The boiler would be offset to the side to allow the mount of the engine at the center edge of one side of the frame. Wrapped around the boiler would be a "Saddle Tank" to provide working water to the boiler and weight to the locomotive for better adhesion to the track. A cab containing a fuel bunker would be mounted to the rear of the boiler and contain the operating controls. The Fireman would be responsible for maintaining enough steam, (adding coal and water to the mix and preventing the boiler from exploding). The Engineer would be responsible for the operation of the locomotive and the safe transportation of the cargo.
Mandatory controls would be: water feed, sight glass, tri-cock water level test ports, safety pop valves, pressure gages, forward reverse lever, throttle control and safety warning devices. Stuff nice to have would be better whistles and bells, lights, cab heat, windows, cutoff control to the steam entering the cylinders, brake controls for the cars, brakes for the locomotive, and an air compressor to feed them.
Construction time would depend on how many workers the builder can throw at the project, materials, and the availability of the machine tooling for the fabrication of the finicky bits.
In conclusion, a twenty ton, forty Hp, geared locomotive could probably move ten to fifteen loaded cars over rough track on the level. This capacity will be sorely needed in many industrial applications, especially in places where a lot of materiel must be moved around, like a steel mill or construction of railways. A geared locomotive would get the town a lot of "bang for its buck" and could be upgraded as better materials become available.
The Theobroma Shell Game
Written by Karen C. Evans
Chocolate, that magical substance that smoothes out the rough parts of our lives. Those of us who have been living with the Grantville "disaster" these past years are reconciled to the fact that we will never have chocolate again. It isn't available in Germany in 1632.
Or is it?
The basic ingredients of the chocolate we know today are sugar, cocoa, vanilla and milk. Of the four, we know that milk is available, at least seasonally.
Sugar
Sugar has been around for a very long time. Prehistorically, the natives in the Malaysian peninsula knew and used the sweet reeds that grew on their islands. Because of the ease in transplanting and splitting the roots, sugar cane became one of mankind's earliest domesticated crops.
It took several hundred years for the cane to migrate through Southeast Asia to India. Every place that cane arrived, people tried sticking it into the ground themselves, and a new crop was born.
It may have been when the cane reached India—or it may have been somewhere else—but at some point it was discovered that if you boiled the cane for the juice, you got a thick black syrup. And if you added certain substances such as alkali or ash and then boiled some more, and skimmed the grass-like pieces from the top, crystals would form. Thus, sugar was born.
By about 500 BCE, sugar was well-known in India. The army of Alexander the Great encountered sugar around 325 BCE, and wrote about it in their reports. Some conjecture that this is when Egypt was introduced to the sweet cane, but there is no concrete proof of that.
Sugar as we know it in crystallized forms seems to have been standardized by about 600 AD in Persia. The experts were the Nestorian Christians. Some references claim that sugar cane products to that time were limited to the juice, syrup, and thick molasses, and that it was brought to a solid form by the Nestorians.
Whatever the case, the sugar industry exploded around 600 AD. Sugar was traded throughout the areas of the new religion, Islam. When the Europeans came to the Middle East on crusade, they knew of sugar, which had been traded in small quantities before that time. Now they took a hand in the farming—and more importantly—the processing of sugar. Egypt became a center for production, as did the islands of the Mediterranean.
One of the propagated myths in history is that Marco Polo brought sugar back from China in the thirteenth century, but he comments in his writings about the differences between Chinese sugar production and more familiar Egyptian processes. Sugar came to Europe much earlier than the myth proposes. In 1090, the Normans invaded Sicily, and ownership of sugar production moved firmly into European hands.
In 1494, Columbus took sugar cane from his wife's family in Madeira to the Caribbean. It was much sought after all over Europe. Apothecaries and pharmacies considered it one of the essential ingredients for their medicines.
I have found two German cookbooks on the internet that have been translated into English, and modern experimentation has begun in each described receipt to determine what sort of dish is intended. One must remember that, in most cases, cookbooks from the medieval times were a set of notes kept by the head cook of a large household, with instructions for certain dishes. There are no existent recipes for bread, as everyone who made bread already knew the method, and didn't need a recipe. So the dishes in this sort of list are the ones that the cook learned from somewhere else, or the ones written down to remember and use on occasion.
The first book is titled: Ein Buch von Guter Spise ( A Book of Good Food) [http://cs-people.bu.edu/akatlas/Buch/recipes.html] written between 1345 and 1354. There are ninety-six dishes described in it and, by my count, fifteen of them mention sugar, to the sixteen that call for honey. From other sources, it would be easy to see that sugar is expensive and difficult to get in the middle of the fourteenth century.
The second book is called Sabrina Welserin Cookbook, from 1553 [http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html]. Of the two hundred five listed dishes, eighty-five call for sugar, and only five call for honey.
That means that in the near two hundred years between these two works, both written in German, the ratio of sugar to honey went from almost equal honey to sugar in the 1350s (16:15) to almost no honey mentioned in the 1550s (5:85). Either there was a great dearth of honey in the latter period, or sugar was much more common in 1550.
