Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 799 The penetration of the main artery

After a heavy rain in midsummer, there is a fresh smell in the air.Outside Tielingbao Railway Station, a group of well-dressed men were standing on the wooden platform, looking forward to watching a steam train named "East Bank Red No. [-]" enter the station.

The train departed from Xiayihe Township, passed five townships including Canyon Township, Baichiyabao, Meluobao, Hejinbao, and Chengshanbao, crossed 330 kilometers of prairie, and arrived at Tielingbao, an important inland town.The vehicle adopts the newly developed steam locomotive "Donganhong No. 220", the key equipment adopts the latest ferromanganese, double cylinder design, and the total horsepower reaches an astonishing 12 horsepower.There are 330 carriages on the whole train, one tender car, one passenger car, and ten freight cars (each with a load of [-] tons). It took only a little over ten hours to run the [-] kilometers, and the efficiency can be described as amazing. Incomparably high.

The "East Bank Red" train can run directly from Xiayihe Town to the terminal Tieling Fort, and the small railway bridge with a span of 40 meters on the Heihe River near Hejin Fort also contributed.This small bridge took a lot of manpower. After five months of construction and a sky-high construction fund of 9 yuan, it was barely open to traffic.In order to build this bridge well, people on the east bank have adopted many tricky methods, such as building artificial sandbars in the center of the river, such as building a bridge pier every 6-8 meters, etc. , Ferromanganese components are also the main reason for the high construction cost of the bridge.

Moreover, the General Administration of Railways was worried about the quality and design of the Hejin Bridge, so when introducing it to train drivers, it also repeatedly emphasized that it is necessary to slow down before getting on the bridge to prevent excessive impact and shearing forces from damaging the bridge deck materials.But even so, after the "Donganhong" train passed by this time, many components on the deck of the Hejin Bridge were still damaged or deformed, and they urgently needed to be replaced.It can also be seen from this that this bridge will inevitably become a big burden for the General Administration of Railways in the future, and the maintenance cost will be frighteningly high.

But then again, without this railway bridge, materials can only be transferred by ferry from Xiayihe County to Tieling Fort, which is time-consuming, laborious and expensive, and cuts off the utility of the entire arterial-level railway by a small half. It is a pity.Of course, there is no such shortcoming now. Although the maintenance cost of this mere 40-meter railway bridge is high, it is still a railway bridge that can pass a train with a single load of 12 tons after all.The entire 330-kilometer journey from Xiayihe Town to Tieling Fort takes only ten hours for a 120-ton cargo. Is there any more efficient means of transportation than this in the world?

At this time, the vest standing in front of the train station platform was also feeling ups and downs. He remembered that six years ago, inspired by the completion of the double track of the Luomei Railway, some people in China just wanted to build such a railway in the northwest inland area. Neither the Commission nor the Council have any substantive plans yet.They didn't even do prospecting, and they weren't fully prepared in terms of funds and manpower.However, someone from the State Administration of Railways proposed a plan for this railway, and believed that a huge sum of about 400 million yuan would be required to complete the entire journey—this is still a plan that considers the use of slaves in order to reduce large expenditures—it can be divided into five years After completion, the annual investment is about 80 yuan.

The figure of 400 million yuan was an unheard of huge sum in those days.If this plan is really implemented, it will cause the annual expenditure of the State Railway Administration to increase by more than 150%. challenge.Therefore, when some transportation and railway officials first proposed to build this railway with a length that broke the record on the east coast (of course it is also a world record), the Government Council responded to them on the grounds that the central government has limited finances and resources need to be built. Prioritize use to more important places.

Later, in a meeting held by the government and some business people in the second half of the year, after the plan was solemnly proposed for the last time, the central government, which had just turned the budget into black letters, finally began to seriously consider it.Later, seeing the hopeful National Railway Administration striking while the iron was hot, coupled with the successive discoveries of coal mines, gold mines, manganese mines, and iron mines in the Tieling area, the Executive Committee finally made up its mind to start the construction of the Northwest Railway.But at that time they only had more than 20 yuan of funds on hand, which was enough to build the first phase of the railway. Fortunately, each company finally contributed some funds, which more or less made up for the lack of central finance.

In this way, under the support of many parties, the Northwest Railway was finally built stumblingly, and was finally completed at the beginning of this year, which took five years and five months.As for the cost, although a large number of slave workers were used to reduce the cost, it still cost more than 390 million yuan in the end (more than half of which are two-year bank acceptance bills, and it is estimated that 50 years and 51 years will be the peak period of exchange) Even if it is spread over six years, the annual expenditure is still close to 65 yuan, which can be called an extremely heavy financial expenditure, and it also greatly increased the degree of domestic inflation.

