Chapter 283: Second Plant

The first outside coachbuilding contract was signed seven days later.

Halford and Sons agreed to supply twenty-five four-passenger tonneau bodies, painted Brunswick green, built strictly to Teucher blueprint standards.

The first finished body arrived at the Helmarte assembly depot on a flatbed dray the following Tuesday.

Ernest was there with Davies and two young inspectors. He held a long brass checking gauge against the rear mounting points where the timber sills met the steel chassis frame.

He checked the left sill. Then the right.

He laid the gauge down. "Rejected."

Mr. Halford, who had come in person with his son to watch the delivery, went red in the face. "Rejected? What are you talking about? Look at that paint! That’s five coats of carriage varnish!"

"The paint is beautiful," Ernest said. "The rear cross-studs are four millimeters too wide."

"Four millimeters!" Halford shouted, his hands waving in the air. "It’s wood, Baron! A carriage body moves with the weather! A tap with an iron mallet and it drops right over the bolts!"

"If you force it with a mallet, the timber stays under tension," Ernest explained, his voice entirely unruffled. "The road vibration will crack the sill within five hundred kilometers. Furthermore, if this body only fits this specific frame, my mechanics in the field cannot swap a damaged body for a fresh one."

Halford threw his hat onto the timber dray. "For forty years, we have fitted every carriage body by hand to its own running gear! That is true craftsmanship!"

"That is slow craftsmanship," Ernest countered. "If every part must be filed and forced by hand, we cannot build five hundred cars. We provide the brass gauges so that every body you make fits every chassis we press in Belfast. Take it back, slot the rear iron plates four millimeters inward, and bring it back tomorrow."

Halford cursed under his breath, kicked the dray wheel, and ordered his carter to turn the team around.

Hollen, sitting on an empty oil barrel by the door, shook his head with a grin. "You have a gift for making friends, Ernest."

"I have a duty to make interchangeable parts," Ernest said.

The second body Halford delivered was two millimeters off. Ernest sent it back with notes.

The third body dropped over the chassis studs with a clean, dry thud, every hole aligning perfectly without a mallet.

By the tenth body, Halford’s carpenters had stopped arguing. They had built their own timber jigs to match the Teucher brass gauges. Their assembly time dropped by a third, and the finished wood was cleaner than anything their shop had turned out in ten years.

When the twenty-fifth body cleared inspection without a single pencil mark on the sheet, Halford stood in the depot yard, watching two mechanics bolt it to a rolling chassis.

His son stood beside him, holding the company ledger. "Father... the carriage sales for private broughams dropped by four this month."

The old coachbuilder took a slow breath of the cold morning air, watching the green car roll toward the fuel bay. "How many more bodies does Teucher want?"

"Fifty," the son said quietly. "At full price."

Halford pulled his coat tighter around his neck. "Take the contract, lad. We build motorcars now."

Not everyone in Helmarte was as practical as Halford.

Three days later, two hundred carriage drivers, stable boys, and farriers marched down King’s Avenue toward the municipal hall. They carried hand-painted banners made of coarse sackcloth:

HORSES FEED FAMILIES.

KEEP THE ROADS HONEST.

MACHINES BELONG IN FACTORIES.

Arthur stood by the window of the Teucher commercial office, watching the crowd gather outside the municipal gate.

"They’re getting louder," Arthur said, his brow furrowed. "The conservative papers are taking their side. They’re calling the Model One an aristocratic nuisance that ruins the streets and starves honest workers."

Ernest stood beside him, his hands clasped behind his back.

He didn’t mock the men below. He looked at their worn coats, their rough hands, and the wooden placards they held in the cold wind. He understood where they came from; his own father had spent decades swinging a sledge over an open coal fire, surviving week to week on whatever iron the local merchants bought.

"We cannot stop the engine, Arthur," Ernest said softly.

"I know that," Arthur sighed. "Commercial reality does not care about feelings. But politics does."

"Publish a notice in the morning papers," Ernest said.

Arthur turned his head. "What kind of notice?"

"Teucher Motor will establish an employment school at the Belfast works and here in the capital," Ernest replied. "Any carriage driver who wishes to learn motor handling can attend a three-week course without fee. Any blacksmith who wants to learn oxy-acetylene welding and gear fitting can apprentice in our service bays."

