Alongside lorries and tractors a variety of more specialized self propelled vehicles have been built by Infrastructure, with Steam Shovels being among the most common. The motorized shovel assembly was first built in 24 IA though it was placed on an unpowered chassis, with the first self propelled unit being completed in 27 IA. Production of free roaming steam shovels was comparatively slow but steady at 4-5 vehicles annually for the next six years until the outbreak of the Escort War. Only four were completed over the course of the conflict, including two that been under construction at the beginning of hostilities. After the war production of new Steam Shovels was increased as a number of major construction projects. By 46 IA some 170 of these vehicles were active, with 85 of them assigned to the various construction projects along the Urblaast Loriv canal.
Steam Shovel No 157 is fairly typical of these vehicles, completed in 44 IA at the Dockland Construction Vehicle Plant. She has a wooden cab and is operated by 2-3 people: the crane operator, the fireman who tends to the boiler and as often as not an apprentice operator. She's not fast on the ground, with a top speed of 5 kph on a good road. Even so, she can move more than a cubic meter of dirt or gravel in one go, allowing at most three people to do more work than two hundred workers with shovels and wheelbarrows. This means that Earthmoving can be done more quickly and cheaply and those extra 200 workers can be put to other tasks.
In addition to their use on state construction projects, it is possible for Infrastructural Citizens to hire out these vehicles for their own endeavours.
Statistics: Posted by Zor — 2024-03-30 11:32am