Work on Sinkhole Mine and Some Upgrades

Village Station - New Back Office

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I had recently made some upgrades to a couple of the buildings in town. For instance, I made a small office in the "behind the stairs" area of the village rail station. As you can see, there's a crafting bench, but with that is an electric furnace, battery box and rolling machine. These allow me to build things I might need for the railway and recharge my equipment without having to run all the way back to the basement of my home.

Maceration Station

Likewise, I also moved some of the "valuables" storage in the warehouse. Where I originally had placed the redstone dust chest, I instead put a macerator. This way I won't have to run off to my basement to macerate any ore blocks I bring back to the village. Both the warehouse macerator and the rail station equipment are powered by copper cables connected to the main line feeding my MFE from the solar tower in town. I may end up building a central "power station" in the underground below the solar tower itself, and then have power lines running out along the roadways, heading to different buildings or powering street lamps.

Sinkhole Mine Surface Office

The majority of what I did today, though, was to work on shifting things around over at Sinkhole Mine. I moved the system I had in place to bring material from the bottom of the mine up to the surface into a building, making it much more safe. There's also a lot more surface storage, allowing for longer mining trips down below. Then I only have to fill storage carts and bring them back to the village for sorting.

Sinkhole Mine Subterranean Office

I also built a small office down at the bottom of the mine to make filling the bottom part of the automatic movement system much easier. There's also a ladder leading up into the surface office, so I no longer have to rely on swimming up the water pouring in from the ocean. I'm considering trying to remove that water to make it less troublesome to move around at the bottom of the chasm.

To one side of that underground chasm, I had found a second one, this one having a floor made of a lava lake. I turned most of the surface lava into obsidian, and had also found the entrance to an abandoned mine. I stripped quite a few valuables from the walls of the mine, but I know there's plenty more to be had. If you look closely in the final picture above, you'll see a hole in the wall with a fence gate. Eventually, I'll set up a system where I can send a storage cart from the abandoned mine, have it empty directly into the chest, and then have the contents shunted straight up into the surface office.