I want to be emperor

Chapter 813 Sideline Business of Railway Corporation
The Mid-Autumn Festival in the 33rd year of Chengshun, compared to the previous festive atmosphere, was limited to a small number of people, and the festival was just a pure festival.

This year's Mid-Autumn Festival has changed from a traditional festival to a super-large-scale, even nationwide consumption!

Countless people, especially those who live and work in other places, made plans in advance, bought train tickets, flocked to the train station when the holidays first came, and then took the train back to their hometowns that they hadn't been back for many years.

There are also some people who take their families to the suburbs and even other places to play during the rare seven-day long vacation.

Of course, more people will still choose to celebrate the festival locally, accompany their families to enjoy the moon and eat moon cakes, and take them to the commercial street for a stroll or a restaurant.

Whether people are going back to their hometowns, traveling, or celebrating local festivals, they will consume more or less!

Although the vast majority of people do not have the habit of spending money extravagantly, and their consumption base is relatively small, you can't stand the Great Chu Empire with a population of more than 4 million!
There are too many people, and the per capita consumption is one Chu Yuan, so the sum total is more than 4 million Chu Yuan.

And the Chu Yuan is very valuable these days. The annual central fiscal revenue of the Great Chu Empire is only more than 7 million Chu Yuan.

The consumption of just one festival has reached more than 4 million, which is quite obvious for the economy of the Great Chu Empire.

The increase in people's travel will increase the development of trains and ships, as well as the development of hotels, restaurants and other service industries.

The development of the transportation and accommodation industries can also stimulate the development of more industries.

Economic development has always been driven by one link. As long as you increase the terminal consumption, you can quickly promote the development of the entire economic system.

Although the role of the festival economy in stimulating the economy is far less than that of infrastructure construction, it is a real public consumption, and it is not a one-off, and it has sustainable development.

Therefore, the high level of the empire is very satisfied with the knowledge of the festival economy of this Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.

After making a head start now, I am also thinking about waiting until the Spring Festival to make a bigger wave.

For the Spring Festival, consumption can also be stimulated again. After all, in a year, you can save money on weekdays, but you have to spend some money to get some benefits during the New Year. Prepare some New Year’s goods, and then make new clothes for your children.

Luo Zhixue is quite satisfied with the economic development driven by this Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. It seems that the more than 1000-page reports written by those economists are still somewhat useful!
Although he didn't read that report...but he couldn't deny that the report was useful.

After the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, all walks of life returned to normal production rhythms, but many people had fun during the holidays, and they were not used to returning to work again.

There are also some people who eat and drink too much during the festival, and there are not a few people who drink themselves into the hospital.

As a result, during the long Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, instead of being able to take a break, hospitals across the country ushered in a peak period for medical consultations. Many doctors and nurses had to stick to their jobs for a long time during the holiday.

Also sticking to their posts are the patrol police and the C-class division garrison in various places.

The huge flow of people during the long holiday is very likely to cause various problems, such as mass casualties and the like. In order to ensure that the public security during the long holiday does not deteriorate, almost all police officers are not allowed to take vacations and continue to stick to their jobs, or even work. The time is longer than usual.

The reason why the Mid-Autumn Festival of the Great Chu Empire can run smoothly this time is inseparable from the fact that a large number of staff in the medical, patrol, and transportation industries continue to stick to their jobs.

Of course, after the long holiday is over, people in these industries will gradually make up for their holidays through rescheduling.

After the mid-autumn festival carnival ended, people from all walks of life in the Great Chu Empire returned to work one after another, which also included the railway construction site of the Railway Corporation in Guizhou.

When the Great Chu Empire was in Chengshun for 27 years, it formally drew up the construction plan of the Xiangyun Railway, and began preliminary surveys to determine the route.

In the 29th year of Chengshun, the Xiangyun Railway officially started construction.

This Yunnan-Guizhou Railway will extend southwest from Changsha in the south of Chu, enter Guizhou after passing through Huaihua Mansion, then reach Guiyang, the provincial capital of Guizhou, and then extend towards Yunnan, and finally arrive at Kunming, where the Heshengyun Railway will be planned. That is, the railway section of Thang Long Province (north of Annam).

From Changsha in the south of Chu, through Guiyang in Guizhou, Kunming in Yunnan, and finally arrived at Haiphong Port under Thang Long Province, thus forming the Changhai Railway.

This long-sea railway is the first southwestern main railway in the Great Chu Empire, and its economic and strategic roles are extremely important.

In the early days, due to technical and financial problems, the Great Chu Empire failed to build railways in the southwest region. However, with the continuous improvement of railway construction technology, especially after the great development of tunnel and bridge technology, there is still a large amount of steam engine The construction machinery and equipment for power are also applied to the construction of railways.

