Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

The route plan for the Rhodesian sea-going railway trunk line and the plan for the latest internal combustion engine traction locomotive of Dongda were quickly finalized. According to the previously planned route from Chavuma to Beira, it basically covered the ore transportation and the most densely populated areas in Rhodesia, and the overall length increase was not very large.

With Dongda's latest internal combustion engine heavy-duty train traction locomotive, each heavy-duty ore transport train in the future will be able to haul 80 tons and reach a speed of kilometers per hour. The transportation time from Chavuma to Beira will be basically shortened to within one day.

In terms of passenger transportation, the latest internal combustion passenger locomotive of the University of the North is used, with a maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour. It basically realizes high-speed railway transportation on the straight route section. Although it is still some distance away from quasi-high-speed railway, for Rhodesia, this is already a groundbreaking event.

A higher speed would not be cost-effective, because this railway needs to take into account both heavy-load transportation and passenger and freight transportation, and the investment cost is limited, and the local infrastructure in Rhodesia is not very perfect.

The planning and construction of the railway is already quite advanced at 120 km/h, a level that the main world has not yet reached.

That is to say, Ren Zhong and Ding Wei were able to come up with this plan under the current condition that labor costs are not particularly expensive. After all, in this era, the cost of building a 80-ton heavy-load railway track that can reach kilometers per hour is much more difficult and expensive than building ordinary railway tracks.

However, the efficiency of copper ore transportation cannot be improved without heavy-load railways. One 5-ton heavy-load train requires at least three ordinary trains. In Rhodesia's current environment, for a single-track railway built according to the standard of one-day delivery, running five trains a day may be the limit. Without -ton heavy-load railways, it may be difficult to achieve a transportation capacity of one million tons a year.

After all, more passenger and freight trains will have to be interspersed in between to meet the needs of personnel transportation, and they cannot be used entirely for ore transportation. According to current plans, heavy-load trains are basically designed to run one shift a day, and can transport more than 300 million tons of ore a year under extreme conditions. This transportation volume can almost match the future ore production capacity of the northern Rhodesia copper mines within at least ten years.

Compared with Nigeria's 3000 million ton double-track iron ore heavy-haul railway, Rhodesia's sea-going railway trunk line has much smaller capacity.

But relatively speaking, the railway mileage in Nigeria is much shorter, and the planned iron ore production capacity is much larger. It is precisely because of the successful demonstration of this plan by the University of International Business and Economics in Nigeria.

Sir Philip then set his sights on Ding Wei. After all, Dongda is really resolute in doing things, and it has a good reputation in the financial circle of Fog City. Now that Nigeria's iron ore production capacity has reached the most important level of tens of millions of tons, this heavy-duty railway has begun to produce benefits. The overall investment in Nigeria's heavy-duty railway is almost 2 million pounds. Now the freight income has exceeded the level of 1000 million pounds per year, and the profit is several million pounds. When the iron ore production capacity fully reaches the design level of 3000 million tons, the Fog City financial circle estimates that the annual profit of this railway will exceed 1000 million pounds just for ore transportation. There is no problem.

The passenger transport inserted in between would be the icing on the cake, but Nigeria is so poor right now that not many people would take the railway, an efficient and comfortable means of transport.

However, with the mining of iron ore, Nigeria's local fiscal revenue has greatly improved, and the local economy has begun to develop by leaps and bounds. The completion of the railway has greatly facilitated the export of local specialties. Nigeria's economy is completely doubling along the railway.

Apart from anything else, even the plantations, now with the railway, a large amount of undeveloped land in Nigeria has not only become Dongda's plantations, but the foresighted people of John Bull's family have also begun to imitate the Dongda plantation method and started to open plantations here, using the same mechanized farming and hybridization technology as Dongda, turning Nigeria into another important factory area for grain exports very quickly.

After all, the climate here is better for agriculture than that in Rhodesia, the local population density is much higher, and the consumption capacity and human resources are several times stronger than those in Rhodesia.

