Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

While an invisible revolution was quietly unfolding in the State of Surya Nagari, another major change had swept across the empire. And this change had nothing to do with war, but with the steam engine, which had finally been put into service.

It had been over a year since Vijay inspected the first generation of locomotives produced in the Bharatiya Empire. After offering his suggestions for improvement, he hadn't paid much attention to the project. But now, a year later, when he heard about everything that had been accomplished, he couldn't help but feel shocked, and pleasantly surprised.

"Are you sure this is what they sent?" Vijay asked with disbelief.

Ganesh didn't understand why the emperor was so shocked, but when he was questioned for the letter's origin, he did not hesitate and resolutely nodded, "It is, your majesty, I personally received it."

In fact, Vijay knew that there was almost no chance that the letter was mixed up, but he was still in disbelief after reading the letter.

He only suggested some improvements to the locomotive, but these guys, within a year, have completely overhauled the entire engine under the locomotive, and they were successful in producing an engine much stronger, more resilient, and powerful than the one before, it's basically a 2nd generation of the Balwaan engine.

Funny enough, Hey Ram said the same thing and designated the engine they had newly developed as the Balwaan B-2 engine, following the popular naming convention of the empire.

Vijay couldn't hold on any longer and decisively set off to Nagpur.

As the carriage traveled at a high speed driven by the 4 Raja Vamshi Horses, Vijay couldn't help but remember the magical data he had seen in the letter.

The original Balwaan engine had been a single-cylinder, high-pressure horizontal steam engine. Now, it had evolved into a twin-cylinder high-pressure horizontal engine, with each cylinder sharing half of the total power output.

In this new version, a single cylinder alone might not match the 45 psi performance of the first-generation engine, but when combined, the dual-cylinder configuration delivered a thirty percent higher overall working pressure, thirty psi per cylinder, amounting to sixty psi in total.

This improvement was reflected in the power output as well. Previously, it produced over 48 horsepower or around 36 kilowatt hour, but now it has reached 62 horsepower and 46 kilowatt, allowing it to sustain high power usage during long hauls. Its torque output has also risen from 6000 kanda meter to 8500 kanda meter, which means that although the speed has not increased much, with only a five to ten rpm gain over the first generation, the weight it can pull has increased drastically.

He could see there are improvements in the boiler as well, before it used to use a fire-tube wrought iron boiler, but now it is using a reinforced multi-tube fire-tube boiler, overall, from the tests of Heyram and other researchers, the new engine saw a thermal efficiency of 22%, an increase of 4% in the fuel-to-steam conversion from the previous version.

All that data was exciting, but what Vijay was most thrilled about was the actual ground performance data that had been sent to him. The bloody thing now has a maximum pulling capacity of 250 tons and a sustained cruising load capacity of 180 tons. Its maximum range without refueling at a sustained cruising load is over 250 kilometers. And that was not all, using a tender increases its range by another 150 kilometers, bringing the total to over 400 kilometers. Even its efficiency has improved: fuel consumption, which was 14 kilograms of coal per kilometer under heavy load, is now down to 12 kilograms, and water consumption has dropped from 24 liters per kilometer at standard load to just 20 liters.

When the first locomotive was tested after he had left, it could only pull a maximum of 14 carts under ideal conditions and 10 to 12 carts under a sustained standard load. But now, the locomotive built with the second-generation Balwaan engine can handle up to 20 carts at maximum capacity and maintain a steady load of 14 or 15 carts, assuming each loaded cart weighs about 12.5 tons and conditions are level with good rail and weather.

---

Steam was rising from the western railway line of Nagpur, there were no civilians in the railway station, but there were workers who were loading up classified military goods into the carts standing on the railway.

"Brother, what do you think they are doing?" A worker couldn't help but ask in confusion.

"I don't know, I am confused about this as well, even an elephant can barely pull one or two carts, but now nearly 10 of them are attached to one another, can they even be pulled?"

A couple of familiar labourers were talking to each other in hushed voices. However, suddenly they heard a stern warning.

"You guys stop gossiping and quickly get to work!"

They decisively shut their mouths and quickly moved their hands and feet.

In fact, the workers were not the only ones who were confused about what was happening, most of the people in the train station were confused as well, be it the supervisor who was supervising all the goods transport, or even the owners or senior-level managers of different companies based out of Nagpur.

They were not exactly eager to come just to "see how their goods are shipped," since they had better things to do. But when the letter came directly from the emperor's office, it did not matter if they were being summoned to watch the emperor's horse give birth, they had to go.

That aside, they still could not figure out why they needed to witness their products being shipped. But when they arrived at the station, they noticed something strange. Their goods were being loaded onto the carts, nothing unusual there, but the odd part was that ten carts were linked together, and there was not a single elephant in sight.

The senior management of large companies and business owners couldn't help but look at each other in confusion.

---

Hey Ram was not in a hurry, he was leisurely doing all the final checks to the locomotive, which he named Gajraj Express.

Since his majesty had informed that he would be coming, there was no way that the train would move before he came.

In a way, this worked well for him as well, he had more time to inspect everything carefully as opposed to being rushed at the last moment.

Time passed slowly, and the guests were getting impatient, but when they were informed that the emperor would also be coming, they simply shut their mouths and sat in their places. For them now, even if someone said that they had to wait till tomorrow, they would wait decisively without saying a word.

With the entry of the Royal Guards, everyone immediately realized that his majesty the Emperor had finally arrived, everyone stood on their feet and stood aside.

The emperor of the Bharatiya Empire, Rajya Pati Vijay Devaraya Maharaj, finally set foot on the railway station, and the first thing he did was to greet the likes of them, small business owners and senior management, with a namaskara. Almost all of them felt flattered and repeatedly did namaskara and praised the emperor, but due to everyone doing the same thing, it sounded as if a class of kids were speaking all at once.

Vijay smiled, shook his hand, and went to talk with Hey Ram.

"You have given me a big surprise, Hey Ram, I was not expecting improvements to such a degree."

"Haha."

"You'll actually have to give this credit to the prince, your majesty, it is him who proposed to use twin cylinders instead of one."

"This was the biggest breakthrough we ever had."

"In fact, his idea gave rise to more ideas, like what if each cylinder was equivalent to the capacity of the one-cylinder engine of the first generation, how much could the power increase, and what if there are four cylinders, six, or eight, or twelve, so many possibilities."

"I'm already excited for what the future holds."

Vijay smiled and looked around, he could not see Vedant anywhere.

Heyram noticed his majesty's actions and soon understood his dilemma.

"The prince is in Mumbai, Your Majesty. He will collect the data of the locomotive after it reaches there."

Vijay was a little disappointed, but he nodded in understanding.

The executives and business owners at the site couldn't help but feel jealous, seeing Heyram be so close and cordial with the emperor, but what could they do, they were not geniuses who had laid down what is practically the industrial foundation of the Bharatiya Empire with two hands.

"Huh, what is His Majesty doing?"

When Vijay actually went forward and climbed up to the odd-looking carriage, most of the people were confused. However, when the steam from the locomotive rose up into the air like a chamber had been burst open, they were all shocked, some were panicked.

"Save His Majesty, quick!"

They ran forward, thinking that they were being heroic, but in the end, they were stopped by the royal guards and were not allowed to move forward.

However, just then, something happened that caused them to open their mouths so wide that a whole frog could fit in them.

The carriage moved, and not only the first one, each and every carriage connected to it moved.

"What the FU**!"

P.S. Sorry for the rough edit