Count Mu Jin and his party stayed in Yaksa City for five days, and then followed the Northern Navy non-stop to Aihun 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 militiamen, they ride ice sledges into the right bank of Heilongjiang every day. They either cut down trees and clear tree roots, or excavate frozen soil and backfill earth and rocks in order to build a road from Heilongjiang City to Hunan via Hailanpao. Land transportation lines in Malkaron.
It is said that the Qing government 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. The total length is 1,400 miles, with an average stop every fifty to seventy miles along the way, and 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 a tunnel or blow up the mountain to build a bridge; 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 had to be fought, and even Hulunbuyuer had to be defeated. Otherwise, no one would be able to stand the road construction here and the harassment by troops sent from time to time over 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 seduction, and then began to develop accomplices among the prisoners of war in Yaksa. Afterwards, these people will have 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 attended an important meeting led by Zhao Liang's military-industrial complex. The theme of this meeting was to discuss the railway plan along Heilongjiang 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 Area 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 serious challenge to Beihai Town in terms of governance. If we did not rely on telegraphs, just the communication from Heilongjiang City to Beihai Town would take several months, not to mention the allocation of materials and the transfer of personnel.
The lack of close transportation connections means that Beihai Town's rule over this land is in name only. Or just like the Manchus, they would reward Ulin and let the border residents gather spontaneously once a year. At the same time, large amounts of money and material subsidies would be provided 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 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. This includes the backbone of the civil affairs and military-industrial complex factories, the Northern Navy Staff Department, the trade department, hospitals and other units.
Next, Macao-Portuguese engineer Pereira came forward and introduced the three sets of railway planning plans for Beihai Town to the attendees.
The first plan proposes to build a railway from Fuldan City through the east bank of Xingkai Lake, Khabarovsk, Dundun, Varun to Balk Village. This route is 1,200 kilometers long, and most of it is forested along the way. and swampland.
The second plan is from Khabarovsk to Heilongjiang City via Philfa and Kubrint, with a total length of 800 kilometers. In fact, it is along the Huntong River to the middle reaches of Heilongjiang.
The third option is to go from Heilongjiang City via Hailanpao, Zhongan, and Murususu Road to the Humar Military Station, and at the same time, from Yaksa to the Humar Military Station via Duojin, Wukul, Isikken, and Chahanyan. , 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 another time and space in history, this railway line did not exist. When Tsarist Russia built the Trans-Siberian Railway, it went from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk via Shuangchengzi, and then went north to west, enclosing the entire Heilongjiang River Basin, and then directly to Chita.
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 agreed immediately after thinking about it. Just recruit, those who can be obsessed with map surveying these days are scarce talents. Beihai Town can only cultivate them slowly first, and it will be easier when the children who study with Lin Ziping grow up.
Compared with the Manchu and Qing scholars who loved the eight-legged essay 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 "Lanxue" during this period.
Among them, apart from Lin Ziping, the most famous ones are Asada Goryu, Takahashi Toki and Inoh Tadayei.
Tani Yu Asada Goryu is 55 years old this year. This person constructed a complex mathematical model of celestial motion. The Asada crater on the moon was named after him in later generations.
Takahashi came here because he had completed the "Kansei Calendar", and as his disciple, Tadayoshi Ino spent 20 years starting from 1800 to compile the "Complete Map of the Coastal Geographical Map of Great Japan".
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, as well as an explosives factory, a locomotive and carriage factory, several brick factories, and gypsum factories.
Everyone in the meeting, including Zhao Xin, opened their mouths in surprise after hearing this, thinking, "I'll choke you!" Especially Zhao Xin, who thought to himself, "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 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), so a total of 128,000 rails are needed, totaling 96,000 tons of steel. If dual-line operations are opened, steel demand will have to double.
This is only for rail tracks and does not include the amount of steel needed to open tunnels and build bridges along the railway lines.
And as far as carriages are concerned, how many of each of the three types of carriages, passenger cars, trucks, and gondolas, are built? The supply of carriages is insufficient, and the transportation capacity cannot keep up. Shipping materials from various places can only be piled up waiting to go moldy.
In addition, even if a steam locomotive cannot be built in the first place, you still have to be able to repair it, right? Otherwise, there will only be horse-drawn trains on the railway, which is ridiculous!
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 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 is 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 related project construction issues, it also involved the functions of the Railway Construction Committee. Finally, it was agreed to establish the railway police under the Public Security Police Headquarters. During the railway construction period, the railway police was temporarily under the construction committee and would be under the management of the Public Security Police Headquarters after the entire line was opened to traffic.
In order to alleviate the pressure on 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 bit by bit from central Sichuan, he should go to war and capture prisoners first. There are tens of thousands of Qing soldiers and civil servants over there in Hunchun. Let's round up these guys first.
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 people.
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 attract people!
()
.