In 1581, Abraham Orrelius, a Flemish cartographer, would comment that "what used to be kept by the apothecaries for sick people only is now commonly devoured out of gluttony."
The Portuguese were responsible for some of the spread of sugar out of the Mediterranean. They discovered several island groups around the west of Africa; these included Madeira, the Canary islands, and Cape Verde. Sugar cane and sugar production were introduced in all of these tropical locations. When settlements came to Central and South America, so did sugar.
By 1470, sugar refineries were found in the cities of Venice, Bologna, and Antwerp. The European model was for the raw sugar to be minimally processed on the sugar plantations scattered all over the tropics, and then the raw black syrup was transported to Europe for final processing. This way, the West kept control of sugar. By 1496, Madeira was shipping 1700 tons of sugar to Venice, Genoa, Flanders and England. And that was just one production site. It is true that by 1600 Madeira had suffered a sugar blight, and been planted in grapevines for their now-famous wine. But production and demand continued to expand throughout this time period.
It is already canon that sugar is available in Grantville and being traded. In "White Gold" by Kerryn Offord (Grantville Gazette, Volume 9), sugar was estimated as eighty dollars a pound. The source for his information is from a man named N. W. Posthmus, a scholar of the 1940s. He has tabulated shipments of many kinds to the docks of Amsterdam from 1350 through the late 1700s. Our experts in Grantville canon have decided that the most reliable source we have to date is Posthmus, so we go with the prices he provides, making suitable adjustments for transport and middlemen.
When we start to think about acquiring sugar in Germany during the war, we should first acquaint ourselves with the various grades and costs of sugar, muscovado and molasses. What we think of as normal white sugar was available in this period, but not necessarily in tidy paper bags. It was crystallized and then shipped in loaf shapes. When the cook or homemaker wanted a measured amount of sugar, they would rub the loaf with a sort o
f rasp. The resulting sugar crystals would be very white and not a consistent size, ranging from a very fine powder to about the size of a pencil lead because of the rasping process.
Other grades of sugar were also available. There were loaves of sugar that were not as thoroughly refined as the top-of-the-line sugar. Possibly referred to as "cooking sugar," these loaves would be less expensive, and also more strong tasting. They would also be less white. What we know today as brown sugar was probably not available, as brown sugar is refined white sugar crystals with molasses added back to give it moisture and flavor. Those who could not afford the crystallized sugar were still able to buy molasses. Molasses was readily available to almost every class of consumer; the darkness of the grade to determined the lower cost.
In the seventeenth century, sugar was one of the largest money-making projects for investors. It was being grown, refined, and sold by the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, Italians, and anyone else who could wedge their way into the business. Sugar was available for different prices depending on the weather, money exchange, and your political relations with whoever was selling. With so many suppliers, Grantville can shop around for the best deal.
Because of Grantville's connection with the traders in Venice, and its nearness to Amsterdam, it is not only possible, but highly probable that sugar is shipped into town as regularly as coffee. In fact, it may be in more demand and more easily acquired than the mystic black beans.
Vanilla
This very fragrant and mystic substance is not, as some would assume, the "opposite" of chocolate, but it is an essential ingredient in confectionery chocolate. Vanilla is possibly the most pleasant discovery the Europeans found in Central Mexico. The Aztecs, as the dominant tribe of the area, demanded taxes of vanilla from the small tribes that inhabited the jungles of the Yucatan. They also had a whole class of merchants who traveled to the jungles of the south to trade in vanilla and chocolate, and provide it to their noble class. More about them in the section about chocolate.
In 1520, Cortez was well-acquainted with the flavor, smell and availability of vanilla pods. Many of his hired native mercenaries were of the tribes sending tribute to the hated Aztecs.
Vanilla is the ripened seed pod of a particular orchid that was originally found from Southern Mexico down into Guatemala, on the Gulf Coast. The orchids have since been carried around the world and are raised on plantations in all tropical zones. Of the thousands of varieties of orchid that have been classified, not including the numerous hybrids, the vanilla orchid is the only orchid that produces any kind of fruit source for mankind. And of the 150 varieties of vanilla orchid indigenous around the world, the only one that produces the fragrant fruit is that of the Gulf Coast.
The history of vanilla is tightly tied to that of chocolate. It is thought that the Olmecs of Mexico were the first ones to find and use the pods for flavoring. These were the same people to first cultivate cacao, but more on that later. The vanilla was an important ingredient of Atloe, a beverage of Mezzo-America. It consists, even today, of corn masa, water, and vanilla beans. Atoles can be either sweet or savory. There are many variations, either served hot or cold depending on the time of day, and the meal being served.
Vanilla production is a difficult process. The orchid grows on a huge vine that loops up and down trees in the rain forest. And because of the climate, and the size of the vine, the pods do not ripen at the same time. They swell and burst at unexpected moments. If they burst before you can harvest them, you have lost that pod entirely.
