Liu Chengzong always comes up with some effective but weird ideas.
Take the track carriage, for example, but how to build the track specifically? Liu Shishi didn't know that this important task was once again thrown on Liu Chengyun's shoulders.
This is very painful for Cheng Yun's little mind, and he doesn't understand it yet!
After thousands of years, who can know what kind of track the Qin Dynasty used, but Liu Shizi conservatively estimated that with this track running through Hehuang, their food road consumption should be reduced by half.
Chengyun laughed when he heard this. He said, brother, you are too conservative. As long as you want to solve the road consumption problem in Hehuang, even without this track, you can still reduce the road consumption by half.
Chengyun has been in charge of grain collection, grain transportation, and production and construction in the five towns of Hehuang. No one in the entire Marshal's Office knows better than him what problems exist in the Hehuang Valley.
Nowadays, equalizing the land and paying taxes has become a common policy in the Hehuang Valley. The production capacity of this land has also been fully developed. The melted water from the snow mountains can ensure a guaranteed harvest in droughts and floods. The annual grain harvest has been fixed. Under the best circumstances, it can reach two One hundred and fifty thousand stones were used to make food.
If raw grain is collected, it will be 370,000 dan.
Among them, 280,000 shi are fixed and come from 8,000 hectares of fertile land in the Hehuang Valley, and the remaining 90,000 shi come from the 30,000 hectares of land in the Hehuang Mountains.
[In view of the general environment,
Although more and more native people living in mountainous areas are being organized into households, the output of the mountainous areas itself is very low, and less can be exchanged for commercial grain for daily use. Therefore, although there is more land, there is still a lower level of The output, but on the other hand, there are no restrictions on the crops grown by mountain people, so it is also an important source of horse grass, medicinal herbs, wood and other materials for the Marshal's Mansion.
There was a large amount of wastage in the process of collecting this grain into the treasury and making it into military rations. This was a historical problem brought about by Liu Chengzong and others.
The Marshal's Mansion was formerly a lone army that wandered to Qinghai. It occupied a barren land with nothing. Faced with an environment that was surrounded by enemies, everything had to be planned from scratch.
In the environment they faced at that time, cost was not an issue they had to consider at all. The cornerstone of all production construction and planning was safety.
The government offices and markets in Xincheng, the Riyueshan Iron Works, the Juerwan Industry Bureau as a handicraft industry base, Xincheng Academy, the warehouse in Xining City, the Navy Yamen ration processing plant on the north bank of Qinghai Lake, these military important All of them are built in the westernmost part of Hehuang Valley.
After all, at that time, no one dared to put the warehouse on the bank of the Yellow River in Lanzhou, or in the Nianbo place that was not under their control at all.
The policy of equalizing land and buying taxes in the entire Hehuang Valley also revolves around these places. Money comes from the Marshal's Office, and daily necessities are produced in the Baigong Bureau. These things are escorted eastward to the five towns of Hehuang every year; at the same time, each township in the five towns maintains Once the grain is finished, there will be a slight road consumption in transporting the grain and grass to the five towns.
The five towns then transported grain and distributed the money for daily necessities of the Industrial Bureau back to Xining for storage, and then sent it to Qinghai Lake for processing in Xining. This was not a big problem in the past. When the military rations arrived at the Navy Yamen, the army did not march to the Heka grassland. Even if we go to the east of Hehuang to fight, it is very close to transporting food back and forth.
But it’s different now. To the west of Xining, there is no need to transport food. Even if they go on an expedition to Yarkand or support the Tianshan Mountains, it will not be their turn to transport food. The Marshal’s Mansion does not have this transport capacity at all, and to the east, the war front line is close to Qinghai Lake. Thousands of miles away, Lintao Gongchang.
Take Dongguan Town at the eastern end of Hehuang as an example. It takes five hundred miles to transport a piece of grain from here to the Navy Yamen. It is processed into military grain by the Navy Yamen and then transported back to Lanzhou. It takes another five hundred miles, and nothing happens. Just go out a thousand miles away.
This is why Chengyun only talked about road construction in Hehuang and not Qinghai Lake. He suggested that Liu Chengzong split the Navy Yamen, leaving only a department that handles salted fish and smoked fish. The other personnel and technology for processing military rations were moved eastward. move.
