Su-Song Railway, this railway is the opening highlight prepared by the Imperial Railway Company. They want to completely open up the national railway construction situation through the construction and operation of this railway.
Through actual construction and operation, the necessity of railway construction and the huge benefits it brought were proved to the people of the country and the empire's top officials.
After all, railway investment is too huge. The construction cost can range from 20,000 yuan to 30,000 to 40,000 yuan per kilometer. If extended to hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, it can easily cost millions or even tens of millions of yuan. invest.
This is just an investment in one railway line, and according to the initial construction of the national railway network, it will add up to at least several thousand kilometers.
In this initial stage, the national railway network, two main railways, plus some additional branch railways, will probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.
If you spend so much money, can you make a profit?
The most important thing is, how much local economic development can it drive? How much contribution can it make to the overall economic development of the empire?
These are all unknowns, and even various experts and scholars have used various data to demonstrate that building railways is promising.
But after all, it's all just talk on paper. It's still unknown whether it can actually be done and how effective it will be.
Therefore, many people are also worried.
Even the railway company is very cautious about this. This mess has caused a huge negative impact, even for them, it is the result of losing their official position.
Therefore, after many comparisons, they carefully selected the Su-Song Railway as the first long-distance railway.
Because the industrial and commercial economy of this place is already very good, the demand for both passenger transportation and freight transportation is very large. Although transportation could be carried out through inland rivers in the past, river transportation was still overwhelmed, not convenient, and not cheap.
If a railway is opened here, the expected operational benefits will be very high, and the railway investment cost can be quickly recovered, thereby proving the feasibility and necessity of railway construction to the people of the country and to the empire's senior officials.
Under this general environment, the construction plan of the Su-Song Railway was quickly announced in the Da Chu Di newspaper.
After the construction plan was announced, many people were very excited and looked forward to being able to take the convenient train as soon as possible.
However, while the Chinese people are focusing on railway construction, some people in the country do not have trains and railways. Instead, they have developed a competitor of trains: steamships!
Naturally, the people behind the steamships were not ordinary people, not even the shipping industry itself, but the shipyards.
The second largest shipyard in the Dachu Empire, Guangzhou Shipyard, after its neighbor Guangzhou Machinery Company developed a high-pressure steam engine, it immediately came to seek cooperation to order naval steam engines.
However, the naval steam engines they first ordered were not for ordinary transportation, but to build a test steam warship for the navy.
The Navy has an earlier high-pressure steam engine. They have been thinking about putting steam engines on battleships for several years. They also invested money in the Royal Institute of Technology's Steam Engine Research Institute for research.
But they did not expect that the regular army's Steam Engine Research Institute failed to develop a high-pressure steam engine, but the irregular army's Guangzhou Machinery Company did it first. …
But that doesn't matter, the Navy doesn't care who develops the steam engine, they only need a steam engine that can propel the battleship.
Therefore, after hearing that the Guangzhou Machinery Company had developed a high-pressure steam engine, they began to design a steam engine ship for testing and commissioned the Guangzhou Shipyard to build it.
In this way, Guangzhou Shipyard took the lead in contacting Guangzhou Machinery Company.
In the process of contact, after they learned some details about today's high-pressure steam engines, they had other thoughts.
This steam engine can be used in the field of warships, and it can also be used in the field of ordinary merchant ships, especially in the field of inland water and offshore transportation.
When sailing on the ocean, because the stability of the steam engine is not good enough, the endurance is a bit short, and the power output is also relatively short. In fact, it is still very inappropriate for the ocean-going ship to rely solely on the steam engine. You never know when it will be delivered to you on the sea. Play strike, and then you can only be a dead fish in the vast sea...
Therefore, the first steam warship designed by the Navy actually still had sails. The steam engine was not used for daily navigation but for special occasions such as entering and exiting ports, maneuvering during battles, and accelerating when chasing enemies.
The navy has never expected that today's steam engines can propel thousands of tons of warships for regular navigation.
This is true for naval battleships, and ocean-going merchant ships are also unavoidable from this situation.
At present, if a steam engine is installed on an ocean-going ship, it will still play an auxiliary role. This auxiliary role will be particularly useful for warships, especially when adjusting the course during battle and seizing the T prefix. Has great tactical advantages.
But for ordinary ocean-going merchant ships, this auxiliary role is limited.
However, what Guangzhou Shipyard has in mind is not ocean-going merchant ships, but inland river and offshore vessels.
What they envisioned was that if steam power was used on inland river vessels, then inland river vessels would be able to get rid of sails and trackers, making traveling upstream simple and convenient.
