In July of the 24th year of Chengshun, the Songhang Railway was officially opened to traffic, connecting other sections of the Jiangnan Railway and began to be put into commercial operation. Since it was put into operation, the passenger flow has continued to be full.

In August of the 24th year of Chengshun, the railway section from Wuhu in Taiping Prefecture to Guichi in Chizhou Prefecture was opened to traffic, adding one more place in the Chu Empire to a railway line and extending the Jiangnan Railway to the west for more than 100 kilometers.
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In September of the 24th year of Chengshun, the Guangdong section of the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway and the section from Guangzhou to Heyuanzhou were opened to traffic, announcing that Guangdong, the most important economic province in the southern region of the empire, also had a long-distance railway, and it was actively extending to the north.

Prepare to cross the mountainous areas of northern Guangdong and enter Jiangxi.

In November of the 24th year of Chengshun, the southern section of the Central Plains Railway and the section from Xuzhou to Suzhou were completed and started trial operation.

In December of the 24th year of Chengshun, the Hantian-Yueyang section of the Hu-Guang Railway was completed and opened to traffic, officially kicking off the construction of the Hu-Guang Railway.

The twenty-fourth year of Chengshun was a year in which the railway construction of the Dachu Empire continued to achieve fruitful results after two or three years of hard work.

During this year, the total length of road sections completed and opened to traffic reached more than 1,400 kilometers, including many long-distance railways exceeding hundreds of kilometers.

The two vertical and two horizontal main line railway networks have entered the comprehensive construction stage. From the Jiangnan Railway to the Longhai Railway, to the Huguang Railway and the Central Plains Railway, as well as the Guangdong-Jiangxi Railway, these main line railways have all entered the construction stage, and have already

Some sections of the road are open to traffic.

Similarly, the Great Chu Empire's investment in railways this year also reached an extremely terrifying level.

The funds directly invested in railway construction have reached tens of millions of dollars, and investment in railways continues to expand.

The huge railway investment not only gave the Chu Empire a large number of rapidly developing railway networks, but also promoted the flow of people and materials along the railways.

More importantly, it also led to the rapid expansion of a large number of high-end industries.

Especially the upstream core industry of railway construction, which is the steel industry.

Due to the huge demand from the shipbuilding industry and the railway industry, the two major iron-consuming industries, the steel industry of the Dachu Empire more than doubled its steel production in the 20th year of Chengshun compared to the 23rd year of Chengshun, and

There are also a large number of steel mills and facilities that are under accelerated construction. The steel output of the Da Chu Empire is expanding at an extremely alarming rate.

In the past, although the Da Chu Empire's steel production has increased every year, and the growth rate has also been very high, it has never seen such an exaggerated expansion like the past two years, and the market demand for steel seems to be

There is no end, no matter how much steel is produced, it will be consumed by the market instantly.

As a result, steel production has increased significantly, but the value of steel has increased compared with a year ago.

Because although steel production has increased, market demand has increased even more!

The railway industry and the shipbuilding industry are both big consumers of steel. As far as the current steel production of the Chu Empire is concerned, they can also consume it if the production is increased several times.

Not to mention that the shipbuilding industry of the Dachu Empire is still undergoing technological updates. Many shipyards, including the military, have begun to try to design all-steel ships after the high-pressure steam engines for ships were put into use.<

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Not to mention civilian ships, let’s talk about the navy. The Ministry of Ship Administration has begun to design an all-steel and purely steam-powered ironclad.

The design concept is to use an all-iron warship to obtain comprehensive protection capabilities, and then rely on this powerful protection capability to directly approach the enemy's coastal defense and river defense forts to conduct shelling, destroy the enemy's forts, and cover the fleet behind.

The main usage scenarios will be the enemy's offshore and inland river areas.

It is conceivable that the combat effectiveness of this kind of all-iron battleship will not be discussed, but it will definitely consume a lot of steel.