Arthur looked astonished. "Without fee? Ernest, that will cost tens of thousands of riels!"

"It costs less than a riot, Arthur," Ernest said calmly. "And we need five hundred mechanics by next spring anyway. Why look for men who know nothing about horses when we can hire men who already understand roads?"

Hollen let out a low whistle from the corner. "The boy is learning how to think like a politician. Heaven help us all."

The notice appeared in three broadsheets the following morning. It didn’t stop the complaints entirely, but it took the teeth out of the protest. Within two days, forty young carriage drivers had put their names on the waiting list at the Teucher service depot.

At five o’clock that evening, Wallace drove Number Sixty-Four into the eastern service court of the palace.

The four-week evaluation was officially over.

The car looked like an old soldier. The green paint on the lower fenders was scratched from roadside gravel; the canvas weather hood was weathered gray; and the odometer on the dash read three thousand four hundred kilometers.

Aldren walked out of his office, his master ledger tucked under his arm.

He didn’t say a word. He walked three slow circles around Sixty-Four. He tapped the hickory spokes, looked at the dry oil unions, inspected the clear glass sediment bowl, and checked the tire treads.

He stopped by the front fender, looking at Wallace.

"Final tally, Wallace?"

Wallace handed him the grease-stained driver’s log. "Three thousand four hundred and twelve kilometers, Mr. Aldren. Zero engine breakdowns. One loose spoke tightened roadside. One punctured tire changed in twenty minutes. One fuel filter drained in two minutes."

Aldren closed the small book. "Did you ever have to hire a horse team to pull you home?"

"Never, sir," Wallace said firmly.

Aldren nodded once. "Go clean the mud off your boots, Wallace. You start training six more drivers on Monday morning."

Wallace’s face broke into a broad, tired smile. "Yes, sir."

Two hours later, Arthur walked into Ernest’s office back at the city works.

He was carrying a single sheet of heavy parchment bearing the red wax seal of the Lord Chamberlain’s office.

Arthur laid it on the drafting table with deliberate slowness.

"The Board of Green Cloth has approved the contract," Arthur said, his voice unusually quiet with awe. "Sixteen Model Ones for the Royal Household. Ten light dispatches, four passenger tonneaus, and two closed vans for the Crown Post."

Ernest didn’t look up from his desk. "Good."

"Good?" Arthur shouted, throwing his arms wide. "That is ten million riels in royal drafts! Every municipal council in the kingdom will follow their lead!"

He picked up the master sales ledger, dropping it onto the desk with a thud.

"We have two hundred and eighty orders backlogged, Ernest. Seven weeks of waiting has become ten. Halford’s shop can only make thirty bodies a month, and Works Number Three is running day and night shifts just to keep up with the crankshafts."

Arthur pulled a red pencil from his pocket and wrote across the top of the production sheet:

DEMAND HAS EXCEEDED PRODUCTION CAPACITY.

Ernest looked at the red text for a long, quiet minute.

He looked out the high window toward the south yard. Even at eight o’clock at night, the gas mantles were burning bright in the machine bays. The muffled beat of testing engines echoed across the crushed limestone.

Works Number Three was full. The foundries in the valley were running at full blast. Adding another shift would only strain the tools.

They couldn’t just expand the line.

They needed an entirely new plant.

Ernest reached into his drawer, pulled out a fresh, unlined sheet of drafting paper, and flattened it against the green baize.

Hollen, who was lacing his work boots by the hearth, stopped. He looked at the pencil in Ernest’s hand, then at the set of his jaw.

"No," Hollen groaned. "Don’t do it, lad."

Ernest didn’t look up. "Do what?"

"You have the railway face," Hollen said, pointing an accusing finger. "The face you made when you decided to lay two hundred miles of iron through the western marshes in a single summer."

Ernest lowered his pencil to the clean paper.

In neat, bold block letters across the top of the sheet, he wrote:

TEUCHER MOTOR COMPANY — MANUFACTURING PLANT NO. 2

CAPACITY: 5,000 UNITS ANNUALLY

Arthur stopped breathing.

Hollen closed his eyes, let out a deep, defeated sigh, and reached for his tobacco pouch.

"Here we go again," the old ironmaster murmured.