Getting the goblins up to speed in the new cryogenics facility took ten days, part of which was start up time, and most of which was making enough dewar flasks to collect the liquid air under each of the cryocoolers. Interestingly, I really didn't need to hire any additional goblins, because most of their job is waiting to empty devices. While they do have to work harder now, it's still a lot of waiting, though I'm sure maintenance periods are going to be more common. It's also a bit noisy, given the number of mechanical devices in use.

The facility itself is actually very cold as well, which I expected. In fact, this did seem to improve efficiency somewhat, since the ambient air was already cooled below the freezing point of water. I had expected about 9 gallons a day, but we were actually producing 11. On the other hand, I've had to put an order in for special bargas wool clothing to be made for all the workers, to help keep them warm while they go in and out of the facility.

I then had six days where I needed to wait for enough liquid air to be produced that I could start experimenting with the column design. So I took that time to start clearcutting trees in a new area. I expect any day now that the aqueduct will be completed, so I walked down to the coast where the new road will get built along the coastline, and started clearing trees that were in the way. I technically already did my levelling requirements for this next year, since I did that huge burst earlier in order to evolve, but getting some extra levelling beneath my belt didn't seem like a bad idea.

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Fine tuning the distillation columns took quite a while. I actually have two large cryocoolers installed as the top condenser on both of the large towers, and another one on each of the smaller ones. Thankfully, we have plenty of fluorite plates to use for heating elements for the reboilers, so that was relatively easy to install.

All in all, between doing density sampling and repeatedly refilling and waiting for the column to reach equilibrium over and over, I spent eighty-seven days before I was finally confident that all the columns were working well enough for our purposes. While I worked on this, the construction teams resumed building the walls around the facility during the spring rains.

Afterwards, I took a day to tell Zeb about adjusting the work distribution for construction teams. I'd thought about it before, and outside of spring, when the streams swell due to all the rain, we can still dedicate at least one construction team to working in the reservoir above the water line. Then, when we reach winter, we can add more teams in to expand the base level of the reservoir more to catch up with the rest of the year's work.

I had thought about us just stopping reservoir work, but I decided that we should probably keep working on it while we can. Once the city as a whole reaches a certain population level, we'll probably start using the reservoir as a way to keep a constant stream volume, and store more of our early year's water for later in the year. Right now, we actually over-drain the reservoir earlier in the year, and then practically empty it in winter. If it weren't for the aqueduct we built, we actually would already have water issues in the city, but thanks to it providing a decent amount more of water, we're still keeping up, even in winter.

I spent another two days taking apart the old cryogenics facility, while I had a handful of goblins move the old components to the new facility. They aren't going to be used there, but like I said, I want to keep the technology secret. Ultimately, we're actually producing far more of the stirling engines and crystals than I have uses for. So, while I want to keep growing crystals and just storing them away, I want the casting facility to also start making other items that would benefit from replaceable parts.

Namely, I've started to think about the idea of mechanizing some of our transportation on the island, though it does come with it's own challenges. First and foremost, unlike most other engine types, we can't actually easily regulate the output torque on a stirling engine. They take time to ramp up and down. Depending on what sort of application I want, this could be hard to overcome.

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For instance, if I wanted an automobile style vehicle, there would need to be a lot of complex machinery to allow the vehicle to stop and start quickly. Thankfully, the items I have in mind are much simpler. Things I'm thinking of are more like small rail, conveyors, cableways, and ships. There, having a slower startup and shutdown are less of an issue, and added bulk for controls are less of a concern.

Any large system that we might end up designing would obviously need quite a bit of maintenance, but we're reaching population levels where that is manageable. For instance, multiple cableways could prove very useful for transport of goods between locations on the island. Thinking about it, it's actually a bit of a problem that we're digging through the mountain, because any fluorite powered machines travelling through the mountain would need to be supplied with mana crystals. However, if we ran a cable line through instead, then we could simply have the cable's engine sit on the surface. That being the case, I think small rail is basically out the window, since the only places it would go are probably better served by cableways, given our geography.

As for ships, I'd love to design a much better ship. The first powered ship design we made was the paddlewheel steam ship, which functions somewhat like a barge. With the leviathans about, I don't know if we have a good use for ships or not right now, but in the future they could form an invaluable part of our military. All the ships that are currently used for transporting troops are wind propelled, so having a much heavier, metal ship powered by an engine would probably upset the balance of power far more than the rifled artillery did. However, building such a thing would be a massive endeavor, and require a huge amount of metal.

From here on out, about every half of a year, I'm going to need to return up the mountain, and work on growing the mana crystal using our argon supply. So, while I wait for that first batch to be done, I think I'll start tinkering with design ideas for a cableway, along with thinking about where I'd want it built.

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The whole facility is built right against a hillside, meaning I had adequate testing grounds for attempting to make a gondola system. The first step was getting the cabling and cable cars designed. Since I already had a decent idea of what things needed to look like, I started from what I knew, and then started experimenting with the designs to find something that worked well. What I quickly found, however, was that we probably should have been using these for at least some of our projects already.

After eighteen days, I'd had enough cable made from steel to start doing testing. For now, I set the system up with a top station about three hundred feet away from the bottom station with a single intermediate tower with a few rollers to help lift the cable. What I found was that I didn't need a motor at all if I intended all trips to be down the hillside. The weight of a gondola full of rocks was more than enough to pull the cabling with it. In fact, it kept accelerating until it crashed at the bottom.

Right now, it's not that useful to us, but a few years ago, when were were moving lots of stone from the tunnel down to the city, it would have been worth considering. The same situation goes for when we were hauling ore from the cave on the mountain all the way down to the city. Now, however, any ore we find is likely going to be found on the far side of the mountain in the tunnel being dug there. While we're still extracting stone from the tunnel, not all of it goes to the city, so it seems even less useful to make a one way system there.

However, there are two places that could use a powered cableway currently. One could go from this facility up the mountain to about the level where the cave is by following this ridge all the way up. That would allow much easier transport of crystal material and argon between here and there.

The second location is also along this ridgeline. Specifically, bringing ore over the ridgeline to the sulfur ore roasting and smelting facility. While we were able to handle hauling all the ore by hand using carts for most of the way, it did require an inordinate amount of manual labor. Though that did at least give a lot of the goblins work to do to earn some cash.

I'm going to continue doing testing to see what sorts of cableway designs I can make work. I'm also thinking about the idea of a ground embedded cable car, like what some cities used, but instead have it running through the mountain through the completed tunnel, though we'd almost need to expand the tunnel again to make that happen. The benefits of having a powered transport from one side of the island to the other would practically eliminate any concerns about shortages in one city versus another.