Another difficulty with the vanilla flower is that they are very choosy about fertilization. There is a very rare type of bee in the Yucatan that pollinates the vanilla orchids so that the vine can bring the seed pods to fruition. Early entrepreneurs who brought cuttings of the vanilla orchid home to Europe were never successful in actually having vanilla pods appear, even in hot houses in Spain and England. It was some little time before the process was understood, and a method developed to pollinate the flowers for a plantation. Since the flowers appear at dawn and are wilted by the afternoon, growers must maintain constant vigilance for new flowers to pollinate and ripe pods to harvest, in an on-going frantic madhouse.
Even an un-burst vanilla pod does not mean that you have anything of worth. The pod has no detectable scent at all. The curing process can take from six to nine months, and is also very labor-intensive. Because of the intense handwork involved in pollinating and then harvesting the ripe but un-burst pods, then processing them into a fragrant flavoring, vanilla is one of the most labor-intensive products per weight in the known world.
Vanilla first arrived in Europe as a medicinal ingredient. The theory of humors at the time was very prevalent, and all foodstuffs from the New World were thought to be "hot." While it is certain that the chili peppers were definitely hot, and even chocolate could fit into that category, vanilla doesn't seem to fall into the same classification.
There is a great deal of disagreement in various food sources about the availability of vanilla in Germany by the 1630s, and the experts in chocolate do not agree with the experts in vanilla. According to Patricia Rain, known as the Vanilla Queen, as the peoples of Europe experienced this wondrous and fragrant flavoring, the demanded skyrocketed. By 1635 chocolate houses were all the rage in Germany, France, and the Iberian peninsula. And chocolate was very rarely served or consumed without vanilla. Finding vanilla separate from chocolate may be a different problem, though.
Patricia Rain, author of Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance wrote:
"It is interesting to note the role that the Jews played in sugar, vanilla and chocolate production. When the Dutch created the Dutch West India Company, they needed colonizers and offered money to those who would come to the Caribbean. Many of the Jews who had fled to Amsterdam in the previous century signed up to travel to the new colonies. Word spread quickly, and Jews from Azores and Italy joined them. They established flourishing sugar plantations near Recife in northern Brazil, only to be forced to leave along with the Dutch twenty years later as the Portuguese gained control of Brazil. They moved to Barbados, Cayenne (now the Republic of Guiana), and Pomeroon (now French Guyana). They were the experts in sugar production, and in growing cacao and vanilla.
"David and Rafael Mercado, the brothers that invented the process and machinery for refining sugar experienced the same jealousy and hatred that Jews were experiencing in Europe. They were denied the right to hold slaves or indentured servants in the Caribbean. As sugar required large numbers of workers, the brothers decided to go to the growth and production of cacao and vanilla. They quickly secured a monopoly in the vanilla trade, sending the much-desired flavor to their merchant friends and families in Europe. This remained the case until 1690 when the French plundered Pomeroon, and the Jewish monopoly came to an end."
So, again, our up-timers in Grantville may have a way to buy vanilla as easily, if not more easily, than coffee. The connections through both the Jewish commodities and the merchants in Venice indicate that both vanilla and chocolate are not only available, but bought and sold by others in the immediate area.
Chocolate
There are many species of the cacao pod, but only two produce the chocolate that we so crave. The tree known as Theobroma cacao is found in tropical rain forests from central Mexico all the way into the Amazon basin. But with this wide spread, it is not surprising that two different species developed in different places.
In Mesoamerica, the cacao trees, known as criollo variant, have long, pointed, warty, soft and deeply ridged pods which contained seed with white cotyledons. That is, the fruit of the criollo is white, containing the seeds. The forastero South American trees grow hard, round, melon-like pods, and the seeds are nestled in purplish cotyledons.
These two trees, and their hybrids provide raw materials for all modern chocolate industry. The criollo possesses flavor and aroma that are absent from the forastero. Why grow the forastero?
The criollo trees are susceptible to diseases and rot, and produce few pods. So the forastero is cultivated, as a hardier, heavier producer.
Who in history was the first to find cacao as a valuable food source? We have often been told that it was the Aztecs, but archaeologists today know this is not true. It was not even Cortez who first encountered the cacao pod. Columbus, on his fourth voyage, traded with a Mayan canoe for a cacao pod, and brought it home with him. The Aztecs only knew as much about chocolate as the expert cacao cultivators in southern Mexico and Guatemala told them.
Aztec society had three noble classes. The royals, or ruling families, the priesthood, keeping tight control on the people through fear and human sacrifice, and the merchant class. The major source of income and status for members of the merchant class was in acquiring and trading cacao beans. The rest of Aztec society was either the warriors, who were paid in cacao beans, and the peasants, who raised the rest of the food and did the majority of the work that kept society together.
The Aztecs had a concept of money. They used cacao beans. In fact, they were so concerned about wealth and how many cacao beans they could collect that there were even some very clever counterfeiters that made fake cacao beans. They were very difficult to detect, made of hardened clay and painted meticulously to resemble the real thing.
As the Aztecs moved everything in their trade on foot, the caravans of cacao beans were long strings of men with backpacks. And each backpack contained exactly 24,000 beans.
Much of my information about chocolate comes from The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe. To demonstrate how wealthy Motecuhzoma (Montezuma) was at the time of Cortez's conquest, we have the account of Pedro de Alvarado, one of the more avaricious of the Spaniards: