On February 16, the 22nd year of Chengshun, the first train in Chinese history, and even in the history of mankind, the Type 21 train, successfully completed the manned and cargo test on the Jinling City Port Railway.
The Type 21 train pulled a total of 18 carriages, carrying more than 400 people and nearly 100 tons of cargo, and ran back and forth on the ten-kilometer-long port area railway.
In the test, the maximum speed reached 25 kilometers per hour, and it ran smoothly for a considerable distance at a speed of 18 to 20 kilometers per hour.
Although the overall speed is not very fast, its huge carrying capacity shocked the world.
More importantly, a train is not like a horse. It does not need frequent rests. As long as it carries enough coal and water, it can even run for a whole day without stopping.
If you drive during the day, you can easily cover more than 200 highways.
The most important thing is that the Type 21 train is just a test model. In order to reduce the technical difficulty and avoid any accidents during the test, the locomotive of the Type 21 train actually continues the basic design of the Type 21 test prototype. structure.
However, with the current basic industrial capabilities of the Chu Empire, after solving many technical difficulties of high-pressure steam engines, it is completely possible to increase the power of the train exponentially by simply and crudely expanding the cylinder diameter and adding more cylinders.
Now it only has more than a hundred horses, but as long as necessary, we can make a locomotive with a higher horsepower at any time, reaching three hundred or even four or five hundred horses.
This means that the speed of the train can be further increased and the cargo capacity can also be further increased.
Of course, if you want to increase the running speed and cargo capacity of trains, you need not only a locomotive with sufficient power, but also a series of other technical supports.
For example, the load-bearing capacity and stability of the rails must be passed, etc.
According to the estimates of many experts after the day's evaluation, they estimate that with the current overall technical level, the running speed of the train can be maintained at about 30 kilometers per hour. If the power of the locomotive is increased, the train can be upgraded to a higher speed. Not even high speeds.
Because beyond this speed, the accident rate of trains will increase significantly.
Therefore, the speed increase of the train is not simply a limitation of the train power, but also a limitation of the overall technology in many aspects.
For example, the train braking technology mentioned above may be commonplace to future generations, but for the current Dachu Empire, it wants to reduce a train with a mass of hundreds of tons or more from thirty to forty tons. It is not that easy to stop quickly at speeds of kilometers per hour, avoid derailment, and cause no problems with the train itself.
In particular, strictly speaking, the train is not an integral structure, but a traction structure. You cannot just rely on the front of the train to brake.
Each car must brake at the same time to brake quickly.
The current solution provided by Guangzhou Machinery Company is to set up a separate braking device in each carriage and deploy a brakeman. After the train driver issues a braking command, the brakeman will pull the brake lever in each carriage. Apply the brakes...
Although it doesn't look good, it is much more reliable than asking the train to slow down first, then asking the passengers to jump off the train first, and then pulling the train to brake with bare hands after getting off!
Well, not to mention, during several previous internal train tests, Guangzhou Machinery Company actually used this kind of funny-looking artificial brake...
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Strictly speaking, the public train test in the Jinling Port Area was not the first train test in the Chu Empire. In fact, several years ago, someone tried to use a low-pressure steam engine to make a locomotive and then pull the train. The first one was in the Huainan Mine. service company.
Later, some companies tried to use low-pressure steam engines to build trains, but they all ended in failure... Because low-pressure steam engines, under limited volume and weight constraints, had too little power and could not pull too many trains, so they had no practical significance.
Later, after the Guangzhou Machinery Company successfully developed the Type 21 high-pressure steam engine, it also conducted many internal train tests, but these were all internal and non-public tests.
Therefore, the impact is actually very limited, after all, the outside world is not very clear about it.
This is the first time that the Jinling Port Area train test has been made public and it is a successful train test. More than 100,000 people have witnessed this train test with their own eyes. Even the emperor Luo Zhixue brought a group of ministers to serve as the first batch of train passengers.
To a certain extent, Luo Zhixue personally endorsed the safety of trains.
Even His Majesty, His Majesty, has taken the train, which is enough to prove the safety of the train.
Therefore, this time's public train operation test is a success and its significance is also great.
Later that day, news of the successful public test of the train spread throughout Jinling City.
Two days later, the latest batch of Da Chu Di News reported this train test as a front-page report. Comments said that this train test was epoch-making and had a high impact on the overall development of the empire. strategic significance.
At the same time, the latest news from the Ministry of Transportation was published. The Ministry of Transportation has decided to use trains on the Songjiang Railway, which has entered the final project and is about to be completed.
It is expected that in three months' time, the Dachu Empire's first commercial railway will be operated by train.
These news have aroused widespread public attention, but many high-level people know that these are just irrelevant news.
The really big news hasn't been announced yet. No, it should be said that no decision has been made yet.
The top officials of the empire are considering building a large-scale railway network across the country. This is not an intra-city railway with a length of only more than 30 kilometers like the Songjiang Railway, but a large-scale railway that truly connects cities and spreads across the country. net.
Because building a railway network costs a lot of money, requiring hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, the empire's top officials are also very cautious and have been debating it for the past two days.
The main form of debate is not about whether to build a railway or not. In fact, there is nothing to discuss. On the day when the train test was successful on the 16th, the empire's top officials had already reached a consensus that railways must be built on a large scale.
The disagreement among many ministers now is how large this scale should be? How many kilometers of railways are planned to be built in the first batch?
Some say that train technology has matured and has large-scale applications. At the same time, large-scale railway construction can also effectively stimulate the development of the steel industry, etc. They strongly support the rapid launch of the national trunk railway network plan, especially the north-south strategic railway and the east-west strategic railway. railway.
Others believe that railway investment is huge, and railway construction should be based on building railways that are easy to build and expected to be profitable first, and then gradually expand and connect them, and finally build a large-scale national railway network.
These ministers still had opinions on how to build the railway.
At the same time, there are still differences on how to solve the funding for railway construction.
Some say that a company specializing in railways can be set up to attract strategic investment and go public to absorb funds for construction. Others think that railway operating companies can issue construction bonds to raise funds.
Others think that funding problems can be solved through bank loans.
Of course, no one is talking about allocating funds directly from the fiscal budget to build railways.
Investments in railway construction can easily amount to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Just relying on financial investment in construction will bankrupt the central finance of the Chu Empire.
And even if it goes bankrupt, it won't be able to build many railways.
After all, no matter what, the central fiscal revenue of the Dachu Empire is only more than 200 million, not even 300 million, and these central fiscal revenues are like carrots and holes. They all have a destination and cannot be moved. Tens of millions of Chu yuan were spent to build the railway.
Therefore, funds for railway construction must be raised through the market. The main disagreement among the courtiers lies in the method of raising funds.
After all, the amount of money involved in railway construction is huge. If it goes wrong, it will easily cause violent turmoil in the domestic financial market. If something goes wrong, it will easily cause countless people to lose their money.
At the same time, it also involves the issue of railway control. The Dachu Empire has long been open to commercial operation of railways under Luo Zhixue's matter. Its construction and operation must be led and responsible by the official, adopting a strict government-run model, and putting an end to Private capital participation.
This is because the railway is a strategic industry related to people's livelihood and national security, and the official must have absolute control over the railway.
If the right to operate railways is liberalized, private capital may swarm in and compete viciously, and this swarm will only be limited to economically developed and profitable areas.
As for the underdeveloped economy, places where railway operation profits are not high will not have the capital to build railways.
After all, capital is profit-seeking, and they will not engage in loss-making transactions.
Only under official control can a nationwide game of chess be achieved. Railways will be built in both economically developed and economically backward areas, and railway operating profits in economically developed areas will be used to subsidize railway operating losses in economically backward areas.
Therefore, from the beginning, Luo Zhixue strongly stipulated that the railway should be government-run.
But in the case of a government-run company, if you want to adopt the method of listing and financing, there will be a lot of troubles.
In response to the above-mentioned situations, a group of imperial ministers held meetings for several days, and finally, under the leadership of Luo Zhixue, they came up with a preliminary railway construction and operation plan.
First of all, the Railway Management Office was upgraded to the Dachu Empire Railway Corporation. As the only railway construction and operating enterprise in the Dachu Empire, the company is directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Communications.
The model is the same as the Dachu Empire Central Bank, a central government-run bank, is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, the Dachu Empire Grain Corporation is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the Dachu Empire Salt Company is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.
It is different from many ordinary government-run enterprises under the Ministry of Industry. It is not a purely commercial organization, but more similar to a policy organization. It mainly serves people's livelihood and national security. It has the two characteristics of being nationwide and unique.
The Dachu Empire Railway Corporation will be fully responsible for domestic railway construction and operations, and will also set up railway branches in various regions.
The first batch of four regional railway branches established were Jiangnan Railway Company, South China Railway Company, North China Railway Company, and Northwest Railway Company, which were respectively responsible for the construction and operation of railway networks in each region.
