Hadrian’s villa, Tibur, April 249
It was a great day for Titus Aelius Alauda. Heir to a freedman of the emperor Hadrian of gallic origin, he was born in a mildly successful equestrian family, his father a well known trader in eastern pearls from the erythrean sea. Being the third son, Titus had gone to the Academia Militaria Practica where he’d entered the path to become an engineer. Soon he’d discovered he was not made for the military discipline but that he was a talented engineer, developing a fascination with steam engines.
On this day he was about to show to the Emperor and his court his latest invention, one which had cost a lot of investment. Wooden beams sheeted in iron had been laid down in two parallel tracks from the imperial villa at Tibur all the way to the praetorian camp in Rome and on them had been put a machine of his invention : an automobile.
The contraption was constituted of a chariot on which was a advanced steam-engine of the so-called multi-tubular design, where water was heated by multiple tubes full of air heated by the furnace, so as to turn more quickly into steam which then worked pistons which moved the wheels of the vehicule.
Guided by the rail, the contraption could sustain the speed of a horse walking at a fast trot for far longer than a horse, only needing to be fed coal or another kind of fuel and have its water tank replenished. But more importantly it could tirelessly truck seven other carts behind it, which could be filed with either goods or persons.
Titus had first started with a small track in the gardens of the Academia, and shown the potential of the system : while he’d needed four iterations before getting to a successful result, he’d been able to truck carts overloaded with stones without any issue.
He had also had to find ways to bend the tracks to his needs and discovered the maximal angle such tracks could take in curves, as well as find the right kind of tracks. He would have prefered fully metallic tracks but that would have been too costly, beside being too complex for the metalworkers he had asked.
Instead sheets of iron had been bent around the top of the wooden cores, and the rails had been mounted of solid wooden transverses to make sure they did not move and loose the distance between them, which had to be kept given that the wheels were kept at a constant distance by the cart’s axle and could not get out of the rail…
Once he’d been confident of his success, Titus had shown his results to the emperor, who had been enthused and immediately ordered a first line to be built between Rome and his favourite retreat in the countryside, namely the old palace of the emperor Hadrian.
The rails had been laid next to the paved way linking the capital to the imperial ressort, on the cleared ground usually used by carts when dry. This had greatly facilitated the laying of the tracks, although in some places it had been necessary to go on the lands of some local owners due to the curve being too sharp for the tracks.
A trial run had been executed during the night before to bring the machine from Rome, a more difficult exercice given that the automobile had to go uphill, and had given no problem : none were expected for the return trip...
Now the time had come for the first trip of the machine with a hundred selected passengers including the emperor and his wife. Now had come the dawn of a new era…
