I want to be emperor

Chapter 678

In the spring of 22nd year of Chengshun, on February 21th, the first train in the history of China, and even in the history of all mankind, the Type [-] train successfully completed the test of carrying people and cargo on the Jinling City Port Railway.

The Type 21 train pulled a total of 400 carriages, carried more than [-] people and nearly [-] tons of goods, and ran back and forth on the [-]-kilometer port railway.

In the test, the maximum speed reached 25 kilometers per hour, and it ran smoothly at a speed of [-] kilometers to [-] kilometers for a considerable distance.

Although the overall speed is not fast, its huge carrying capacity shocked the world.

More importantly, the train is not like a horse, it does not need frequent rest, as long as it carries enough coal and water, it can even run for a whole day without stopping.

If you drive during the day, you can easily run more than two hundred roads.

The most important thing is that the Type 21 train is just a test model. In order to reduce technical difficulty and avoid any accidents in the test, the locomotive of the Type 21 train actually continues the basic structure of the No. 21 test prototype.

However, with the current basic industrial capabilities of the Great Chu Empire, after solving many technical difficulties of the high-pressure steam engine, it is completely possible to double the power of the train by simply expanding the caliber of the cylinder and adding cylinders.

Now it is only more than 100 horses, but as long as it is needed, it can be produced at any time with a higher horsepower, reaching [-] or even [-] or [-] horsepower.

This means that the speed of the train can be further increased, and the cargo capacity can be further increased.

Of course, in order to increase the running speed and cargo capacity of the train, it is not only necessary to have enough power of the locomotive, but also a series of other technical supports.

For example, the carrying capacity of the rails, the stability must pass the test and so on.

According to the estimates of many experts after the evaluation of the day, they estimated that with the current overall technical level, the running speed of the train can be maintained at about [-] kilometers per hour, and then the power of the locomotive can be increased to raise the train to a higher Neither is high speed.

Because beyond this speed, the accident rate of the train will be greatly increased.

Therefore, the speed increase of the train is not simply a limitation of the train power, but more of a limitation of the overall technology in many aspects.

For example, the train brake technology mentioned above may be commonplace for future generations, but for the current Great Chu Empire, it wants to change a train with a mass of hundreds of tons or more from thirty to forty It is not so easy to stop quickly at a speed of [-] kilometers per hour, avoid derailment, and the train itself does not have problems.

Strictly speaking, the train is not an overall structure, but a traction structure. You can't just rely on the front train's parking space to brake.

It is necessary to allow each car to brake at the same time to be able to brake quickly.

At present, the solution given by Guangzhou Machinery Company is to set up a separate brake device in each carriage, and deploy a brakeman. After the train driver issues a brake command, the brakeman will pull the brake lever in each carriage. Brake on...

Although it doesn't look very good, it is much more reliable than letting the train slow down first, and then let the passengers jump off the train first, and pull the train with bare hands to brake after getting off the train!

Well, not to mention, during the previous internal train tests, the Guangzhou Machinery Company really used this kind of artificial brake that seemed ridiculous...

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Strictly speaking, the public test of trains in the Jinling Port area is not the first train test of the Great Chu Empire. In fact, several years ago, someone tried to use a low-pressure steam engine to make a locomotive, and then tow the train. The Huainan Mine was the first to do it. service company.

Later, some companies tried to use low-pressure steam engines to make trains, but they all ended in failure...Because the low-pressure steam engine has too little power to pull too many trains under the limited volume and weight restrictions, it has no practical significance.

Later, after the Guangzhou Machinery Company's Type 21 high-pressure steam engine was successfully developed, it also conducted many train tests internally, but these were all internal non-public tests.

Therefore, the impact is actually very limited, after all, the outside world is not very clear.

The train test in Jinling Port area is the first public and successful train test, and more than 10 people have witnessed this train test with their own eyes. Even Emperor Luo Zhixue brought a group of courtiers to act The first train passengers.

To some extent, Luo Zhixue personally endorsed the safety of the train.

Even His Majesty has taken the train, which is enough to prove the safety of the train.

Therefore, this time the train public operation test is a success, and its significance is also great.

Later that day, the news of the successful public test of the train spread throughout Jinling City.

Two days later, the latest batch of Dachu Mansion News reported this train test in the form of front-page reports. The comments said that this train test was epoch-making and had a very high impact on the overall development of the empire. strategic significance.

At the same time, the latest news from the Ministry of Communications was also published. The Ministry of Communications has decided to use trains on the Songjiang Railway, which has entered the finishing touches and is about to be completed.