At the same time, each regional railway company will construct and operate detailed railway lines, and then prepare to establish subsidiaries, etc.
This model is different from many other large-scale railways in that it is not based on administrative regions such as provinces, prefectures, and counties, but on railway lines for hierarchical management.
At the same time, in addition to the four major regional companies, the head office also has regular departments such as supervision, administration, and personnel.
Once the administrative structure for railway construction and operation is in place, the rest will be simple. All we need to do is to raise funds to build and operate the railway according to the situation.
After many discussions, it was decided to apply for loans from banks in the name of the railway company to raise funds, and the plan to carve out shares to attract strategic investment or even go public was abandoned.
Even the idea of issuing corporate bonds to raise funds was abandoned.
These are all to avoid subsequent trouble!
Because according to the construction plan drawn up by the empire's high-level officials, the Dachu Empire Railway Company is expected to continue to suffer losses for many years to come... because the railway company has a major strategic mission, which is to build a railway in remote and economically underdeveloped areas. Railways are built to develop local people's livelihood, and even railways are built in remote and uninhabited places such as Monan, Mobei and northwest. At present, these railways are purely military and war-prepared railways. It is estimated that the construction investment will be recovered within many years, let alone The kind that even suffers serious losses in daily operations.
If this is done by selling shares or raising capital by going public, other investors will have objections if you engage in such an obvious loss-making transaction.
In order to avoid this kind of trouble, it is better not to finance externally, but directly borrow money from banks to build the railway, and then use the profits from railway operation to repay the bank loan.
There is no need to worry about bank loans. Several large national banks in the Dachu Empire are all government-owned banks... These government-owned banks also have the characteristics of policy banks. They can even be said to be responsible for issuing loans to railway companies. Task……
And there is no need to worry about the railway company not being able to repay the money. According to the predictions of many experts and scholars, the profits of railways in economically developed areas will be very generous...
If the railway company had not used these profits to build and operate strategic railways that were obviously losing money, then the expected profits of the railway company would be even greater than that of the salt company.
After all, this thing is a monopoly operation with no competitors at all, and it is also a basic industry that directly faces the public. It seems that the profit rate is very low, but the total profit will be very huge.
After the two key issues of administrative structure and funding sources are finalized, the next step is to build the railway there first.
Luo Zhixue will not be too involved in these issues. Naturally, the Railway Corporation and other important ministers of the empire will pay attention.
After emergency discussions in the past few days, based on the opinions of the Ministry of Transport, it was initially planned to build a number of railways in areas with developed economies, flat terrain, low construction difficulty, and huge profits.
In order to accumulate construction experience, it is also to quickly withdraw funds to facilitate subsequent construction.
The first batch of railway lines planned to be made public include the Jiangnan Railway and the Central Plains Railway.
These two main railway lines, with Jinling City as the intersection, extend east to west and north respectively, forming an inverted T-shaped structure.
The Jiangnan Railway is initially planned to start from Dangtu Industrial Zone, extend eastward to Jinling City, and then to Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Suzhou, and Songjiang. After arriving in Songjiang, it will branch off to the north branch to connect to the existing Songjiang Railway, and then build a new one. The southern branch line goes to Hangzhou, Zhejiang, and there are also future plans to extend westward from Dangtu to Hukou, Jiujiang.
The core purpose of this Jiangnan Railway is to connect these important economic towns in the pan-Jiangnan region and further promote the economic development of the Jiangnan region.
At the same time, it is also because of the developed economy in the Jiangnan region that the demand for freight and passenger traffic is very huge. Even with competition from the Yangtze River, the Jiangnan section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, and other water networks, it is expected that the operating profits of this Jiangnan Railway will still be very generous. .
In the early days of railway development in Britain, Britain also faced competition from inland transportation. At that time, the British had begun to use steamships on a large scale for inland water transportation. However, inland water transportation still failed miserably in the face of railway transportation. Many companies operating canals were increasingly Defeat and then quickly disappear!
The Jiangnan region in the Chu Empire was also densely covered with water networks and river transportation was equally developed, but railway transportation still had its huge advantages.
And if this is the case in the Jiangnan region, let alone other places where there are not so many water networks, the advantages of railway transportation will be huge.
In addition to the Jiangnan Railway, the Dachu Empire Railway Corporation quickly announced the plan for its second trunk line railway, the Central Plains Railway, through the Dachu Di Daily.
The railway starts from Jiangpu in Yingtianfu, that is, the Jiangbei area of Jinling City, and extends all the way north, finally reaching Tianjin.