The Great Chu Empire already has the technical ability to trim railways in complex mountainous terrain, and at the same time can better control costs.

The maturity of these technologies made the high-level empire determined to invest huge sums of money in the construction of the Changhai Railway, the main railway line.

This southwest main line railway will be started from two directions at the same time!
On one side is Chu Nan Huai Hua extending westward, and the other side is built from Haiphong Port in Thang Long Province.

Both sides start working at the same time, and finally converge at the middle point.

Changhai Railway, this is also the key project of the second batch of main railway lines of the Great Chu Empire!

Well, it's not the only one, it's just one of the key projects. In addition to the Changhai Railway, there are actually many other main line railways under construction in the second batch of railway construction plans.

Including two railways entering Sichuan, that is, the Guiyang-Chengdu Railway from Guiyang to Chengdu. This railway will end the history of Sichuan without railways and greatly facilitate the people of the empire to travel to and from Sichuan.

Of course... In fact, the Chuanjiang route has also been opened now. The Chuanjiang channel has undergone many renovations. At the same time, with the use of steam ships, the Chuanjiang is no longer a difficult channel to cross, but has become an important transportation channel for Sichuan Unicom to the outside world. A large number of people and goods travel to and from Sichuan through this waterway.

It's just that the limitations of the Chuanjiang route are relatively large, and it is also quite dangerous, far less convenient and safe than the railway.

In addition, the Jinchuan Railway has also drawn up a second route, planning to build a railway from Chengdu to Baoji, Shaanxi, so that goods in and out of Sichuan can go south and east, as well as north and west.

More importantly, this railway can also connect the railway network of the southwest region with the railway network of the northwest railway, allowing the Great Chu Empire to obtain a second strategic railway channel to the northwest.

The construction of the Changhai Railway and the two Sichuan Railways will allow all provinces in the hinterland of the mainland to fully implement trains. Well, except for Dongkang and Xikang...

The terrain of these two places is too harsh, and the empire has no plans to build a railway in this area in a short time... It's not that they don't want to build it, but it's really impossible to build it.

Let alone the railway, a lot of money has been spent on building an official road that can pass horse-drawn carriages all these years. In this way, this road called Liangkang official road has been blocked from time to time... because Many road sections have been repaired today, and they will collapse tomorrow for you to see!
Building roads every day...the pressure is too much.

If it weren't for the protection of the garrisons in the Liangkang area, suppressing the remnants of the local chieftains, and ensuring a high-pressure situation, the Great Chu Empire would not even have such a road that requires a lot of money to maintain every year.

Except for the Liangkang area, the traditional provinces in the Guan, including the provinces in the Northeast, will basically realize the history of railways.

As for some newly occupied areas in the non-traditional hinterland, it depends on the situation!
The terrain is relatively good, it is easy to build railways, and there are also places with huge demand, which are under construction or have already been repaired, such as Central Asia.

In Lianghe Province in Central Asia, people have opened the railway a few years ago.

Back then, the Northwest Railway went all the way through the Gobi Desert and the desert, from Shaanxi to Gansu, and then to Yining, Turpan.

After arriving in Yining, it is actually not difficult to build a railway in Central Asia. The local terrain is flat and the construction is very convenient. Just build it along the established railway.

In just two or three years, the Great Chu Empire built the railway to the Governor of Lianghe Province, 'Turk City', and continued to build it all the way west, planning to build it all the way to the mouth of the Volga River and the coast of the Caspian Sea.

At present, the Great Chu Empire has established Xihai City, the westernmost fortress city of the empire, on the northeast coast of the Caspian Sea, stationed a large number of troops to guard the frontier, and beat the Russians by the way!
In order to provide logistical supplies for these troops stationed on the frontier, the people of Chu State are also worried about it. At present, they rely on the local garrisons to graze on their own, reclaim food on the spot, and then spend a lot of manpower and power to organize a large number of horse-drawn carriages. Transport weapons and ammunition in the past.

In order to reverse this situation, the army urgently needs to repair the railway to Xihai City to solve the logistics supply problem of the western frontier garrison that has plagued the army for many years.

Therefore, compared with the railways in the Southwest, the railways in Central Asia are actually easier to repair, and at the same time, the strategic needs are more urgent, and the repairs are easier and simpler.

Of course, the rapid repair of railways in Central Asia is also related to the fact that the army has provided a large number of engineers and even ordinary troops to help repair railways all year round.

So although this railway belongs to the Railway Corporation, in fact, in many railway construction sites in Central Asia, the construction personnel on it are actually soldiers of the army...

