What followed was a masterclass in working-class logistics. In the shadow of the College Sluice works, where grand office committees took three weeks to approve an ink supply order, thirty working men and women turned an alley into an emergency construction yard in less than ninety seconds. everyone could feel the scent of fresh pine sawdust, spruce resin. The sharp ring of iron spikes driven into seasoned timber.
Eren Tal commanded the line like a master shipwright. He shed his leather coat, working in his gray wool waistcoat, his bare forearms knotted with corded muscle as he hauled twenty-foot staging planks into position. The sweat poured off his brow, dripping into his eyes, but his hands moved with flawless certainty. Measuring spans with his eye, checking grain direction, and setting slanted knee-braces against the granite retaining wall.
‘Twenty-eight foot run, twelve foot rise!’ Eren shouted, lining up the stringers with his wooden ruler. ‘That gives us an eighteen-degree incline. An eighteen-degree grade means the carrier is pushing three long tons of grade pushback plus the deadweight. We need double four-by-six spruce stringers under each wheel-track, and cross-ties every eighteen inches or the timber will bow like a willow hoop!’
Four Lowbank draymen slammed the spruce stringers into place, their heavy boots kicking the ends flush against Platform Four’s stone doorstep. Two guild masons drove twelve-inch iron spikes through the planking into the mortar seams with rhythmic, ear-splitting sledge blows. Eren scrambled beneath the incline, setting three slanted ash shores directly…