This will have a huge impact on inland water transport.
During inland river transportation, the biggest trouble for current sailboats is how to go upstream. The limitations of using sails are very large, and sometimes they are forced to use trackers.
But if you switch to a steam engine, all these troubles will not be a problem.
Steam-powered ships can sail freely on all navigable rivers.
Based on this, they can already see how big the potential market is for such steam river vessels.
For this reason, while everyone in the country is immersed in trains, they have already signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangzhou Machinery Company to obtain the supply of steam engines for civilian ships.
This time, they are ahead of their big brother, Songjiang Naval Shipyard, and also ahead of Luohua Shipyard, which has always been known for its active innovation.
Their Guangzhou Shipyard is at the forefront of all competitors this time.
Guangzhou Machinery Company also attaches great importance to the strategic cooperation with Guangzhou Shipyard. They also want to open up the market for high-pressure steam engines for ships. …
Although we have received orders for several navy steam engines before, and the unit prices are not low, but how can I put it... the total order volume is too small.
Adding up all the orders, the total horsepower is less than 1,000 horses... This is not even as large as the order from Songjiang Railway. In order to operate the soon-to-be-completed Songjiang Railway, Jiangnan Railway Company ordered ten locomotives in one go. The total horsepower is over a thousand horses.
At the same time, major mining companies are also actively contacting them, and have placed orders or are preparing to order trains. These orders are piecemeal, but they add up to a large number.
After all, at present, there are actually thousands of kilometers of railway lines in the Dachu Empire. Most of these railways are mining area railways, and these mining area railways require a lot of trains.
In terms of industrial steam engines, there has not been much progress... The main reason is that today's high-pressure steam engines are still relatively expensive, and their stability is not as good as the mature and stable low-pressure steam engines. Even though they have advantages in power and energy consumption, they are not enough. Let major companies abandon low-pressure steam engines and completely switch to high-pressure steam engines.
More importantly, many domestic companies that are willing to use steam engines already have low-pressure steam engines. They have invested heavily in purchasing low-pressure steam engines before. They cannot just throw them away after a few years, and then purchase more expensive high-pressure steam engines.
Therefore, continued efforts are needed to develop the market for industrial high-pressure steam engines, at least to improve the stability of today's high-pressure steam engines and to reduce production costs and selling prices.
However, if ordinary industries are still cautious about high-pressure steam engines, the textile industry, the largest light industry in the country, is very interested in high-pressure steam engines.
In the past few years, the textile industry has always wanted to use steam engines. However, the cost of low-pressure steam engines is expensive, the operating costs are also high, and the credit is small... This is a loss-making business for the textile industry with relatively low gross profit margin.
The high-pressure steam engine is different. Even if it is still relatively expensive now, it will probably cost you money to use it, but if it is further developed, it will still be more cost-effective to use.
The most important thing is to be able to quickly increase production capacity.
Nowadays, the textile industry is still booming. There is a huge demand for various textiles in the domestic market and even overseas markets. For textile companies, they are only afraid of not being able to produce them or not being able to sell them.
Therefore, Su Qin Textile Company, a leading textile company, also found Guangzhou Machinery Company to discuss strategic cooperation in order to use steam engines as soon as possible.
However, this kind of cooperation must continue to develop and improve in the future. The existing high-pressure steam engines are too expensive, and Su Qin Textile Company is not a fool and will not do business at a loss.
Trains were selling well, and industrial steam engines had a clear path and promising prospects.
However, in the shipping industry, Guangzhou Machinery Company has not made much progress. Among the expected ocean-going ships, except for the navy, no ordinary ocean-going merchant ships are willing to purchase high-pressure steam engines...
Even for the Navy, they only plan to build a few test ships, but they have no plans to launch large-scale steam warships immediately. …
Under such circumstances, Guangzhou Machinery Company can only focus on inland river vessels.
In this way, they also hit it off with the Guangzhou Shipyard.
Soon, Guangzhou Machinery Company set up a naval steam engine research and development team, and with the cooperation of technical personnel sent from Guangzhou Shipyard, began to design and build steam engines for inland river ships.
In order to reduce technical difficulty, it is also to reduce production costs and avoid excessively high selling prices leading to poor market acceptance.
They used a small-cylinder high-pressure steam engine with a lower technical difficulty, and reduced the technical difficulty and manufacturing costs by reducing the cylinder diameter.
After all, in the current steam engine production, the most costly link is actually the processing of the cylinder.
In the processing of cylinders, the larger the diameter and volume of the cylinder, the greater the difficulty, and the lower the yield rate.