The current iron-ribbed wooden hull ships already consume a large amount of steel for shipbuilding. If all-iron shipbuilding is adopted, the consumption of steel will double.

The rapid development of the railway and shipbuilding industries has directly led to the shortage of supply in the steel industry.

In addition to the steel industry, the explosive development of these two industries has also led to the rapid development of heavy machinery processing, precision machinery processing and other industries.

For example, Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company is an important manufacturer that provides various types of marine load-bearing wrought iron parts for the shipbuilding industry, that is, various main parts such as ribs, keels, and beams.

Their production capacity has continued to increase in the past two or three years, but demand still exceeds supply.

Also engaged in this industry are Hantian Heavy Machinery Company, Tianjin Heavy Machinery Company, Panyu Heavy Machinery Company, Songjiang Heavy Machinery Company and other domestic heavy machinery companies with the ability to process large iron parts. They have also appeared.

Production is rapidly increasing to meet the huge market demand.

The three major domestic steam engine manufacturers, Guangzhou Machinery Company, Dangtu Machinery Company, and Tianjin Machinery Company, are working hard to produce various types of high-pressure steam engines.

However, although the output is increasing year by year, the supply is still in short supply because the technical content of these high-pressure steam engines is still very high and the output is still relatively limited

These high-pressure steam engines with single-machine horsepower ranging from hundreds of horsepower to several horsepower can be said to represent the highest industrial strength of the contemporary Chu Empire and can be called the industrial flower of the Chu Empire.

If you look at these steam engines with the eyes of future generations, even if they are stupid and crude, their performance is rubbish. But these steam engines, their processing accuracy, material smelting technology, etc. are all considered to be inferior to the contemporary Chu Empire.

The ultimate challenge.

Why are there only three domestic steam engine manufacturers that can produce high-pressure steam engines? This is not a patent issue, but a pure production capacity issue.

If you want to produce this kind of high-pressure steam engine, first of all, your materials must pass the standards. Not just any messy iron materials can be used as cylinder materials.

Not to mention processing, if you want to process such a large cylinder and ensure ultra-high precision, this is not something ordinary manufacturers can do.

Currently, there are only three major steam engine manufacturers and several artillery factories that produce large artillery with this kind of processing capability.

It is worth mentioning that the military uses artillery factories to process the cylinders and pistons of small high-pressure steam engines based on the limited patent authorization of Guangzhou Machinery Company, and then assembles them into small steam engines for military use.

Although arsenals are used to manufacture high-tech products such as high-pressure steam engines, some of the majors are inconsistent, so that the technical performance of the small steam engines is not very good and the cost is extremely high. However, as emergency products in special times, these small high-pressure steam engines are still

It was installed on a number of small steamships.

The small steamships currently produced at the Kur Arsenal in Siberia have a full load displacement of only a few dozen tons, but they undertake part of the transportation function of the Siberian river network. They are used on the Lena River, the Yenisey River, and the Ob River.

These small steamships with both machine and sail can already be seen on the three major Siberian rivers.

Well, the first batch of steamships used by the Chu army in Siberia were not used as battleships, but as transport ships and even tugboats.

The most commonly seen scene is that of a steamship emitting white smoke and towing several or even a dozen sail transport ships behind it.

Sometimes this scene scares some of the indigenous people along the way to death... shouting various indigenous words such as devils in a language that outsiders cannot understand.

Well, including the Russians!

When the Great Chu Empire put steamships into use on the Ob River for the first time in the spring of the 24th year of Chengshun, it scared the Russians across the way...

They can't imagine that a ship can go upstream without sails or trackers... It's just a matter of going upstream by yourself, there are several ships towed behind it!

These Russians who still believed in God were frightened, and then shouted devil... turned around and ran away. For many months, this group of Russians did not dare to harass the Chu Empire along the Ob River again.

The stronghold.

To a certain extent, the use of steamships on the Ob River completely dispelled the Russians' plans to return to the Ob River.

