In the past ten years or so in the Chu Empire, the development of railways can be said to be rapid, with a large number of railway lines being built and opened to traffic almost every year.
Its development speed is more exaggerated than the historical railway development in Britain and even the United States.
Before the 21st year of Chengshun, the railway development in the Dachu Empire was very weak. It was basically limited to old wrought iron railways. They were mainly used for mining area railways and port railways. They used horse-drawn carriages instead of trains.
However, this fee is relative... Because the Da Chu Empire had a huge territory and a large population. Even if the railway development at that time was very weak, in fact, the many mining areas and port railways could reach thousands of kilometers.
Among them, the famous Songjiang Railway, a passenger and freight railway with a total mileage of more than 30 kilometers, was developed during this period.
When this railway was originally designed and constructed, this railway was used to run carriages... not trains. Its rails were not the steel rails that were later adopted on a large scale, but were made of mild steel.
Mild steel was a trade-off between wrought iron and low-carbon steel that the Chu Empire made due to the limitations of its smelting technology and imperfect processing technology. The carbon content used was slightly higher than Wrought iron, but a type of steel lower than later generations of low carbon steel...
The hardness and wear resistance are not as good as traditional low carbon steel, but they are worse than wrought iron.
The toughness is higher than low carbon steel and weaker than wrought iron.
This thing is actually between wrought iron and low carbon steel. It is called mild steel within the Dachu Empire. It is the result of the Dachu Empire trying to improve the material performance and processing performance as much as possible under limited technical conditions.
In Chengshun's more than ten years and even twenty years ago, it was widely used in various industries such as railways, ships, and mechanical processing.
Early railways and ships were basically built using this mild steel.
Songjiang Railway too!
It's just that when this railway was built, it happened to coincide with the successful development of high-pressure steam engines, and then the train appeared, which was the Guangzhou Machinery Company's Type 21 train.
Therefore, when the Songjiang Railway was completed and put into operation, it used trains instead of horse-drawn carriages.
But...it cannot be denied that this railway was designed from the beginning to run horse-drawn carriages!
Chengshun The development of the Dachu Empire's railways twenty-one years ago was mainly focused on mining areas and port railways, and was mainly focused on short-distance, large-scale cargo transportation.
In addition, there is actually a kind of rail carriage in urban areas... Rail carriages are still an important urban means of transportation in many big cities to this day, but it is traditionally difficult to classify this kind of rail transportation as railways. .
Twenty-one years after Chengshun, because the Guangzhou Machinery Company successfully developed the Type 21 train, its subsequent operation on the Songjiang Railway achieved great commercial success.
At the same time, during this period, the Dachu Empire also successively developed large-scale mass production technology, casting technology, and processing technology for steel. Major steel companies successively launched various rails.
The service life of this new type of rail is ten to twenty times longer than that of early wrought iron, and several times higher than that of mild steel. At the same time, although the cost has increased, it is still within an acceptable range...
After all, after the large-scale mass production process of steel has been improved, there is not much difference in production costs for steel plants between low carbon steel and high carbon steel, that is, a little more carbon content and a little less carbon content.
In addition, the most important point is that after twenty years of early industrial development, the productivity of the Chu Empire has been greatly improved, and the demand for transportation is also very urgent.
The huge population flow, huge material transportation needs, coupled with the successful research and development of the Type 21 train and breakthroughs in rail technology, combined directly promoted the development of railways.
Starting from the 21st year of Chengshun, the Chu Empire began to rapidly build railways at a scale of thousands of kilometers per year.
In the early days, it was mainly concentrated in plain areas and economically developed areas where it was easy to build railways. In the middle period, war-ready railways were added. Now, with the further development of construction technology, the Chu Empire has also begun to build railways in complex terrain such as mountainous areas.
As of today, the 33rd year of Chengshun, the Chu Empire has built a total of 40,000 kilometers of railways, which is a quite terrifying number.
The main main line railways that have been built include the Jinpu Line (Tianjin, Hebei to Pukou of Jinling), Guanghu Line (Hukou of Jiangxi to Guangzhou, Guangdong), and Jiangnan Railway (Ningbo of Zhejiang to Hukou of Jiangxi, including the branch line from Hangzhou to Jinling via Huzhou).
Hailan Line (Jiangbei Haizhou to Gansu Lanzhou), Northwest Railway (Gansu Lanzhou to Turpan Yinning), Central Asia Railway (Turpan Yinning to Lianghe Province Turcheng), these three railway lines are actually a whole east-west railway line. The railway is therefore also called the East-West Railway.