Sir Philip was an old John Bull aristocrat and also a pragmatist. After he and Ding Wei had witnessed the construction speed and per-acre yield of the Dongda plantation in Rhodesia, he no longer had any doubts about Dongda.

After comparing and inspecting Nigeria's railway and mining construction, the old knight believed that Nigeria's economic take-off miracle could be fully replicated in Rhodesia.

Because northern Rhodesia has more valuable copper resources, all it needs is a railway to transport these resources out.

With common economic interests involved, the whole work progressed quickly. The planned railway route from Lusaka to Beira had actually been designed before. After the railway planning experts from the University of the East took an aerial survey by plane, they believed that there were no major problems with the planning of this railway. Most of the area is plains with a stable geological structure, which is very conducive to the construction of heavy-duty railways. Except for the mountains near Harare, which are more challenging, and the geological structure near Beira after leaving Harare, which is a bit softer, the geological conditions in most other areas are good and the cost is not high.

Therefore, the southern route from Lusaka to Beira will remain basically unchanged.

The two sides disputed for some time over the northern route from Chavuma to Lusaka.

According to Sir Philip's idea, the line from Mongu to Seranga, Kadimaloa, Livingstone South to Lusaka will cover more than twice the population of the line from Mongu, Kamao, Mongbwa North to Lusaka. It may be more beneficial for passenger transport in the future and will also facilitate the connection of these densely populated areas in northern Rhodesia.

However, doing so would not only increase the railway mileage, but also make the terrain more complex and the technical difficulty of building heavy-load tracks greater, which would be very unfavorable for the export of ore.

Therefore, after comparing the designs of the two routes, railway planning experts from the University of the East suggested that a light-load passenger line be built on the southern line in the future. If it is built according to the standard of 80 kilometers per hour, the construction cost will be at least half of the current -ton heavy-load line. In terms of usage, it can also connect the population of these areas with the regional administrative center of Lusaka.

This can be rebuilt in the future.

The North Line is the best option for a heavy-load dedicated line that is as straight as possible.

After some bargaining, the southern line plan was shelved and is expected to be built within ten years after the main sea route is completed.

In this way, the planning work was completed within 3 months, and the 1680-kilometer railway line is now divided into sections and bidding has started simultaneously!

With the current railway infrastructure capabilities of Dongda, there were 300,000 engineers who were transferred to other positions. In addition, Dongda’s railway construction has been crazy in the past decade, and the number of professional railway construction workers has exceeded one million. There are more than a dozen engineering bureaus across the country!

Therefore, the fifteen bidding sections were divided up before each engineering bureau even got a piece of the pie! Of course, considering that the construction was to be carried out thousands of miles away, there would not be so many ordinary workers this time. Each bidding section was prepared to send more than a thousand core technical workers, that is, technicians who operated mechanical equipment, project managers, and key engineers.

The remaining general workers will be recruited directly from the local area.

According to the agreement reached between Ding Wei and Sir Philip, it might be necessary to mobilize hundreds of thousands of local workers to absorb all of Rhodesia's idle labor force at once.

Although these black uncles were illiterate and management was difficult at first, this did not pose a problem for the builders from Dongda. They quickly divided the people into project engineering teams according to different types of work. The team leader was appointed by someone sent by Dongda, and the deputy team leader was chosen from prestigious local workers.

Literacy education is also conducted every week to help these black workers master basic listening and speaking skills (in both Chinese and English). For those who perform well and have quick minds, Dongda even recruits them to start technical training in vehicle driving and construction machinery driving.

For the Dongda engineering team, which has no ambitions, they are not worried about having nothing to do after teaching these black uncles apprentices. They simply regard the technical improvement of their work partners as a responsibility.

Since Sir Philip was closely connected with the Engineering and Construction Department of the University of International Business and Economics, he fully agreed to the quasi-military management and training measures of the University of International Business and Economics for the originally lax tribal employees. Therefore, those who completely disobeyed the management and were lazy and slacking off were resolutely removed from the team by the University of International Business and Economics. After all, the job opportunities in this construction were very rare for these black uncles. Although the wages were not much, there was definitely no job in the local area that could make more money than this.