The main stream of the Ob River completely and comprehensively fell into the hands of the Chu Empire in the 24th year of Chengshun. The subsequent continuous fighting between the Chu Empire Army and the Russians will be transferred from the main stream area of ​​the Ob River to

Further west, there are tributaries on the west bank of the Ob River and even the Ural Mountains.

The most important place among them is undoubtedly Tyumen on the Tula River, a tributary of the Ob River.

Since the Russians continued to retreat in the three major river basins of Siberia, and even lost several major cities in the Ob River basin, the Russians could only retreat to the Ural Mountains and garrison heavy troops in Tyumen, east of the Ural Mountains!

Qiu Ming has become a bridgehead that prevents the Chu people from continuing to advance westward. Once this place is lost, it will not take long for the Chu people to reach the Ural Mountains... Once the Chu people are allowed to cross the Ural Mountains, it will be over...
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If the Siberian region is just a vast and sparsely populated colony for the current Russians and does not have much practical value, then the Eastern European region west of the Ural Mountains is the core hinterland of the Russians.<

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Once the Chu Empire enters this area, they can prepare for the Great Patriotic War...

Therefore, when the Siberian region was lost and the Chu army arrived at Tyumen, the Russians were greatly alarmed and began to send large numbers of troops toward Tyumen and other important areas in the Ural Mountains.

Not the hundreds and thousands of people in Siberia, but tens of thousands and tens of thousands of troops sent here.

In Tyumen alone, more than 30,000 soldiers were sent to garrison, and other frontline cities also had a large number of troops. In order to defend the Ural Mountains and their own core territory, the Russians sent more than 50,000 soldiers to the entire Eastern Front.

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It is worth noting that these 50,000 soldiers are already regular Russian troops, not the kind of colonial mercenaries that were in Siberia before.

At the same time, in the Tyumen region, they have been able to more easily obtain various supplies from the area west of the Ural Mountains. It is no longer the same as when they were fighting in Siberia. The supply and transportation of both personnel and materials was very troublesome.

On the other hand, the transportation of supplies by the Chu army in the Ob River Basin became very troublesome!

Distance has become the biggest enemy of the Chu Empire Army!

Because the Chu army in Tobo City (Tobolsk), which is closest to the Russians and at the forefront of the Western Front, has enough power in the arsenal closest to the rear, namely the Hetong small arsenal in the upper reaches of the Irtysh River.

More than a thousand kilometers...

The scale of Hetong Arsenal is actually very small, not even one-third of the output of Yin Ning Arsenal, let alone being comparable to those large arsenals in the hinterland of the Central Plains.

Not to mention other things, just to provide weapons and ammunition for Tuobo City and other garrisons in the Ob River Basin has already cost the Chu army time and energy.

This is also the reason why the Chu army has not launched a large-scale attack on Tyumen City since they took control of the main stream of the Ob River last year, even though Tyumen ahead is not far from Tuobo City, and there are rivers connecting the two places.

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It’s not that I don’t want to fight, it’s that I don’t have the ammunition to fight... With the current amount of logistical supplies, it’s okay to defend Tuobo City, but it’s not going to work well if we attack.

After all, the Russians in Tyumen are not hundreds or thousands, but tens of thousands. According to the Chu army's usual firepower superiority style.

To attack such a solid city garrisoned with a large number of troops and artillery, it is impossible not to have tens of thousands of troops, but also to add hundreds of artillery pieces and prepare dozens of heavy siege guns.

As for fighting with the lives of soldiers... Are you kidding the barbarians? When did the Chu army have to rely on the sacrifice of soldiers to win the war?

I can’t afford to lose that face!

Besides, there is no practical benefit to conquering Tyumen. The territory of the Chu Empire is already large enough, and the vast Siberian area behind it cannot be said to be fully controlled. It is actually very difficult to continue to move westward to capture the Ural Mountains.
To be continued...