Along the way, it passed through Chuzhou, Fengyang, Xuzhou, Liaocheng, Dezhou, Cangzhou, and finally arrived in Tianjin.
In addition to these two major trunk railways, there are actually many straight-line and regional local railway network construction plans.
For example, as a branch railway of the Central Plains Railway, there will be a railway extending from Xuzhou to the west, all the way to Luoyang, and in the future it will even reach Tongguan and even Xi'an. If it goes east, it can all the way to Haizhou and the sea.
At the same time, there is also a straight railway in Shandong, extending eastward to Jinan. In the future, it can also be built all the way to other eastern areas of the Shandong Peninsula, such as Qingdao Naval Base, Dengzhou Naval Base, etc.
There will also be a straight-line railway from Tianjin to Youzhou and even all the way north to Zhangjiakou and into Monan. This is also the grassland railway line that the Army has longed for, and it is also the current grassland supply line.
To the east, it can extend to Tangshan, then go all the way east out of Shanhaiguan, pass through Jinzhou and finally reach Liaoyang, integrating the Northeast region into the national railway network.
On the other hand, it will be more troublesome to build long-distance trunk railways in the south, mainly because there are many mountains in the south, making railway construction difficult and investment-intensive.
Therefore, there is currently no main line railway plan in the south, only a few regional local railway line plans.
For example, the Pearl River Delta Railway in Guangzhou plans to connect Foshan, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Huizhou and other places. It will also connect several places in the Pearl River Delta that are suitable for large-scale industrial development and have relatively flat terrain through railways.
In addition, Huguang can also build a railway network centered on Hantian, connecting Jiujiang to the east and Wuchang to the west. It can also be extended to Changsha in detail in the future.
At the same time, a railway can also be built in Jiangbei, Hantianfu, all the way north to Xiangyang, Nanyang, and then continue north to Zhengzhou, Henan, to connect with the planned east-west railway line.
Looking at the railway lines planned to be built by the Chu Empire, they all have almost the same characteristics. The first is that the terrain is flat, the construction difficulty of railway construction is low, and the investment is small.
Even though you will pass through some hilly and mountainous areas along the way, you will avoid these mountainous areas when choosing the specific route.
The first principle of the Chu Empire's railway construction these days is: only build railways on plain terrain!
Don’t build any mountains or hills. If you can go around it, go around it. If you can’t go around it, don’t repair it yet...
There is no way. The construction capacity these days is limited. It is okay to build railways on flat terrain. If we switch to building railways in mountains, the roadbed alone will not be able to handle it... Strictly speaking, it is not impossible to build railways in mountainous areas, no. Many mining companies have their own mining area railways, many of which are in mountainous areas... But railway companies are not mine bosses. Mine bosses are rich and are willing to spend money in order to transport coal, iron ore and other goods. In the end, The key thing is that the railways in these mining areas are not long, only a few dozen kilometers long.
Those mining companies gritted their teeth and got it done. Even so, most of the many mining area railways built by these mining companies themselves were narrow-gauge railways.
The most commonly used are small railways of 75 centimeters, and some are one-meter railways. There are even very few mining area railways of one meter and two meters... As for the standard railway of one meter and five meters, no mine bosses have taken this seriously yet. What a fool, building this kind of standard railway in a mountainous area.
The cost gap is not just a little bit, but several times the cost gap.
It is inevitable to build railways in mountainous areas, but not now!
At least we have to wait until the technology further develops and matures, the railway company has accumulated enough experience, and at the same time it has made money from operating railways in these eastern flat areas, before it can spend money to build railways in these mountainous areas.
The first principle is to build railways on flat terrain, and the second principle is to build railways first in places with huge and urgent transportation needs.
For example, Jiangnan and the Pearl River Delta railway network are all products of this policy.
In addition to these, many places will also have some local small railways. For example, Fujian will build a small railway in Zhangzhou and Quanzhou, and Northeast China will first build a railway from major mining areas to Haikou.
There are also numerous smaller railway branches surrounding these mainline railways.
The railway network plan for the entire Da Chu Empire is very large, and the expected total investment is also huge, and the expected construction time is also long.
In just a few years, the national railway network will not even be able to open...
Therefore, the national railway network will not be visible in a short time. The railway construction plans that people can see in a short time are still some local railway construction plans.
The most eye-catching one is undoubtedly the first phase of the Jiangnan Railway construction project: the Susong Railway from Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture to Wu County, Suzhou Prefecture.
(End of chapter)