Youhan Line (from Youzhou, Hebei to Hankou, Hantianfu), Nanheng Line (from Nanchang, Jiangxi to Hengyang, southern Chu, and continues to extend westward into Guizhou, is part of the Southwest Railway)
Liaodong Railway (Tianjin, Hebei to Shenyang, Liaodong), East China Sea Railway (Shenyang, Liaodong to Busan, East China Sea), Liaobei Railway (Shenyang, Liaodong to Heishui Shuangjiang)
Jiaotai Line (Jiaozhou Bay, Shandong to Taiyuan, Shanxi).
These major railway trunk lines, such as the Fujian Railway, Guangxi Railway, Xining Railway, etc., plus several major railway branch lines, basically connected all the provinces in the mainland hinterland of the Chu Empire.
Well, except for the four provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Liangkang, the railways in Yunnan and Sichuan are also under construction. It is estimated that they will be completed and opened to traffic soon. By then, only the Liangkang area will be inaccessible to trains.
These main railway lines mean that a Chu nationality can take a train from the southernmost province of Thang Long to the northernmost province of Heishui. In the future, he can also reach the city of Chur on the shores of Lake Baiga via the grassland railway.
At the same time, there are a large number of various railway branch lines, connecting many prefectures and counties, especially some economically developed areas in the east and south, such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangnan and other provinces. Not to mention every county, but basically every county Every city is accessible by train.
These railway networks formed the blood vessels for the local economic operation of the Great Chu Empire, continuously transporting people and various materials, and providing various nutrients for the huge empire of the Great Chu Empire.
At the same time, it also brought a new life to the vast number of people in the empire!
Through these railways, even people in some remote places can easily travel to other places to work and live, and many local specialty products can be easily transported to economically developed areas.
The large-scale construction of railways not only drove the development of the empire's economy at a furious speed because of its large-scale infrastructure, but also brought strong economic vitality to the railway lines.
The large-scale development of railways even directly gave birth to many large cities with railway hubs, and even changed the structure of some parts of the Chu Empire.
Such as Xuzhou, this place used to be like that, but now because it is located at a railway transportation hub, it has directly become a newly developed industrial city in the Chu Empire, and has also become the new provincial capital of Jiangbei Province.
The same goes for Zhengzhou. Because of the Yellow River Bridge, Zhengzhou has become a railway hub in the Central Plains region, and its ultimate development speed far exceeded that of Luoyang next door. Now the governor of Henan Province has moved from Luoyang to Zhengzhou.
The same goes for the decline of Anqing and the rise of Luzhou. Anqing used to be the capital of Anlu Province, but in fact its development has not been very good. The main reason is that the terrain there is limited, and it seems to be on the edge of the Yangtze River, but in fact The port throughput is not large.
It does have good military defense capabilities and a strong historical background...but these two points are of little use in the past 20 to 30 years of the empire's rapid development.
With the railway construction in Anlu Province kicking off, Luzhou-Hefei Line has become an important cross-rail hub in Anlu Province. It can reach Jingshi Pukou in the east, Lu'an in the west, and continue to the west. Arrive in Xinyang and connect to the railway networks of Huguang and Henan.
You can reach Bengbu to the north and Anqing to the south.
This unique cross-railway hub status directly boosted the economic development of Luzhou and Hefei. It also became the most important industrial city in the Anlu area of the Chu Empire. It was the second largest industrial city in the Pan-Jiangbei region after Xuzhou. Rapidly rising industrial city.
As a result, the provincial capital of Anlu Province also moved to Hefei County, Luzhou.
Xuzhou, Zhengzhou, and Luzhou all became big winners in economic development due to the construction of railways, and took advantage of the trend to become the new provincial capitals of their provinces.
There are many similar examples, not only in provincial capitals, but also in prefectural and county governments.
The original capital or county seat of many prefectures and counties was in other places, but because the railway line did not pass through the original capital or county seat, the capital or county seat was then moved to the railway line.
Of course, this is also because the railway construction capabilities of the Dachu Empire are still a bit poor, so when building railways, the priority is the difficulty of construction. It will not be said that because your capital is in a mountainous area, the railway line will specially go around you. In the ravines of the mountains.
Local officials in local prefectures and counties do not have enough political energy to influence the direction of railway lines, especially trunk railways, so most of the time they have to accommodate railway lines.
It can be seen from this that a round of large-scale urban construction occurred in the Chu Empire around railway lines and train stations.