This thing is actually similar to the production and processing of artillery. The larger the caliber, the higher the cost.
For small-diameter cylinders, the manufacturing cost of the core component of the cylinder can be controlled, and then the total power can be increased by connecting two cylinders or even three or four cylinders in series.
In this way, they soon designed the first high-pressure steam engine for civilian ships.
This is a steam engine with only 52 horsepower, but it is smaller in size and lighter in weight. It is driven by two cylinders.
Because most of the key technologies were actually directly applied from the Type 21 steam engine, the design was simple and the construction was simpler, and the prototype was quickly built.
Then, engineers from the Guangzhou Shipyard directly moved it onto a prepared test ship, the Zheng He, for testing.
After the installation was completed, the first practical ship powered by a pure steam engine in the history of the Chu Empire and in human history was born.
The Zhenghe, with a total length of 46 meters and a width of 10 meters, is a typical shallow-water inland river ship. It originally used Chinese hard sails, but now the sails have been removed and certain modifications have been made internally. Install steam engines and deploy coal bunkers, etc.
On both sides of the ship, there are two huge paddle wheels.
In fact, the Guangzhou Shipyard originally planned to use propeller technology, but today's propeller technology is not yet mature. Even the Navy's test ship only has one using a propeller, and several others still use paddle wheels with stern pushers. , with push from both sides.
The Navy is testing various technical solutions in order to find better propulsion solutions.
In order to reduce technical risks, the Guangzhou Shipyard adopted a paddle wheel layout on both sides of the Zheng He.
Because they adopt mature technical solutions, although the overall performance is average, it is easy to modify and build.
In less than three months, the Zheng He had been refitted and prepared for sea trials.
Well, this time was in mid-April of the 22nd year of Chengshun. Only two months had passed since the public test of the Type 21 train, and the Su-Song Railway plan had just been announced.
This is not to say that the Guangzhou Shipyard acted quickly and completed it in just a few months. In fact, the modification of the Zheng He lasted three months, and three months ago, several months of planning had gone through. Design, steam engine design and production. …
It has actually been half a year since Guangzhou Machinery Company and Guangzhou Shipyard jointly built this steam engine ship.
Because after the high-pressure steam engine developed by Guangzhou Machinery Company, the locomotives used as applications, namely the Type 21 locomotive, industrial steam engines, and naval steam engines, actually belonged to three different project groups for parallel research and development.
When the news spread that the steamer Zheng He was about to undergo a public sailing test, many local people in Guangzhou also ran to the Pearl River to watch the excitement.
The whole scene was just like the train public test in Jinling City two months ago, very lively.
Of course, the actual influence is still lower. After all, when the Jinling City train was tested, the emperor himself took the train to participate in the test.
As for the navigation test of the Zheng He, only local officials participated, and more technical personnel from Guangzhou Shipbuilding and Guangzhou Machinery Company.
There was also a group of management from major shipping companies who were invited to watch the trial.
Among them is the boss of Liuhe Shipping Company, the former gang leader Liu Jiaquan.
Liu Jiaquan was very interested in the Zheng He in front of him, and even more interested in the inland river steamer. He had even planned that if the Zheng He sailed smoothly, he could buy the ship and sail it on the Pearl River. Regular routes operated by steamships.
He was very optimistic about the progress of river steamers!
Liu Jiaquan started out as a pirate, so he chose to clear his name and go ashore where the empire was unified. He took hundreds of pirates under his command and transformed into a Liuhe Trading Company, which grew bigger and bigger.
At its peak, Liuhe Trading Company owned more than 20 ships, all of which were ocean-going ships, ranging from 2,000 tons to 4,000 to 500 tons. They traveled to various Southeast Asian routes and participated in Indian trade all year round.
At their peak, they even had colonies on the east coast of India... and their overall scale could rank among the top five among domestic armed trading companies.
However, as the empire unified and merged the major armed trading companies, even if Liu Jiaquan was unwilling, he could only choose to merge with the Nanyang Trading Company and become part of the newly established Western Trading Company.
Because of the special nature of the newly established Western Trading Company, the government strictly controlled the company, and Liu Jiaquan no longer had actual operating rights except for shares.
However, he was not disheartened. Since the armed trade could not be carried out, he would engage in ordinary trade and shipping.
Therefore, he successively sold part of the shares of Western Trading Company to cash out, and then used the money to establish a new Liuhe Trading Company and Liuhe Shipping Company.
