Chapter 406: Building railways is not that simple!
Count Mu Jin and his party stayed in Yaksa City for five days, and then followed the Northern Navy non-stop to Aihui City, where there were thousands of prisoners headed by Major General Alexandrov.
Like the prisoners in Yaksa City, the Russian prisoners in Aihui City have not been idle this winter. Escorted by the Northern Navy and Daur militia, they enter the right bank of Heilongjiang on ice sledges every day, either cutting down trees and clearing tree roots.
Either the frozen soil is excavated and the earth and rocks are backfilled to build a land transportation line from Heilongjiang City to Humalkalun via Hailanpao.
It is said that the Qing government has built a post road from the city of Mergen to the other side of Yaksa since the Kangxi era. It was a mountain road built by cutting down trees along the left bank of the Nen River and the northern slope of the Daxingan Mountains. It is 1,400 miles long.
On average, there is one station every fifty to seventy miles, with a total of 25 stations and Karens.
The reason why Beihai Town did not choose this route was first of all because the mountain roads were difficult to travel, and they had to either build tunnels or blow up mountains to build bridges; secondly, the city of Morgan was still in the hands of the Qing Dynasty, and the Beihai navy currently lacked the strength to attack Mo.
Ergen City, then we have to defeat Qiqihar and Alchuka together.
And as a result, the entire Heilongjiang General Mansion area has to be fought, and even Hulunbuer has to be defeated. Otherwise, no one can stand the road construction here and the harassment of troops sent from time to time there.
Zhao Xin only stayed in the city of Yaksa for three days. After he met Krutogorov for the second time, the other party gritted his teeth and agreed to Zhao Xin's temptation, and then began to develop accomplices among the prisoners of war in Yaksa. After that,
These people also need to undergo training and loyalty tests by the North Navy before they can receive new weapons using flash caps, and then be sent back to Irkutsk to form an interim government.
In mid-March, after completing his inspection tour from Khabarovsk to Yaksa, Zhao Xin returned to Beihai Town and participated in an important meeting led by Zhao Liang's military-industrial complex. The theme of this meeting was to discuss the railways along Heilongjiang.
plan and determine the final railway direction.
For travelers like Zhao Xin, the important role of railways in the outer Northeast is self-evident.
At present, the territory of Beihai Town includes 80% of the jurisdiction of Jilin General Mansion of the Qing Dynasty, 70% of the jurisdiction of Heilongjiang General Mansion, Kuye Island, Ezo Island, and the Beihai Special Zone of Eastern Siberia. If the area east of the Lena River is included
Taken together, the entire area exceeds 2 million square kilometers.
In such a vast area, the transportation links between various border residents' gathering points and towns are very weak, which poses a severe challenge to Beihai Town in terms of governance. If we do not rely on telegraphs, the communication link from Heilongjiang City to Beihai Town alone will be
It will take several months, not to mention the allocation of materials and the transfer of personnel.
The lack of close transportation connections also means that Beihai Town's rule over this land is ineffective. Either it will reward Wulin like the Manchus and let the border residents gather spontaneously once a year, and at the same time spend a large amount of money and materials.
Subsidy to meet the living needs of these border residents.
“I suggest that the first theme of this meeting is to establish the ‘Beihai Town Railway Construction Committee’, with Zhao Xin serving as the chairman of the committee.”
"agree!"
"No comment."
"Quickly move on to the next item."
Following Zhao Liang's speech, representatives from all parties present in the conference room raised their hands in agreement. These included the backbone of the civil affairs and military-industrial complex factories, the Northern Navy Staff Headquarters, the trade department, hospitals and other units.
Next, Macao-Portuguese engineer Pereira took the stage and introduced the three sets of plans for Beihai Town Railway Planning to the attendees.
Pereira has been in Beihai Town for almost three years. This thirty-year-old Macao-Portuguese engineer left Europe and came to far East Asia. It was not until he was recruited by Beihai Town that he finally showed off what he had learned. Although he had just arrived in Beihai Town,
At that time, he expressed great indignation at Zhao Xin's shelling of the Macau fort, but after Zhao Xin told him the truth about the opium trade several times, Pereira was speechless.
In the three years since he came to Beihai Town, Pereira has personally witnessed and participated in the industrial foundation of Beihai Town, which was built almost from scratch step by step. He has a deep knowledge of Zhao Xin, Zhao Liang, Chen Qingsong and others.
He was so impressed that he even often went to Beihai Town Primary School to audit mathematics and physics classes. Now he was deeply proud that he could personally participate in such a great project.
