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by tacos 3702 days ago
Ah yes. Wake up a few extra hours before sunrise to load crisp, clean-burning coal into a furnace. Then fiddle with dials waiting for it to come up to pressure without exploding. Then drag a cast iron boiler and tons of water (!) on tiny wheels across muddy fields, generating 15 horsepower. Built to scale!
2 comments

generating 15 horsepower

You don't need a lot of horsepower to replace a horse. Quite literally, one would be enough.

In the spring you have a specific number of weeks to prep and plant. The amount of food you can produce is directly tied to the horsepower you can apply. It's also the difference between spending 15 hours a day in the field versus 8.
Yeah, I know, more power means you can process a bigger swath of the field faster with one pass. But I've driven a ~15hp tractor, and it could still do a lot more than you'd think.
You're clearly a waste of time. They were already doing that. Why? Because the ICE's weren't up to snuff.