Liu Chengzong considered this suggestion very carefully. His proposal to build the Xilan track was indeed a whim, but after listening to Chengyun's analysis of the Hehuang road consumption, he really became firm in his idea of building the track.
The administrative structure of the Marshal's Mansion must be moved to Lanzhou. Some things, such as government officials and official documents, are easy to move; but there are also some things, such as iron and steel.
Factories, mines, and arms bureaus are difficult to relocate.
But if these departments don't move eastward, all the military supplies of the Marshal's Army will have to be transported from thousands of miles away, and the price will be too high.
But if you really decide to build a track, you will face difficulties.
Let’s not mention the track for the moment. Even if the Marshal’s Mansion builds the track, no vehicles except artillery carriages will be able to run on it.
Because Liu Chengzong was a rag picker, he picked up all vehicles, whether they were tanks or baggage vehicles, military or civilian, except artillery carts.
The artillery carriage with only the thousand-pound cannon was made by the Marshal's Mansion itself, but even for the artillery carriage, the wheelbase, wheel width and load-bearing weight did not have unified specifications.
It is true that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Liu Chengzong did not expect that he would start from the design of vehicles when he casually mentioned building a track. This was a very professional matter. Liu Chengzong did not dare to take over all the tasks and directly sent people. Please come and teach me.
He and my teacher, Cheng Cheng, are both amateurs in carriage design, but what they have in common is that they both know the importance of design in creating things.
Liu Chengzong was a man who was good at using knives and also liked to hide knives. Almost every time he fought, he would select a few good knives from the trophies and send them to the marshal's office to hide them.
But the sword he carried, even though he had changed to better equipment, the blade was always the standard Yan Ling official sword made of ordinary materials.
The quality of standard knife blades is very average, and the processing technology of the blade blade is also very ordinary, but it has one advantage that technology and materials can never replace, that is, reasonable design.
The most important thing about a weapon is its center of gravity. Only when the center of gravity is right can you take advantage of it. Only when you take advantage of it can you kill people, and to kill people, only one knife is needed.
A good carriage is like a good knife. The materials used are important, but the more important thing is the design. A good design can not add extra weight to the horse, so that it can run faster and further. Only by doing this step well , are qualified to talk about materials and quality.
Designing a universal two-wheeled carriage chassis, I was very happy when I heard about it - fortunately Liu Chengzong said it early!
The Ordnance Bureau under the Marshal's Office is currently doing this job. Since I received the caravan sent by Oirat from Tianshan on the way, I have received complaints from Liu Chengyun and others about the insufficient vehicle reserves of the Marshal's Office.
The Marshal's Mansion uses troops everywhere, and it has a high level of mules and horses. It doesn't even build carriages. It's strange that the vehicles it captures alone are enough!
Not to mention that before Liu Chengzong's expedition to Gansu, he gave an order to the workers' office to move the rocket launcher boxes to the tanks, saying that they would be equipped for the entire army. More than a hundred of them were already ready, because the cargo had to be transported. He also removed the rocket launcher box and took away the cargo.
I originally wanted to design a two-wheeled carriage that could carry guns, transport artillery, load rockets, transport supplies, and even be able to temporarily modify simple fortifications in the wild by adding baffles.
Now when Liu Chengzong mentioned this matter, he only needed to calculate the width of the wheel and the length of the axle. This matter came to me immediately: "Go back to the commander, the work office is already doing it. The axle is four feet and three feet." It's just that the wheels are different now. There are wooden wheels and iron wheels, wooden axes and iron axles. It's completely possible to set a rule for the wheels."
Liu Chengzong knew that this iron shaft, wooden shaft, iron wheel and wooden wheel were all prepared for the thousand-jin cannon.
The iron shaft is a forged iron shaft, but the iron wheel is not pure iron. It is a circle of iron sheet wrapped around the wheel. At present, their thousand-pound cannon is not as heavy as an iron wheel made of pure iron.
Liu Chengzong nodded and said: "It will be much simpler this way. After formulating wheel width regulations that can be used in various situations, the experimental track can be put into use. A single carriage can carry 600 to 1,200 kilograms, and a double carriage can carry 800 kilograms. To one thousand six hundred catties."