It is expected that in three months, the first commercially operated railway of the Great Chu Empire will be run by train.

These news have aroused the general attention of the public, but many high-level people know that these are just irrelevant news.

The real big news hasn't been announced yet, no, it should be said that no decision has been made yet.

The high-level empire is considering building a large-scale railway network across the country. This is not an intra-city railway with a length of more than 30 kilometers like the Songjiang Railway, but a large-scale railway network that truly connects various cities and spreads all over the country. .

Because the construction of the railway network costs a lot, and it will cost tens of millions of dollars at every turn, so the high-level officials of the empire are also very cautious, and they have been arguing for the past two days.

The main way of arguing is not whether to build a railway or not. In fact, there is nothing to discuss. When the train test was successful on the [-]th, a consensus was reached among the top leaders of the empire, that is, the railway must be built on a large scale.

The difference among many courtiers today is, how large should this scale be?How many kilometers of railways are planned to be built in the first batch?

Some say that train technology is mature and has been applied on a large scale. At the same time, large-scale construction of railways can also effectively stimulate the development of the steel industry. They strongly support the rapid launch of the national main line railway network plan, especially the North-South strategic railway and the East-West strategy. railway.

Others believe that the investment in railways is huge, and railway construction should follow the principle of first building railways that are easy to build and expected to be profitable, and then gradually expand and connect, and finally build a large-scale national railway network.

These courtiers still have opinions on how to build the railway.

At the same time, there is still disagreement on how to solve the funds for the construction of the railway.

Some said that it is possible to set up a company specializing in railways, and then absorb strategic investment, go public to absorb funds for construction, and some believe that railway operating companies can issue construction bonds to raise funds.

Others believe that the funding problem can be solved through bank loans.

Of course, no one said that the railway will be built directly from the financial appropriation.

At every turn, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of Chu Yuan's investment in railway construction will bankrupt the central finance of the Great Chu Empire just relying on financial investment in construction.

And even if it goes bankrupt, not many railways will be built.

After all, no matter what, the central fiscal revenue of the Great Chu Empire is only more than 2 million, not even [-] million, and these central fiscal revenues are all radishes and pits, all of which have their destinations and cannot be moved. Tens of millions of Chu Yuan came out to build the railway.

Therefore, the funds for the construction of the railway must be gathered through the market, and the differences among the courtiers mainly lie in the way of raising funds.

After all, the amount of funds involved in railway construction is huge. If it is not done well, it will easily cause violent turmoil in the domestic financial market. If something goes wrong, it will easily make countless people lose their money.

At the same time, it also involves the issue of railway control. The Great Chu Empire has long been open to commercial operation of railways under Luo Zhixue's affairs. Participation of private capital.

This is because the railway is a strategic industry related to people's livelihood and national security, and the government must have absolute control over the railway.

If the right to operate railways is released, private capital may flock to vicious competition, and this flock will only be limited to economically developed and lucrative regions.

As for the underdeveloped economy, there will be no capital to build railways in places where the profits of railway operations are not high.

After all, capital is profit-seeking, and they will not engage in business that loses money.

Only under the leadership of official control can we achieve a game of chess across the country. Both economically developed and economically backward regions will build railways, and the railway operating profits in economically developed regions will be used to subsidize the railway operating losses in economically backward regions.

So from the very beginning, Luo Zhixue strongly stipulated that the railway should be run by the government.

But in the case of the government, if the method of listing and financing is to be adopted, a lot of troubles will arise.

In view of the many situations mentioned above, a group of important imperial ministers held meetings for several days in a row, and finally, under the leadership of Luo Zhixue, they came up with a preliminary railway construction and operation plan.

First of all, the Railway Management Office was upgraded to the Great Chu Empire Railway Corporation. As the only railway construction and operation enterprise in the Great Chu Empire, the company was directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Communications.

Its model is the same as the central government-run bank of the Great Chu Empire Central Bank, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, the Great Chu Empire Grain Corporation is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the Great Chu Empire Salt Company is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

Unlike many ordinary government-run enterprises under the Ministry of Industry, it is not a purely commercial organization, but more similar to a policy organization. It focuses on serving the people's livelihood and national security, and has two characteristics: national and unique.

The Great Chu Empire Railway Corporation will be fully responsible for the domestic railway construction and operation, and will set up railway branches in various regions.

The first batch of four regional railway branches established were Jiangnan Railway Company, South China Railway Company, North China Railway Company, and Northwest Railway Company, which were respectively responsible for the construction and operation of the railway network in each region.