Many cities, even provincial capitals, are actually newly built, not to mention those small counties, small prefectures and the like.
The new county towns in some counties were completely built in the wilderness around the train station.
In this process, there has been a very large investment in local infrastructure, which has brought huge demand for various infrastructure and promoted economic development.
Think about it, how much steel, cement, bricks, wood and supporting materials are needed to build a new city. At the same time, how many construction jobs can be directly provided by large-scale infrastructure construction?
These are eventually transformed into demand for industrial products, which in turn drives the development of overall employment. With more jobs, people have jobs and more income, and consumption will naturally follow.
People in later generations don't understand why some countries are so fond of large-scale infrastructure construction. Many of them have built useless facilities... Is it because they have too much money and no place to spend it?
In fact, for this kind of large-scale infrastructure construction, it is not important whether the facilities are useful or not. What is important is to stimulate economic development.
There are too many truths to explain, but simply put: think with your toes, if you build a new city, how much demand for industrial products will be created, how many jobs will be created, and how many families’ jobs will be saved!
In modern times, countries would even dig and fill a drainage ditch, fill it and dig it again... Why? No reason, just find a reason to create jobs and pay wages to the unemployed!
Well, that's right, I'm talking about the United States. They did this during the Great Depression in the 1930s...
So many times something that seems particularly absurd has a self-consistent logic, even though this logic seems very absurd to many people.
As for why you don't build more new drainage ditches and don't dig old drainage ditches over and over again, well, in fact, in most cases, one drainage ditch is enough, and more are useless!
Besides, building new gutters is too troublesome and involves too many things, so it would be easier and easier to dig up the old ones.
As for whether the gutters are useful...that's not important. What's important is to find an excuse to pay the unemployed.
Of course, what I said above is a bit extreme and even more ridiculous, but if you look at the essence through the phenomenon, the principles are actually the same.
Investing in infrastructure facilitates people's transportation and improves living standards. At the same time, artificial demand is created to stimulate economic development.
Of course, if this kind of thing is done too much, it is easy to cause many economic problems.
Today's Dachu Empire is actually in this state... Why is it that the empire already has thousands of tons of gold reserves, but it is still so enthusiastic about gold? For this reason, it does not hesitate to fight in South Africa and build railways to dig for gold. Mine.
Isn’t it just to obtain more gold to issue more banknotes and increase the total amount of currency in circulation?
However, putting aside many detailed negative consequences, the economic development driven by the current large-scale construction of the Chu Empire is extremely rapid, and the living standards of the people are improving at a speed visible to the naked eye.
This is also a necessary stage for an industrial country to develop to a certain level. In the original time and space, Britain and the United States did this in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.
Britain's railway investment frenzy in the 1840s and 1950s and the United States' railway construction frenzy in the late 19th century were both in a similar background.
Today's Great Chu Empire is no exception!
And the construction scale is larger and faster than the two countries in the original time and space!
Because the Chu Empire had a larger territory and a larger population, it could obtain industrial raw materials from overseas and the industrial market was larger.
After the Chu Empire, with a population of more than 400 million, entered the industrial age, the energy it unleashed was astonishing.
The people of our country may not feel this deeply enough, but the people in some countries or regions surrounding the Great Chu Empire feel it more deeply.
Especially Siam and Myanmar in the south.
As two indigenous countries directly bordering the Chu Empire, in the early years the Kingdom of Siam and the Kingdom of Myanmar were worried that the Chu people would come and annex them.
In particular, the Annan region was annexed by the Chu State, and subsequently many areas of the Nanzhang Kingdom were also annexed by the Chu State in various names. Both the senior officials and the people of the Kingdom of Siam and the Kingdom of Myanmar were worried about being annexed by the Chu State every day. annexation of the country.
But now...these Siamese and Burmese people are no longer worried about being annexed by the Chu Kingdom. On the contrary, they are now thinking about how to join the Chu Empire and become imperial subjects!
There are so many indigenous people trying to smuggle into the empire every year that the Chu Empire has to increase the number of troops stationed in the southwest border to strictly guard against it...
However, there are still many fish that slip through the net every year, even if they have to go through the test of life and death in the process... There are many illegal immigrants who die in the jungle or at sea every year.
However, it still cannot stop these illegal immigrants from going to Chu State!
After all, for these illegal immigrants, being an indigenous barbarian is not as good as being a member of the Chu Empire... Even a black householder without household registration is better than a native!
Many Chu people are very repulsive to this and strictly guard against illegal immigrants!