But for Pereira, the only bad thing about Beihai Town is that it does not believe in God. Although there are two Orthodox priests in the hospital and the iron factory, the Portuguese believe in Catholicism, and the two sides are basically on the same page. At first, Pereira
Leila often went to chat with Macarius, but after a few quarrels, he never went again.
Pereira stood up, walked to the large map hanging on the wall, coughed slightly, then raised a pointing stick, and spoke an opening statement in fairly fluent Mandarin:
"Gentlemen, I am honored to introduce to you the three sets of railway plans designed by the Engineering Department that I personally received. Here, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to His Highness King Zhao, Mr. Zhao Liang, and Professor Li from the primary school.
The three of them have provided strong support for this plan.”
After receiving a round of applause, Pereira began to describe three plans for railway construction.
The first plan proposes to build a railway from Fuldan City through the east bank of Xingkai Lake, Khabarovsk, Dundun, Varun and Balk Village. This route is 1,200 kilometers long, and most of it is woodland along the way.
and swampland.
The second plan is from Khabarovsk via Philfa, Kubrint to Heilongjiang City. The total length of the route is 800 kilometers. In fact, it goes along the Huntong River to the middle reaches of Heilongjiang River.
The third plan is to go from Heilongjiang City via Hailanpao, Zhongan, Murususu Road to Humar Military Station, and at the same time from Yaksa to Humal Military Station via Duojin, Wukul, Isikken, Chahanyan
, started construction from the north to the south together, with a total length of 2,400 miles.
A group of people discussed the whole day and finally decided on the second plan, namely the railway from Khabarovsk to Heilongjiang City, in order to connect the two main grain-producing areas in the outer northeast in the future, forming a hub with Khabarovsk as the hub.
A parallel water and land transportation system. Of course, this route is also the shortest.
In the history of another time and space, this railway line did not exist. When Tsarist Russia built the Trans-Siberian Railway, it went from Vladivostok to Shuangchengzi to Khabarovsk, and then went north and west, enclosing the entire Heilongjiang River Basin, and then
Arrive directly at Chita.
Don't think that the construction of railways in Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century can prove how developed its industry is. In fact, its industrial technology level is not as good as that of Beihai Town today.
A large part of the railway tracks paved at that time were purchased from the United Kingdom. In addition, the biggest problem in Tsarist Russia at that time was the lack of manpower. If they had not recruited a large number of hard-working Chinese workers from Shandong, they probably would not have been able to complete the repairs by the time the Tsar stepped down.
Then the first thing to do is to conduct surveys along the railway line and study the waterway traffic conditions of the rivers along the way to determine the best construction route.
Lin Ziping, who was present at the meeting as the leader of the Beihai Town survey team, pointed out that there were currently not enough surveyors. Except for Sato Shinbuchi, all of his subordinates were from technical schools. Therefore, he needed to return to the island country to recruit some scholars to participate in the survey.
Zhao Xinlue thought about it and immediately agreed. Just recruit them. Those who can be obsessed with map surveying these days are scarce talents. Beihai Town can only cultivate them slowly first. It will be easier when the children who study with Lin Ziping grow up.
.
Compared to the Manchu and Qing scholars who loved eight-legged essays and the Xuancheng Mei family who only regarded astronomy and mathematics as family knowledge, the island country still had some surveying and mapping talents due to the rise of "Lan Xue" during this period.
Among them, apart from Lin Ziping, the most famous ones are Asada Goryu, Asada Taketachi and Takahashi Toki.
Goryu Asada is 55 years old this year. He constructed a complex mathematical model of celestial motion. The Asada crater on the moon was named after him.
Asada used Kepler's laws to predict and observe the solar eclipse. Takahashi arrived because he completed the Kansei Calendar.
I believe that with Lin Ziping's reputation and Beihai Town's strength, these three can be recruited to engage in surveying and mapping.
As for the famous Mamiya Linzo in later generations, he is now just 8 years old and has been renamed Miya Linzo. The little guy is studying in Beihai Town Primary School.
After determining the surveying and mapping issues and related budget costs, the next step is the construction of supporting projects and project budget.
According to a report submitted by Zhao Liang, before the entire railway project can be launched, Beihai Town needs to establish two separate iron smelting plants and a steel plant to produce rails and related fasteners, a special-shaped casting factory, a bridge and tunnel component factory, and two cement plants.
factory, a lime factory, two sleeper processing factories, an explosives factory, a locomotive and carriage factory, several brick factories, and gypsum factories.