At the same time, the regional railway companies will construct and operate the railway lines in detail, and then prepare to establish subsidiaries.

This model is different from many other large railways. It is not based on administrative regions such as provinces, prefectures, and counties, but on the basis of railway lines for hierarchical management.

At the same time, in addition to the four major regional companies, the head office also has regular departments such as supervision, administration, and personnel.

When the administrative structure of railway construction and operation is completed, the rest of the work is simple. It only needs to gather funds according to the situation to build the railway and operate it.

According to various discussions, it was decided to raise funds by applying for a loan from the bank in the name of the railway company, and the plan of splitting out shares to attract strategic investment and even go public was directly abandoned.

Even plans to raise funds through corporate bonds were dropped.

These are all to avoid subsequent troubles!
Because according to the construction plan drawn up by the top management of the empire, the Great Chu Empire Railway Company is estimated to continue to lose money for many years to come... because the railway company has a major strategic task, that is, to develop in remote and economically underdeveloped areas. To build railways to develop local people's livelihood, and even to build railways in remote and uninhabited places such as Monan, Mobei, and Northwest. Currently, these railways are purely military-ready railways. It is estimated that the construction investment will be recovered in many years The kind that even suffers serious losses in daily operations.

If this is through selling shares or going public for financing, other investors will have opinions on such an obvious loss-making business.

In order to avoid this kind of trouble, they simply did not seek external financing, and directly asked the bank to borrow money to repair the railway, and then used the profits from the railway operation to repay the bank loan.

And there is no need to worry about bank loans. Several large national banks in the Great Chu Empire are all wholly government-owned banks... These government-run banks also have the characteristics of policy banks, and they can even be said to be theirs when issuing loans to railway companies. Task……

And there is no need to worry about the railway company not being able to pay back the money. According to the predictions of various experts and scholars, the profits of railways in economically developed areas will be very rich...

If it weren't for the railway company to use these profits to build and operate strategic railways that are obviously losing money, then the expected profit of the railway company will be even greater than that of the salt company.

After all, this thing is a monopoly operation, there are no competitors at all, and it is a basic industry that directly faces the public. It seems that the profit margin is very low, but the total profit will be huge.

After the two key issues of administrative structure and funding source are finalized, the next step is to build the railway there first.

As for these issues, Luo Zhixue will not be involved too much, and naturally the Railway Corporation and other important ministers of the empire will pay attention.

After several days of urgent discussions, based on the opinions of the Ministry of Communications, it was initially planned to build a batch of railways in areas with developed economies, flat terrain, low construction difficulty, and high profitability.

In order to accumulate construction experience, but also to quickly withdraw funds to facilitate subsequent construction.

The first batch of railway lines to be publicized include Jiangnan Railway and Central Plains Railway.

These two main line railways, with Jinling City as the intersection point, extend east-west and north respectively, forming an inverted T-shaped structure.

Jiangnan Railway, initially planned to start from the Dangtu Industrial Zone, extend eastward to Jinling City, and then eastward to Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Suzhou, and Songjiang. After arriving in Songjiang, the northern branch line will be branched to connect the existing Songjiang Railway, and then a new one will be built. The southern branch of the branch line goes to Hangzhou, Zhejiang, and there is also a future plan, which is to continue westward from Dangtu to the mouth of Jiujiang Lake.

The core purpose of this Jiangnan Railway is to connect these economically important towns in the Pan-Jiangnan region and further promote the economic development of the Jiangnan region.

At the same time, it is also because of the developed economy in the Jiangnan area that the demand for freight and passenger traffic is huge. Even with competition from the Yangtze River, the southern section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and other water networks, it is expected that the operating profit of this Jiangnan railway will still be very rich. .

In the early development of British railways in the original time and space, they also faced the competition of inland transportation, and the inland waterway transportation of the British at that time had begun to use steam ships on a large scale, but inland waterway transportation still failed in the face of railway transportation, and many companies operating canals were increasingly Defeated, and then quickly disappeared!
In the Jiangnan area of ​​the Great Chu Empire, the water network is also densely covered, and the river transportation is also developed, but the railway transportation still has its huge advantages.

And this is the case in the Jiangnan area, let alone other places where there are not so many water networks. The advantages of railway transportation will be huge.

In addition to the Jiangnan Railway, the Great Chu Empire Railway Corporation quickly announced the second main line railway plan, the Central Plains Railway, through the Dachu Dibao.

The railway starts from Jiangpu in Yingtianfu, that is, the Jiangbei area of ​​Jinling City, and extends all the way north, finally arriving in Tianjin.

