Steam Engine Factory (ETW building)
| Steam Engine Factory | |
|---|---|
| Category: | Metal Industry |
| Level: | 3 |
| Turns to build: | 6 |
| Building cost: | 6000 |
| |
| Requires | |
 Ironmaster's Works | |
| Technology | |
 | |
This huge workshop creates the steam engines that provide motive power for other factories and their machinery; it is a birthplace of a new industrial age.
Steam-powered machines offer a way of creating unlimited goods of many kinds in an efficient manner. This enormous ironworks designs, develops and creates new static steam engines of many kinds, from the beam engines used to pump water out of mines, to the stationary engines used to haul plateway wagons, and the complicated expansion engines that provide power to other machines. Each new technical advance can be applied to work of the shop itself, and other manufactories soon benefit from any improvements, if they pay for the engineers’ work.
The “shock of the new” in the 18th Century was immense and nowhere more so than in the factories and mills that steam engines made possible. Workers’ lives were transformed overnight, and they had to master many strange new concepts: steam engines could be dangerous things. It’s worth remembering that many workers were killed by poorly installed or maintained engines, boiled alive thanks to steam explosions or mangled by a lack of safety features. Safety valves to release excess pressure were fitted not only to save lives, but also the expense of rebuilding if a boiler did explode!
This building can be built when the region has iron resources.