into the area at Mile Marker One Thousand and Ninety-Four the ground beneath them changed. It became a layer of highly fractured bituminous shale with deep seams of compressed volcanic ash. This made the track bed unstable. The massive dynamic wheel loads of the ninety-ton locomotive could displace the -grade materials and cause big vertical alignment errors.To stop the softening of the ash layers Kael started using the High-Density Calcified Grouting System right away. This system used a series of secondary mixer cars attached to the material train. The stabilization operation needed the processing of local limestone aggregate from the Sector Eighty-Three cutting archives. The raw stone was crushed inside the mixer car’s rotary cylinders. It was mixed with a twelve-percent

The Cryogenic Permafrost Fault And Thermal Induction Track Systems were a problem for the team at Western Heavy Mechanical Repository Nine. They had to leave the repository under an gloomy sky. The sky was so low that it made the whole area look like it was in a shadow. The team was led by Locomotive Unit Four. It was a machine with a lot of power. The temperature was very cold. It was minus fourteen degrees Fahrenheit. This was a problem because the steel rails could break easily in such cold weather.Kael was in charge of checking the steel rails. He used a tool to see if the rails were good enough to use in the cold weather. The rails were made of a kind of steel that was good for normal weather but not for very cold weather. Kael did some tests. Found out that the steel was not good enough. He told Valen that they could not use the rails in the weather. If they did the rails would. The train would not be able to move.Kael said that they had to find a way to keep the rails warm. T