Chengyun and Shicheng couldn't help but frown slightly when they heard this number.
Chengyun asked: "Brother, is this the most we can carry?"
In fact, this number is not small. A single carriage with a load of 600 kilograms is the prescribed cargo capacity of the current single carriage in the Marshal's Mansion. Of course, it can carry more cargo. The baggage soldiers driving the carriage often sit on the carriage, but the horse will definitely be more tired. .
As for the two-horse carriage Liu Chengzong said weighed 1,600 kilograms, the Marshal's Mansion usually did not use carriages except for firing cannons.
Carrying such heavy cargo.
Chengyun felt that Liu Chengzong's estimate was low because this number was the cargo capacity of a carriage traveling on dirt roads and grasslands.
He didn't understand rail carriages, but he knew very well about horse carriages. The weight of horse-drawn goods is not static and has a lot to do with the towing vehicle, mileage, and road conditions.
For long-distance marches in the wilderness, which last for days, a horse-drawn cart and a mule cart can pull 500 kilograms of cargo, which is considered a lot. Especially for urgent marches, loading 300 kilograms of goods on the cart is considered heavy duty; but for short-distance freight, pulling 600 kilograms is considered heavy duty. This is the wilderness. The condition of grassland and land.
If you switch to a hard road, although it is not good for the horse's hooves, the vehicle will move faster without bumps, and it can actually pull heavier goods and travel farther.
There is a gravel road in Xining Fucheng. On such a smooth road, not to mention horses, Bajiao City Chieftain Chen Shiwen's chieftain soldiers could drag seven to eight hundred kilograms of grain all over the ground by pulling a flatbed cart with a belt, but if it were changed to On the dirt road, it took three people to push and pull him back to the chieftain's territory.
The wooden track they want to build now, in the understanding of the transportation company, is to use limited costs to build the best road conditions for carriages along the ruts - they are all paved with elm tracks, so smooth.
Not to mention the wooden flat road, even if it is an official road, it is still full of small dirt slopes and pits. When walking outside, you will never encounter a flat road.
In the understanding of transportation, once this kind of road is paved, a Hexi horse can drag two thousand kilograms of cargo out no matter what.
"Of course that's low."
Liu Chengzong explained with a smile: "If our track is only a dozen miles long and covered with iron sheets, even if a horse pulls three thousand kilograms, I think it will be fine. But it will take four hundred miles to build. Even if a bicycle weighs one thousand two hundred kilograms, it will be fine." Jin, the horse will run out of energy after running for an hour and a half. When it loses its energy, it will have to be replaced."
"This track is for transporting armaments. If the transport is small, we can build more vehicles. We are not short of horses or vehicles, but it will not work if the transport is slow."
As Liu Chengzong spoke, he waved his hand on the map to the east: "Once the war breaks out over there, the goods will have to travel another four to five hundred miles to cross the Yellow River. They are all heavy vehicles. What will happen if there are not enough vehicles on the front line?"
Cheng Yun suddenly realized that he was not thinking about fighting, but only thinking about transporting goods, but then he asked: "In this case, we should build docks on both sides of the Yellow River. The track will be built soon to transport goods, and the current small dock is not enough." make."
As he spoke, he tilted his head and said, "Should we also build cars in Lanzhou? If not, we can build heavy cars in Hexi to transport goods on rails; we can build light cars in Hedong to supply military supplies. Anyway, when the goods arrive at the shore, they have to be unloaded and loaded on ships. Just two sets. What are the rules?"
"That's what you said."
Liu Chengzong nodded slowly, but then he shook his head and rejected the suggestion, and said with a smile: "There is still a set of rules. If the track in Hehuang works well, we will build a track wherever we go in the future! By then, Hehuang will truly become a Once we reach the rear, it’s not too late to build a heavy vehicle under another set of regulations.”
"That's a lot of money."
Chengyun secretly smacked his tongue, took out a small abacus from his waist and started playing, saying as he was playing: "For four hundred miles, we need two sections from north to south, one from west to east and one from east to west, otherwise the carriage will be hit; cast iron The Riyueshan Iron Works does have the ability to connect strips of iron together, but at the moment there are too many uses for the iron materials and they cannot afford to lay them on the ground."
