Quote:
Originally Posted by Rupert
They'll certainly be useful for that. A traction engine or a simple portable steam engine, though those need something else pulling them when they're moved - I'd go with a proper traction engine so it can be used to pull stuff when you move your logging base. You'd have a portable saw mill, and probably rig cables to pull in large logs, tear out stumps, & etc., as well. You'd still need horses or oxen for supplemental towing, and to drag out trees from areas out of reach of a traction engine.
I expect you'd have companies that specialised in felling and clearing land who would own all this and would move around to wherever land was being cleared, or they'd work for some Junker who'd discovered this neat way of making money from plant and labourers that they didn't currently need on their own estates.
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Antarctic Space Nazi Steampunk lumberjack roughnecks! The mind boggles...
If only they could use zeppelins somehow...
Wait, how do you get the heavy equipment to the place to be cleared, if that happens to be some
Treckbauern's estate which is 500 km from anywhere, just surrounded by savage natives loyal to him and his surprisingly extensive collection of native-born citizen farmhands armed with archaic black powder weapons?
Yeah, sure, for the ones who grew rich from vineyards in the analogue of the Rhine valley, you use the analogue Rhine to float it there, obviously, the way he uses it to move his wine to market.
But what about ones who need farmland to feed their miners at a valuable site which isn't yet situated on a river (he plans to dig a canal), and where there is just thick forest everywhere around? Could the kind of zeppelins that might be available to the ASNs by the Year 40-50 carry equipment there?