But now with the completion of the railway, it can be said that everything has paid off.The closed inland industrial and mining areas have a thoroughfare leading to the coastal area, and there is no obstacle to the exchange of materials and personnel on both sides. The villages and towns along the railway will surely usher in great development opportunities under the tilt of the national policy.In fact, this is easy to understand. The country has spent a lot of money to build the railway. If the railway is not rich and the products are not rich, then it will be a mess. Is the government stupid?

"I've been looking forward to this railway for six years." Brushing off some soot that was blown onto his sleeves by the wind, the vest turned and walked back to the waiting room, smiling at the officials surrounding him and saying, "Great development!" The era of Tieling is coming, and Tieling's resource conditions are very good. There may have been some disadvantages in terms of location, but now that the railway has been connected, this disadvantage has been smoothed out a lot. The two backbone enterprises, Tieling Special Steel Works and No. [-] Heavy Machinery Factory , will surely bring a new round of basic industry development and progress to our country. Among other things, our ferromanganese has been used by many departments and has been made into bearings, cylinders, wheelsets, gears and other various mechanical parts; the steam engine newly produced by No. [-] Heavy Factory is also closely watched by various departments, and sooner or later it will be applied on a large scale to locomotives, ships, factories and other occasions. Generally speaking, the development prospects are very good..."

The vest mentioned Tieling Special Steel and Yizhong, two large manufacturing enterprises, but the future development of Tieling is by no means limited to this.Recently, Northern Arsenal, a leader in the military industry, has cooperated with Dayuhe Armory Factory (the East Bank Company holds 65% of the shares and the government holds 35%), the first arms factory in the East Bank Republic, to convert the former Dayuhe Armory Factory Part of the business in the comprehensive workshop was spun off and moved to Tieling Fort, and a new professional manufacturing company, the Western Forging Factory, was established, of which the Northern Armory Factory held 60% of the shares, and the Dayuhe Factory held 40% of the shares.

The establishment of the western forging plant made up for the gap in the domestic forging industry on the east coast.Nowadays, with the gradual development of the east coast industry, the demand for forging parts of high quality, high specifications and different sizes is increasing. It became more and more difficult, and even the size of the processed parts gradually failed to keep up, which seriously affected the upgrading of the domestic machinery industry on the east coast.

In such a situation, the western forging plant came into being.Under the plan of the Government Affairs Council, four enterprises with machining capabilities, the First Heavy Machinery Factory, the Railway Machinery Processing Factory, the Northern Arsenal, and the Dayuhe Armory, will use the latest technology and latest industrial achievements to produce the large-scale machinery required by the Western Forging Factory as soon as possible. Steam forging hammer to replace the already relatively old hydraulic machinery and improve the forging processing capacity of the factory.In addition, the Machinery Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Technical Section of the Western Forging Plant will also work together to start research and development of newer and better forging equipment with funds allocated by the state. Of course, stamping equipment will also be developed at the same time to ensure the production capacity of the plant. comprehensive and diverse.

It can be seen that Tieling Fort and its surrounding areas are indeed another industrial center that the state has focused on building (Ping'an County is currently the only heavy industry and energy center in China). This is the original intention of the committee's western development policy, so the rise of the machinery industry here is also expected.

However, after the machinery, energy, and metallurgical industries gather here, higher requirements are placed on local infrastructure and transportation facilities.Therefore, after the opening of the railway to Tieling Fort, the team of tens of thousands of workers (mostly slaves) involved in the construction has not been disbanded.On the contrary, under the leadership of their superiors, they drove to Tieling Fort in batches, and then built a lot of construction nearby. Factory buildings, streets, highways, reservoirs, canals, housing and other facilities were not left behind. The huge Tieling Fort almost became a cloud of smoke and dust. big construction site.

In addition, the Northwest Reclamation Bureau represented by Ma Jia, the State Administration of Railways represented by Peng Zhicheng, and other units such as the Ministry of Communications reached a rare consensus, and began to urge the 11 members of the new Executive Committee to approve the fourth phase of the Northwest Railway that they jointly applied for as soon as possible. , that is to say, the railway will continue to extend from Tieling Fort to the edge of Wujiang River.In this way, all kinds of industrial products in the Tieling area can be transported here nearby, and then shipped to sea, which is convenient and quick.After all, the section of the river in the lower reaches of the Wujiang River has a wide river and deep water, and it can directly pass through seagoing ships, which is of great value.

They have even chosen the end point of the railway, which is the port of Salto in later generations.At present, the Ministry of Immigration has relocated more than a thousand immigrants from the Ming Dynasty who have just arrived here, and built castles and docks here.Together with the subsequent groups of residents, they will build settlements, wharves and railway stations in this place named Daxing Port (implying the prosperity of the west and Wujiang area), making preparations for the opening of railways here in the future.

(End of this chapter)