Liuhe Trading Company is not doing well... After all, there are too many people engaged in ordinary trade, and the competition is very high. The most important thing is that the Liu family has been traveling all their lives, and they have never done ordinary trade seriously!
If he didn't carry hundreds of armed men and sail several armed merchant ships loaded with naval guns, he really wouldn't know how to do overseas trade business!
So the new Liuhe Trading Company is not doing well...
However, the Liuhe Shipping Company is prospering. After all, Liu Jiaquan and several of his main subordinates have been running ships for at least 20 years, and running ships is a common occurrence for them. …
They first started shipping business in Southeast Asia, and then gradually expanded to the domestic coast.
Finally, relying on the base camp of Guangzhou, we will deeply operate regular routes in the Pearl River Basin. This year, we will also enter the Yangtze River Basin.
In this way, the three major shipping businesses of inland waterway, offshore and ocean shipping are in full bloom, and they are all doing quite well. I dare not say that they are comparable to those large government-run shipping companies directly under the Ministry of Industry, but among a large number of domestic shipping companies, they are also doing well. It can be regarded as one of the top twenty shipping companies in the country.
Because the shipping company is developing well, the overseas trade business is half-dead, and because he is getting older, Liu Jiaquan now focuses his career on the shipping company.
In the past few years, he has successively sold his shares in the Western Trading Company. This company has nothing to do with him anyway, and although Lilan seems to be huge, the potential expenses are greater, and the future dividends will not be much. It is better to directly Sell it to the Ministry of Industry... And the Ministry of Industry offered a very good price for the recovered shares in order to fully control the Western Trading Company and the Eastern Trading Company.
After selling the shares, he invested part of the funds in the shipping company, and the other part in diversified investments in other industries to dilute the risks.
Liu Jiaquan, who has completed asset integration, has a considerable asset scale. He owns the wholly-owned Liuhe Shipping Company and the half-dead Liuhe Trading Company. In addition, he is also the second largest shareholder of Luohua Shipyard.
His actual net worth is actually more than that of the Li family, the richest man in Guangdong on the surface! It's just that his reputation is not well known, and he is very low-key on weekdays. The most important thing is that he is in an industry that rarely has direct contact with ordinary people, so the outside world is not very familiar with him.
However, for people in the Guangzhou Shipyard and Guangzhou Machinery Company, Liu Jiaquan's reputation is very big.
In the past, Liuhe Trading Company was very powerful and had been a partner of these two companies all year round. He continued to order ships from Guangzhou Shipyard for many years. In the early years, he also helped Guangzhou Machinery Company export various iron products overseas.
Now he has transitioned to shipping, but he is still one of the few top rich people in the country.
According to the preliminary contacts between the two parties, Liu Jiaquan was very interested in steamships, not only inland river steamships, but also in coastal steamships.
So these two major companies want to open Liu Jiaquan's wallet and take money out of it.
Amid the expectations of a group of people, on April 23, the 22nd year of Chengshun, the first public trial of the Zheng He began.
As the chimney on the Zheng He spewed out thin white smoke and sounded a loud whistle, the Zheng He slowly reversed from the dock, then adjusted its direction and began to move upstream.
The purpose of choosing to sail upstream on the first trial voyage was to prove to everyone, especially the potential customers present, the huge advantages of steamships in traveling against the current.
Sure enough, when the Zheng He, which was more than 40 meters long, began to slowly swim upstream, it immediately attracted the attention of Liu Jiaquan and others.
"This boat is quite interesting. It can still run so fast against the current, and it doesn't need to constantly adjust the sail angle like a sailboat. It doesn't seem to require many crew members!"
The Liu family are all old captains. With just one glance, they can basically get an idea, and what they can guess are basically the sailing speed and even the operating cost.
"This steamship has something going for it!" Liu Jiaquan only watched the trial voyage for more than ten minutes. Strictly speaking, the Zheng He hadn't gone very far yet, and he had already made up his mind to order the steamer and then seize the inland river. shipping market.
He has even begun to plan what routes to run in the early stage and how long the intervals between ship schedules are between fixed routes. The route on the Pearl River side must be carried out, but the route on the other side of the Yangtze River obviously has greater prospects and higher Lilan. .
Even though the Jiangnan Railway has started construction, how can the transportation capacity of trains be compared with large-tonnage ships?
In terms of transportation costs, inland waterway shipping is definitely much lower than rail transportation.
What's more, many places do not have railways in the short or even long term, and the main mode of transportation in these places is still inland water transportation.
Therefore, Liu Jiaquan believes that even with the huge impact of trains, inland waterway shipping has great potential!