Along the way, it passes through Chuzhou, Fengyang, Xuzhou, Liaocheng, Dezhou, Cangzhou, and finally arrives in Tianjin.

In addition to these two main line railways, there are actually quite a few straight lines and regional local railway network construction plans.

For example, as a branch railway of the Central Plains Railway, there will be a railway extending from Xuzhou to the west, all the way to Luoyang, and in the future it will even reach Tongguan and even Xi'an, and if it goes east, it can reach Haizhou all the way to the sea.

At the same time, there is also a straight line of railway in Shandong, which extends eastward to Jinan. In the future, it can also be built all the way to other eastern regions of the Shandong Peninsula, such as Qingdao Naval Base and Dengzhou Naval Base.

There will also be a railway line from Tianjin to Youzhou and even all the way north to Zhangjiakou and into Monan. This is also the grassland railway line that the army is thinking about, and it is also the current grassland supply line.

If it goes east, it can extend to Tangshan, and then go east all the way out of Shanhaiguan, pass through Jinzhou, and finally arrive in Liaoyang, bringing the Northeast region into the national railway network.

On the contrary, it will be more troublesome to build long-distance main-line railways in the southern region. The main reason is that there are many mountains in the south, so it is difficult to build railways and the investment is large.

Therefore, there is no main-line railway plan in the south for the time being, and there are only a few regional local railway line plans.

For example, the Pearl River Delta Railway in Guangzhou intends to connect Foshan, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Huizhou and other places, and connect several places in the Pearl River Delta that are suitable for large-scale industrial development and have relatively flat terrain through railways.

In addition, Huguang can also build a railway network centered on Hantian, connecting Jiujiang to the east and Wuchang to the west, and it can be extended to Changsha in detail later.

At the same time, in Jiangbei of Hantianfu, a railway can also be built all the way north, to Xiangyang, Nanyang, and then continue north to Zhengzhou, Henan, to connect with the planned east-west railway line.

Looking at the railway lines planned to be built by the Great Chu Empire, they all have almost the same characteristics. First of all, the terrain is flat, the construction difficulty of railway construction is low, and the investment is small.

Even if there are some hilly and mountainous areas along the way, these mountainous areas will be bypassed when choosing a specific route.

The first principle of the Great Chu Empire in building railways these years is: only build railways on plain terrain!

What kind of mountains, hills and so on are not built, if you can bypass it, you can bypass it, if you can't bypass it, you don't repair it...

There is no way, the construction capacity is limited these days, and it is okay to build railways on flat terrain. If it is replaced by building railways in mountainous areas, the roadbed alone will not be able to handle it... Strictly speaking, it is not impossible to build railways in mountainous areas, no Many of the mine railways of mining companies themselves are in mountainous areas... But the railway companies are not those mine owners. The mine owners are rich, and they are willing to spend money in order to transport coal, iron ore and other goods. The key point is that the railways in these mining areas are not long, and they are only tens of kilometers long.

Those mining companies gritted their teeth and did it. Even so, most of the many mining railways built by these mining companies themselves are narrow-gauge railways.

The most used is the 75 cm small railway, and some are 1.2 meter railway, and even the 1.5 meter mine railway is rare... As for the [-] meter standard railway, no mine bosses have taken advantage of it for the time being. In the mountainous area Here to engage in this standard railway.

The cost gap in the middle is not 01:30, but a cost gap of several times.

Railways in mountainous regions are inevitable, just not now!
At least until the technology is further developed and matured, the railway company has accumulated enough experience, and at the same time, after operating railways in these eastern flat areas to make money, they can spend money to build railways in these mountainous areas.

The first principle is to build railways on flat terrain, and the second principle is to build railways where there is a huge and urgent transportation demand.

For example, Jiangnan and the Pearl River Delta railway network are all products of this policy.

In addition to these, there will be some small local railways in many places. For example, there will be a small railway in Zhangzhou in Fujian, a small railway in Quanzhou, and a railway from major mining areas to Haikou in the northeast.

There are also numerous small railway branches surrounding these mainline railways.

The railway network planning of the entire Great Chu Empire is very large, and the expected total investment is also huge, and the expected construction time is also long.

In just a few years, the national railway network can't even open...

Therefore, the national railway network cannot be seen in a short period of time, and the railway construction plans that people can see in a short period of time are still some local railway construction plans.

Among them, the most attention-grabbing project is the first phase of the Jiangnan Railway: the Su-Song Railway from Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture to Wu County, Suzhou Prefecture.

(End of this chapter)