Why would a colony need to relocate?
In this Answer I came up a scenareo under which Eriek's concept makes sense.
I rather like this idea: an expedition or colony on another world has to, for some reason, pull up stakes and move. They can't build large-scale high-tech machines from scratch, so they go all steam punk. They make simple wheels for all the hab modules, and on the building housing the nuclear reactor they fashon a pair of simple steam pistons to turn wheels, with no gear box or transmission. They have a 19th century train powered by a nuclear reactor, and likewise all the solutions they come up with have a steam-punk flair, combining modern engineering knowledge with more primitive materials handling and fabrication techniques.
So, that begs the question of: why would they have to move?
My original note suggested Mars, as it would be easy to come up with new iron parts. But what could possibly necessitate a move on Mars? So I open it up to any solar system "world" that can support humans living in sealed boxes. Some moons are problematic due to the radiation belts around their primary. Besides survivability with this level of life support, they need local resources for making new large machine parts (given they have power to smelt ores, liberate alumium, or whatever), and the environment must supply a reason why they must relocate.
Edit: The reason should be "realistic" science-based, so ghosts are not an acceptable reason. The situation should consider real knowledge about the geology and other properties of the settled body. Use real resources, not McGuffinite.
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Here's a rare, but plausible scenario that nobody seems to have thought of yet:
Meteor Strike
We're already tracking all known comets and meteors in case any of them have even the slightest chance of striking Earth. We're also tracking the millions and millions of bits of space debris in orbit, to try and make sure none of them hit the International Space Station. We would presumably be doing the same for any colonies we happen to establish on other worlds (be it the Moon, Mars, Europa, whatever).
Of course, that doesn't mean we can do anything about these impacts. For example, most of the space junk that might hit the ISS is very tiny, but the relative impact speed would be so great (the ISS orbits Earth at 7km/s) that the station would still take significant damage. The only real option the station has is to get the hell out of dodge, by undertaking emergency maneuvers to shift its orbital altitude (it has in fact done this repeatedly in the past).
Now, space scientists are (generally, with a few infamous exceptions) a very cautious bunch. And need I remind you, your colony is powered by a nuclear reactor. All it takes is a single impact in just the wrong place and you'll end up with another Chernobyl, or worse. An entire section of planet/moon will be rendered even less inhabitable than it was before you got there, you'll lose trillions of dollars' worth of equipment, and potentially the lives of your colonists.
So if there's even the slightest chance of something hitting your colony, and you have no way of preventing the impact, you'll want to up sticks and move. Of course, there's a few variables to consider:
- The size and speed of the impactor (i.e. how far away do you have to get to be safe?)
- How early you detect the potential collision
- How fast you can set up your nuclear steampunk train
- How fast said train moves across the rough terrain of [insert celestial body here]
But this could also add an extra element of drama into your story: can your characters pack up and get out of range in time before that big ol' asteroid hits? Does everyone agree that they need to? And where will they move to afterwards?
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Keeping it on mars, one easy reason is flooding. If they are there teraforming, things start to warm up, a lot of permafrost will melt. That water has to go somewhere, and the most likely place is the Borealis Basin which is very low ground and covers 40% of the planet.
Water could be brought in with comets, or it could be natural ground water, since there is evidence that there may be more water on mars than we know about, but either way, if they set up their town in that area, and the water started to rise, they might suddenly realize that they miscalculated where the coastline was going to end up and now their town is going to be underwater unless they move a bit up slope.
An alternative would be setting up their town down in a canyon or up on a rim. The ground softens and it looks like the canyon wall might destabilize. The real question is how far you want them to have to travel. If they are on top of the canyon then they only need to move a few miles away. If they are down in the bottom for some reason (mineral deposits?), they could be worried that the whole canyon is unsafe, and so need to travel a very long way to get out of it.
There are places in the Valles Marineris where you could stand in the center of it and the canyon walls would be over the horizon, but there are other areas where the canyon is much narrower.
A good candidate area would be the Noctis Labyrinthus, which is the twisty area on the left of the image.
Edit:
Another idea, they might just decide to go nomad.
"We're here, in the middle of this dusty plain/crater/wherever and people go out and tell stories about the majestic views they see. How hard would it be, really, to just pack everything up and move the town around. We've already scouted this whole area, it's about time to move somewhere fresh anyway..."
Edit 2:
So it's not a colony, but a spaceship carrying pieces of a colony modular style. They crash on a planet that is really close to the star. Thankfully it was on the night side, but dawn is coming. It's a very slow rotation, but eventually the sun will rise and everything will burn. So they start setting up the modules to make vehicles to run away, but that's only buying time since they'd never make anything big enough to really survive, and rescue isn't coming very fast, so why not make the whole thing mobile...
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