The rail carriage was soon put into operation in Shanghai. The fare was in segmented pricing system, with the lowest fare being one penny and the highest three penny.

In that era, three cents were a lot for a poor man. He could buy a pancake for one penny. Ordinary poor people only had one to two pancakes for a meal, and two pancakes for three penny.

In terms of value, one tael of silver in the Ming Dynasty was equivalent to three hundred yuan in modern times, one tael of silver could be exchanged for one thousand-civilian copper plates, and one copper plate was equivalent to three cents. But in fact, the purchasing power of one tael of silver in the Ming Dynasty was much greater than three hundred yuan. The purchasing power of one tael of silver in the Ming Dynasty was equivalent to one dollar later, and the purchasing power of three cents was equivalent to three yuan.

But in fact, people who need to go to and from get off work in a carriage in Shanghai will not be too poor. An ordinary textile factory worker will have a monthly salary of three taels of silver; those with higher skills will have a salary of five to eight taels of silver. Those who are accounting staff in the factory can get a salary of more than ten to twenty taels of silver every month.

Even ordinary workers with the lowest salary earn 3,000 cents a month, spending six cents a day to get to get off work is not something they can't afford. What's more, some people who live near the workplace spend less than three cents by car. Generally speaking, they can take a bus to work by spending one to two cents a day.

The door of this kind of carriage is open. Get on the front door and get off the bus from the back. There is a driver who is driving on the front door. When he wants to get off the bus from the back, there is a ticket seller. After getting on the bus, the driver will give the passenger a ticket from the station. When it comes to getting off, the passenger handes the ticket he received when he gets on the bus to the ticket seller, and the ticket seller collects money based on the station he is on.

After the railroad bus was put into operation, the business was very good. A large number of workers and ordinary employees like to ride railroad buses to and from get off work. For them, this kind of car is completely within their financial affordability.

Before this kind of rail carriage appeared, some staff members took a break to buy goods in the most prosperous commercial streets, and had to ride expensive taxi cars. With rail carriages, they could ride rail carriages.

Although rail carriages have had a certain impact on the taxi carriage business, the taxi carriage business is still very prosperous. After all, Shanghai is now a megacity with a population of more than 2 million. The city has a positive and large area. The length of the city has reached more than 20 miles from east to west and fifteen miles from north to south, which is far beyond the scale of Nanjing and Beijing.

The center of the Donglin Party was quietly transferred from Donglin Academy to the Donglin Commercial District of Shanghai. The so-called Donglin Commercial District includes the Donglin Jiangnan Yin No., the Yin No. residential building, the commercial streets around Donglin Jiangnan Yin No., etc., and there are several luxury hotels and several entertainment centers that are quietly replacing the Qinhuai River.

The railroad public carriages have a fixed shift, and there will be no cars after 10 o'clock in the evening. Those who want to go to entertainment venues, rich young men, rich second generations, etc. have their own carriages, but their friends may not necessarily have their own cars, so they generally like to ride in taxi cars.

Shortly after the rail-public carriage was officially put into operation, Song Yingxing, the Minister of Works, personally visited the Qi brothers' car factory. Song Yingxing first praised the achievements made by the Qi brothers in founding an industry, and then he said something.

"The public carriage has been successful. We now need to build a long-distance rail carriage route from Shanghai to Nanjing. The transportation volume of this kind of carriage is extremely large. We can build a long-distance rail carriage route from Nanjing to Shanghai, so that people from major cities between Nanjing and Shanghai will be much more convenient." Song Yingxing said the plan that Li Guodong told him.

In fact, this long-distance rail carriage route is a railway!

The railway from Nanjing to Shanghai is called the Beijing-Shanghai Railway. In fact, Song Yingxing was not very supportive of the proposal to build the Beijing-Shanghai Railway, because the water transportation in the south of the Yangtze River was extremely developed and there was no need to build a railway. Although Song Yingxing and the Sun family were developing steam engines according to Li Guodong's requirements, and once the steam engine was born, trains could appear. However, they also believed that the same was true for the steam engine to be installed on the ship, and there was no need to build railways in areas with developed water networks.

After all, in this era, water transportation is the fastest mode of transportation and the largest mode of transportation. Who can imagine that if trains appear in the future, the speed of land transportation will be far greater than that of water transportation?

But Li Guodong retorted: "After the birth of the steam engine, the speed of transportation on land will be far exceeding the speed of water transportation. In the future, shipping will be mainly freight. If passengers want to travel between Beijing and Shanghai, they will still choose land transportation."

In fact, in later generations, water transportation between Shanghai and Ningxia was very developed, with Yangtze River routes, Suzhou River, canals and other water transportation routes. However, it did not affect railway transportation. Between Shanghai and Ningxia, there were Beijing-Shanghai Railway, Shanghai-Nanjing High-speed Railway, Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway, and six-line parallel. Such a developed railway transportation can still eat enough. Water transportation is to transport cargo, and railways mainly carry passengers. Let’s talk about the high-speed rail era, just like the steam engine era, the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway was also very important. During the Republic of China, there were both ships and trains from Shanghai to Nanjing, but passengers would rather take a train when traveling between the two places.

Take the Republic of China period as an example. It took more than ten hours to get a ship from Shanghai to Nanjing, and it was not convenient to take a train. The fastest train was the Asia train confiscated from the Japanese, which only took four hours to go; even if it was a slow train, it only took eight hours to get on the bus and have a nap, and it arrived early the next morning.

Therefore, railways and water transportation are not in conflict.

Perhaps before the birth of the steam engine, the speed and transportation volume of this railway were far inferior to water transportation. But Li Guodong looked at it from a development perspective. But of course he could not say that the speed of the train in the future could exceed 100 kilometers per hour.

In the end, Song Yingxing and the others had no choice but to agree to the plan to build the Beijing-Shanghai Railway proposed by Li Guodong. Although Song Yingxing was dissatisfied, he still obeyed.

As expected, when the Qi brothers mentioned the construction of long-distance rail carriages with the Qi brothers, the Qi brothers agreed that it would definitely be a loss to build this route. They are capitalists, not philanthropists. Capitalists will definitely not do losses in business that loses money, but as long as the profits of beheading businesses are high, capitalists will rush to do it.

Song Yingxing sighed and said, "You don't need to pay money. The money for building this line is all paid by the royal treasury. As long as you are responsible for repairing the road, the treasury will naturally pay you the project cost. Also, if you build cars for this railway, the treasury will also buy rail carriages for you."

Then, Song Yingxing took out another drawing, which was a drawing of a super-large rail carriage.

"This kind of carriage has two bogies, each bogie has four wheels, and there are four pairs of wheels in total, that is, eight wheels. The weight of this car is about 20,000 jin to 50,000 jin." Song Yingxing pointed to the drawings and said.

"That's so heavy?" Qi Lisun gasped, "This is simply moving the boat to land!"

"Don't worry, let's make it first. Anyway, the Empress Dowager and the Prince will pay the money."

All of these silvers were made from the inner treasury. Anyway, those silvers were earned by Li Guodong for Chongzhen before. Chongzhen was very stingy when he was there, after all, he was afraid of poverty. Now Chongzhen is gone, how to use the silver? Zhang Yan can be said to be 100% supportive of Li Guodong. Whether it is expanding the new army or building infrastructure, Zhang Yan did not hesitate to take out the silver. The infrastructure built by Li Guodong and the companies built can always make more money back.

As for the money spent on building a new army, of course, it is impossible to recover, but with a new army, you can attack the Central Plains in the north.
Chapter completed!