The army built it as a military supply railway, and did not charge the labor costs of the railway company. It only asked the railway company to continue to repair the railway to the west.

To put it simply, the Railway Corporation paid for technicians, and the Army sent people to repair the railway in Central Asia.

As for other places, this is not the case for the time being.

However, the railway in the west is limited to Mesopotamia for the time being, and there is no plan to build a railway in the vast Siberia region in the north.

For the strategic railway going west, one is enough in a short period of time. There is no need to build another in Siberia further north... After all, there are really few people in Siberia now, and it is useless to build a railway in the past.

There is a Northwest-Central Asia railway network that can allow the Chu army to go to the west, and then go to various parts of West Siberia through the river.

I have to say that the water network in Siberia is really easy to use.

In the past, the Russians were able to rely on the dense water network in Siberia, which expanded to the easternmost Bering Strait in just a few decades.

The current Great Chu Empire can also rely on Siberia's dense water network to successfully fight all the way to the Ural Mountains.

The reason why they don’t continue to fight west is purely that the high-level empire now feels that the Russians in the west are not a threat. At the same time, the railway has not yet been repaired. It will be too expensive to continue to fight west. They won't be able to run with long legs anymore, so the top officials of the Great Chu Empire decided to take a break in the west and wait until the Central Asia Railway is extended to Xihai City.

In recent years, the focus of expansion has been on overseas India, Africa and North America.

Especially in North America!
In order to expand rapidly in North America, the Great Chu Empire is frantically preparing to build a railway across North America's east and west coasts.

It is just building a railway in North America. Judging from the current local population of more than 100 Chu people, I am afraid that this railway will cost the railway company even its internal warehouse!
So even if it is decided to build the railway, how to build it... specifically how to raise money to repair it, and how to pay back the cost in the future, is a headache for the top management of the empire.

From the looks of it now, no matter how it looks at a loss... But if you want to colonize and occupy North America, especially if you want to go deep into the middle of North America, and even go to the east coast.

Railways are indispensable.

The empire's North American expansion strategy requires this railway, but the investment cost of this railway will be very high, and the cost recovery will be very long.

In order to reduce the financial pressure of the Railway Corporation, it is also to give the public more confidence to buy the railway company bonds of the Railway Corporation and raise funds.

After discussing with a large number of cabinet leaders, Luo Zhixue decided to give more specific rights to the construction of the North American East-West Railway.

That is to allow the railway company to obtain land ownership within five kilometers around the railway line, and mineral mining rights within [-] kilometers away from five kilometers away.

Giving assets along the railway line, this point has actually been adopted during the construction of the local railway of the Great Chu Empire, but before it was not meant to be given along the railway line, but to the land near the railway station.

At present, all the land near the railway station in the Great Chu Empire will be assigned to the Railway Corporation, and then the Railway Corporation will auction off the land after the railway station is completed. In some places, the Railway Corporation will invest in the construction of some commercial buildings, and then rent out real estate or real estate to benefit.

Relying on this method, the railway company has obtained a second income besides train operation...

Well, the Railway Corporation is currently the largest commercial local developer in the country...

Similarly, the Railway Corporation itself will open hotels, convenience stores and the like in the railway stations.

In short, it is to generate more income around train operations, and then subsidize train operations and railway construction.

There is no way, the train fare and cargo freight of the Great Chu Empire cannot be set too high in order to support the country's economic development. In many cases, some railway lines of the railway company do not make money, or even operate at a loss.

At the same time, the funds for railway companies to build railways come from the capital market to collect funds, or bank loans, or railway company bonds, and these funds require interest!

Operating expenses, construction expenses, and capital costs have all led to the tight financial pressure of the Railway Corporation.

If Luo Zhixue didn't give them some side jobs to generate income, they wouldn't even be able to pay back the interest... You know, the railway company owes hundreds of millions, and the annual interest is a huge amount.

This requires repayment of debts, while continuing to invest heavily in the construction of railways, and to use some strategic railways at a flat cost or even at a loss.

People's Railway Corporation is also very difficult to do.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue gave the land near the railway station to the railway company and allowed them to operate and develop these lands.

However, the situation in North America is more special, and the funding problem is more prominent and serious.

Considering the land in North America, the land that the future railway will pass through will be unclaimed land, which will not involve any land acquisition fees, and there will be no property rights disputes.

In order to stimulate the future development along the railway line, Luo Zhixue simply waved his hand and directly gave the railway company the land property rights within [-] kilometers along the railway line, and the mineral development rights within [-] kilometers and [-] kilometers away.

In this way, relying on these land and mineral development rights, the Railway Corporation will be able to solve the funding problem.

(End of this chapter)