Everyone present at the meeting, including Zhao Xin, opened their mouths in surprise after hearing this. They thought, "I'm going to kill you!" Especially Zhao Xin, who thought, "How many things do I have to buy without breaking my legs?"
Zhao Liang started to explain to everyone one by one with a strange smile on his face. He thought to himself that my military-industrial steel complex had been settling for so long and it was finally about to explode!
Let’s talk about the rails first. Assuming that the total length of the route is 800 kilometers, then based on the existing industrial production capacity of Beihai Town, a 12.5-meter-long heavy rail is already the limit. The weight of each rail is 0.75 tons (60-rail standard), then the total
It will require 128,000 rails, totaling 96,000 tons of steel. If dual-line operation is launched, steel demand will have to double.
This is only for railway tracks and does not include the amount of steel required to open tunnels and build bridges along the railway lines.
And as far as carriages are concerned, how many of the three types of carriages, passenger cars, trucks, and gondolas, are built? If the supply of carriages is insufficient, the transportation capacity cannot keep up, and the shipping materials from various places can only be piled up waiting to become moldy. If the supply is too much, the transportation capacity will be reduced
waste.
In addition, even if a steam locomotive cannot be built in the first place, it must be repaired, right? Otherwise, the railway will only be able to run horse-drawn trains, which is ridiculous!
By the way, in the selection of steam locomotives, there are two final models. One is the domestic "forward steam locomotive". Its wheel power/kW is 2190, and the modular traction is 33.29 tons; the other is the domestic "forward steam locomotive".
One is also a domestically produced "upstream steam locomotive", but it uses diesel as fuel and has a traction force of 3.5 tons.
The former is no longer produced by the manufacturer, so you can only buy antiques in stock. Fortunately, this model is not only available in China, but there are also many sealed ones abroad.
The latter is produced by the only company in China that still produces steam locomotives. It is said to be a steam locomotive, but in fact it is an internal combustion engine.
According to Pereira's estimate, the construction budget of the entire railway is 100 million North Sea dollars, and the average construction cost per kilometer is 125,000 North Sea dollars.
"So much money?" Chen Qingsong, who was present at the meeting, asked with a frown.
Zhao Liang explained: "It's not much. After the construction of each supporting plant is completed, it can still serve the future. It's just that the construction cost was included in the railway at the beginning. If the supporting plants are deducted, the construction cost per kilometer will be
At NT$60,000.”
In fact, this amount of money is really not that much.
We must know that in the history of another time and space, Tsarist Russia invested a total of 329 million gold rubles in building the Amur Railway, and the average construction cost per kilometer was as high as 157,000 rubles. Even after deducting corruption and waste of funds, the construction cost per kilometer was still
Around 100,000 gold rubles; and this is only a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Tsarist Russia even opened the country's first railway transportation university - Waterway Transportation Institute specifically for this purpose.
To build so many supporting industrial systems around the railway is undoubtedly a great test for the military-industrial complex in Beihai Town.
In addition, in the process of building railways, the locations of stations, railway workshops and locomotive depots are not decided on the head, but based on the actual situation and the flow direction of the rivers along the way, so as not to pollute the villages and planned towns along the way.
of water sources.
The meeting lasted for three days. In addition to issues related to project construction, it also touched on the functions of the Railway Construction Committee. Finally, it was agreed to establish a railway police under the Public Security Police Department. During the railway construction period, the railway police will temporarily be under the construction committee.
After the entire line is opened to traffic, it will be placed under the management of the Public Security Police Department.
In order to alleviate the pressure of transporting building materials required for railway construction, most materials need to be transported through waterways during the project construction. As a result, the transportation conditions of the Ussuri River and Heilongjiang rivers must be improved. Therefore, the entire Ussuri River and part of the Heilongjiang rivers
The dredging and widening project is on the table again.
In addition, new local central towns must be established to utilize the functions of these towns for transferring goods and play their role in railway transportation.
Corresponding to this is immigration, building new immigrant villages along the railway line, distributing subsidies, allocating fields, establishing medical points, expanding the coverage area of Beihai Trading Company, and building schools.
After the meeting, Zhao Xin thought about it. Instead of waiting for Xu Dayong to transport people out of Sichuan little by little, he should go to war and capture prisoners first. There are tens of thousands of Qing soldiers and civilians in Hunchun, so he should round them up first.
Let’s talk about it later.
As for the original consideration of intimidating Suvorov, he also forgot about it. At present, the more prisoners the better, but there is a shortage of them.
At the same time, the Thunder, Thor and Beihai No. 1 to No. 4 set off again, destined for the island country; the goal is to pull people!