Working hard for a year on the construction site is at least equivalent to what they earn from farming the land for more than two years!
Because Dongda is now growing grain in Rhodesia, the local grain prices are very affordable, and the money earned from the construction site can at least buy the output that they cannot get even if they farm for two years!
Thanks to Dongda's literacy activities and institutionalized management, not only did the speed of project construction greatly accelerate, allowing the black uncles involved in the construction to have the ability to listen and speak Chinese and English, but they were also exposed to some of Dongda's planting skills, promoted hybridization technology, and even organized them to visit Dongda's plantations. In this way, these black uncles who were originally closed in the tribe and knew nothing, discovered that there are such wonderful planting methods outside, which can produce more food with less land.

This will not only boost the level of agricultural planting technology in this area while building the railway, but will also open up new possibilities for the future lives of the black uncles in the local tribes, so that they will not fall back into poverty after the completion of the railway construction.

Sir Philip and his colleagues were also very wary of these literacy classes at Todai at first, but after sending people to listen in depth many times, they finally felt relieved that Todai was doing what they had always wanted to do but had never been able to do.

Moreover, after they were able to understand basic Dongda dialect and English, the management of these workers became more orderly. There were no more translation conflicts with the management, and work arrangements and on-site commands became smoother.

This has further accelerated the construction of the railway. The railway line, which was originally planned to be completed in two years, may now be completed ahead of schedule.

This meant that the mine construction that Sir Philip was in charge of was somewhat behind schedule, and he had to find Ding Wei for help.

Because Dongda also had very mature experience in ore mining and a complete set of mining and excavation machinery and equipment in Nigeria, Ding Wei took this opportunity to sell tens of millions of mining machinery and equipment to Dongda.

Although Rhodesia and Sir Philip were unable to pay the money immediately, there was no rush. Ding Wei and his team directly agreed to use the ore to offset the payment based on the current market price of copper, and they would not even be charged interest.

How could Sir Philip refuse such a win-win situation? The large-scale development of the entire Rhodesia was carried out in full swing under the cooperation of East Datong and John Bull.

Thanks to the participation of the East African infrastructure maniac and the ready-made demonstration case in Nigeria, the financing of the Rhodesian Railway in the financial market was very smooth. After only two rounds of convertible bonds were issued, 100 million pounds of East African Railway shares were sold, which turned into a steady supply of construction materials sent to Rhodesia.

According to the agreement reached privately between Sir Philip and Ding Wei, most of the steel for this railway came from Dongda, because Dongda's steel rails were about 15% cheaper than John Bull's.

But in terms of cement and railway signal systems, these orders were given to the chaebols behind Sir Philip, giving these John Bull family chaebols a chance to share the cake.

However, Ding Wei soon discovered that a large part of the signal system orders fell into the hands of Goldenstar, and the source of semiconductors still came from Dongda!

This means that most of the money needed to purchase materials for the construction of this railway was taken away by Dongda University.

So on the whole, the concessions made by Dongda on factory costs in building this railway not only did not result in losses in the end, but it also made back more money from material costs.

For enterprises in the domestic railway industry chain of Dongda, they have received many large orders for construction machinery and railway construction materials this time. From Nigeria to Rhodesia, they have directly taken a lot of big cakes from these overseas projects. After all, the total construction scale is nearly 3000 kilometers.

Even in China, this is a huge number. After all, China is building about 10,000 kilometers of roads every year.

It is precisely because of these exceptional benefits that Ren Zhong actively advocates that infrastructure should start to move towards overseas markets. In the current overseas market, due to the good image of Dongda in not competing for anything, and the fact that what it does is public welfare and basic things, the Western powers' competitors have no advantage in competing with Dongda.

However, for Dongda, these are not only about solving some of the overflow of infrastructure capacity, but also about creating conditions for Dongda's infrastructure industry chain to go abroad.

If the Rhodesian railway project continues to be successful, Dongda will have established two shining infrastructure business cards for infrastructure construction in Black Africa! (End of this chapter)