The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 342 Wooden Track Technology

When Zhu Linmi's Yunnan policy was implemented, the chieftains would not only rely heavily on the imperial court's grain, but at the same time all the items they produced would be purchased by the household department.Once they do something wrong again, the Ministry of Households only needs to adjust the purchase price slightly to make them miserable. As for reducing the food supply, it will kill them even more.

While all the chieftains were excitedly discussing the great "Qian" Cheng, there were voices of doubt. A thin and tall chieftain cupped his hands and said, "Your Highness, I am not questioning the imperial court, but according to what Your Highness just said, the monthly household We need to collect at least hundreds of thousands of catties of wood, iron, coal, etc., how to transport so many things? The Ministry of Households will not deal with me and wait a month to let it go, right?"

In fact, many of these chieftains are quite business-minded, and they also know that if the "worthless" products at home are transported to Guangdong and Guangxi, no, they can be exchanged for a lot of money as long as they are transported to Kunming.

However, with the current transportation capacity of Ming Dynasty, the cost of people and horses to transport these items to Kunming far exceeds the value of the items themselves.So they can only watch things rot in the mountains for generations.

After the thin and tall chieftain said, many people around him immediately echoed, "Wang Inspector is not worried."

"Yes, it would take tens of thousands of strong men to transport so many things."

"The imperial court still needs to transport grain to Yunnan, and it will cost even more money..."

Zhu Linmei smiled slightly when he heard the words, he already had a well-thought-out plan for transportation, otherwise he would not have proposed this strategy of "guiding the structure of the chieftain industry".

His solution was wooden rail transit.

In fact, as early as the [-]th century, European mine owners began to try to build wooden rails in order to increase their transport capacity. However, due to the immaturity of the technology, it was not until the end of the [-]th century that this mode of transportation began in England and spread across Europe.

Although the earliest wooden railcars were still dragged by horses or donkeys, their cargo capacity was more than ten times higher than that of horse-drawn carts on ordinary roads!The speed is also about twice as fast.

With the development of wooden track technology and the appearance of steam engines, the earliest steam trains were finally born.

Wooden rail transportation technology has been improved for more than a hundred years in Europe before it matured, but for Zhu Linmi, these technological improvements are just some small tricks, which people did not expect hundreds of years ago.The train tracks of later generations are much more complicated than this.

The most important technology of wooden rail transit is just a few points: the structural design of sleepers and tracks.This is a direct copy of the rails, just change the material to wood.In the later stage, iron sheets can be wrapped outside the wooden rails to increase durability.

Wheels with raised rims.This is the simplest, as long as you draw a sketch, even a carpenter can make it.

Brake system.In the early stage, wooden wheels and cowhide can be used, and when Daming's rubber is produced, they can be replaced with rubber brakes.

switch system.Although this is a bit troublesome, it may not be involved in the initial stage.After the wagon is unloaded, it can be directly transported on the track by manpower.After the wooden track network is built to extend in all directions, it will be too late to improve it slowly.

As for the carriage part, you can directly use the ready-made carriage carriage, and still use mules and horses to drag it.

The wooden track technology seems very simple, but due to the greatly reduced resistance of the carriage and the ability to pass in rainy and snowy days, its transport capacity is several blocks away from the traditional carriage.

At the end of the eighteenth century, precisely because of the popularization of wooden tracks, the transportation cost in British mining areas plummeted by dozens of times, but the transport capacity increased by more than ten times!Provided a steady stream of cheap raw materials for the British Industrial Revolution.

In fact, Zhu Linmi has long wanted to develop wooden rail transportation. If Daming can popularize wooden rails, the transportation cost of various materials will be greatly reduced, and it will also greatly promote the commercial development of the entire country.

In particular, the prices of wood, ore, and coal will even be halved, that is to say, the cost of producing guns and shipbuilding in the future can be reduced by [-] to [-]%.

In addition, strong transportation capabilities are also of great significance in military terms.

The first is the mobilization of troops. Tens of thousands of troops are transported by rails, even faster than cavalry, but only need to use thousands of horses.

Secondly, it will greatly improve the logistics supply capacity.In the wars of the seventeenth century, the transportation of food and supplies had a decisive impact on the battle situation.Although Jianlu had a total of hundreds of thousands of Manchu and Han troops, he could at most go south to invade once every six months. The reason was that he was hindered by his logistical supply capacity.It will take at least three or four months to raise and transport grain from Beijing and Shandong to the Jiangnan battlefield.

Previously, Zhu Linmi had fought in areas controlled by Ming Dynasty, and logistics was basically not a problem, but he knew that when the Ming army crossed the river and marched north, the battlefield was in enemy-occupied areas, and the logistical pressure would become very heavy.

Considering all aspects, it is advisable to start the wooden rail transit as soon as possible.This time, there is an opportunity to manage chieftains, so it happens to be a pilot project in Yunnan.

The construction of wooden tracks is extremely expensive. Zhu Linmi roughly calculated that it usually takes nearly 700 taels of silver to lay one mile.However, there are a large number of local people in Yunnan as cheap labor, and more or less wood is needed, so the cost can be reduced by about [-]%, which is very suitable for the trial of wooden tracks.

But even so, the money in Zhu Linmi's hands is not enough to build a dense track network in Yunnan.In the early stage of his plan, he only laid the northern and western Yunnan to Kunming, and then from Kunming to Yunnan via Tianzhou.

After the materials are transported to Guangxi, they can be transported to Macau by river and land, and then sent to all parts of the country by sea.Even so, nearly one million taels will probably be invested in the completion of this wooden rail transit line.

He glanced at the chieftain who raised doubts, and said loudly: "You don't have to worry about the transportation problem, the imperial court will invest a lot of manpower and material resources in building wooden rail lines in Yunnan, and hundreds of thousands of catties of goods will not be a problem.

"As for the purchase of your property by the household department at a high price, this is the national policy of the imperial court to favor Yunnan, and it will never be changed overnight. After a long time, everyone will know."

According to Zhu Linming's plan to make the country rich in maritime trade, a large number of warships, merchant ships and cannons will be manufactured in the future. The supplies in Yunnan may only be enough for four or five shipyards, so they can produce as much as they want.

As for importing grain into Yunnan, it is not a problem. Potatoes and sweet potatoes have been planted in Jiangxi, and many people in Fujing and Guangdong have tried it. Soon Guangxi and Yunnan will also start to promote it.It is foreseeable that this year's autumn grain harvest will be at least [-] to [-] percent higher than usual.

It is definitely not a problem to feed these chieftains with the surplus grain, not to mention that they themselves still produce grain for the time being. When their own land no longer grows grain, Daming has already planted potatoes and sweet potatoes everywhere, and grain will not be a problem for a long time.

Naturally, the chieftains didn't understand what the wooden rails were, but they understood that the imperial court would "invest a lot of manpower and material resources". In short, His Royal Highness the Coordinating King personally promised to transport the things they produced, so they all felt at ease. I began to look forward to a "rich new life" in the future.

(End of this chapter)