"The elm rail mentioned by the second brother alone is calculated as one foot per material, which is 18 materials per mile. Paving 400 miles of road will cost 7,200 materials. The stone reinforcements are also calculated in the same way, and the wood needs to be made. Waterproofing and anti-corrosion are just labor and materials, plus labor and food... Such a big project is estimated to cost 400,000 workers."
Four hundred thousand workers, Liu Chengzong pondered: "The total amount is okay, how do we calculate it?"
One worker works one day, and 400,000 workers sounds like a huge amount, but in fact, over the course of a year, the labor and food expenses are equivalent to the cost of raising troops for a thousand headquarters.
But in fact, Liu Chengzong's Marshal's Mansion did not have such easy-to-maintain soldiers. After all, hired workers did not need to raise war horses - for Liu Chengzong, there was no cost more expensive in the world than feeding a huge army.
Of course, he has never paid for the cost of raising soldiers. The wool comes from the sheep. He will be a sheep-brained man until he dies. It is Xikang Erfu who raises the soldiers.
There are nearly a million people, and the food used by the Marshal's Mansion, Generals, Schools, and Soldiers is all made possible by the people's fat.
Cheng Yun finally reviewed the calculation on the abacus, confirmed that the calculation was accurate, and said confidently: "Five hundred people, four hundred miles, two days and one mile."
"It's a bit slow, it needs to be faster."
Liu Chengzong secretly calculated in his heart that according to this progress, it would take more than two years to build this road. Anyway, the total amount of work is the same, so he opened his hands and said: "Two thousand people, four hundred miles, two miles a day."
"Farming in Hehuang is heavy and winter is too cold. The entire road starts at Xining and ends at Hekou. It is divided into twelve sections in the middle. There are ten horse stations in the five towns of Hehuang. They are responsible for changing horses and repairing carriages. At the same time, It also serves as a market town fair for the five towns and twenty townships.”
Although the load capacity of the wooden carriage track is far less than that of laying sleepers, it is also impossible to pass the four-hundred-mile-long track in one line. After all, the four-hoof engine is not a steam engine. The steam engine can run all the time, but the horses will get tired.
Firstly, horses need to be changed, and secondly, there needs to be time and place for loading and unloading goods and cleaning the track. Therefore, no matter how long the track is, it must be built section by section.
"Even if two thousand people are used, this road will definitely not be used until next winter or even the spring after that."
After Cheng Yun said this, he sighed and said, "Right now, the Shuaifu's reserve of materials is insufficient, so we can only do a stretch of twenty or thirty miles to test the situation."
"Also, brother, I think we need to find a dedicated person for this matter. I am in charge of the household office. This is the work of the government office. It is better to set up a special department in the government office and set up a chief envoy."
Liu Chengzong pondered and nodded slowly, then said: "In that case, as you said, we will set up a road administration department under the engineering office and find a reliable person from among the workers who are building the reservoir to be responsible for this."
Speaking of this, Liu Chengzong suddenly became interested and said to Chengyun and Shichengwo: "Now that my brother has gone to Tianshan, there is no one to take care of the affairs of the military office for the time being. In addition, there is no one in the ceremony office. What do you think of this person in charge?" Think about it, who is suitable?"
I thought about it for a while, but couldn't find a suitable candidate. It wasn't until I saw Liu Chengzong looking over at me that I asked, "Commander, how about Bai Yiqing from Gansu?"
"That guy is chanting sutras in the Ganzhou temple. He must be strong enough, but this will make him the head of the rites office. It doesn't matter what happens in the marshal's house. If he meets the imperial court, he will be a one-off. If he finds an opportunity, he will If I let go, I might even write a book about Escape from the Tiger's Mouth in Beijing."
After Liu Chengzong said this, he quickly waved his hand: "No, no, think of another one. I need to be able to receive tribute envoys from the vassal, be in charge of internal and external rites and music, and understand the affairs of the imperial court and the peasant army...huh?"
Before he finished speaking, Cheng Yun said, "Brother, I'm thinking of someone. Do you think it's okay?"
"who?"
"Zhang Xianzhong."
