"Woo..." The sharp train whistle sounded, and a train full of cargo slowly stopped in Hejinbao Station. 'As the station manager's order, a group of station workers who had been waiting for a long time rushed up and began the intense unloading of supplies. The truck loaded with various things, including coking coal needed by the Tieling Special Steel Factory, salted fish and cured meat transported from coastal areas, as well as a large number of mechanical equipment and parts.

After these things were unloaded in the station, the workers would immediately use ferries to transport them to the dock on the other side of the Heihe River, then load another train there, and finally transport them to Chengshan Fort and Tieling Fort, two places that urgently need various materials. It can be seen that without the extension of the railway, it is unimaginable to build an industrial city in the inland area. The massive amount of various materials alone is enough to squeeze out the transportation potential of a small country like the East Coast.

However, with the railway, the vast and rich inland areas are like opening their doors to the East Coast people. Haven’t you seen that most of the colonists in Western countries are stuck in the coastal areas of their respective colonies and letting the inland areas sleep there? The reason is not that they do not want to develop, but that they are powerless in the inland areas with limited manpower. But with trains, it is completely different. For example, the East Coast, which has developed to the third generation, has a total cargo capacity of more than 120 tons and an average speed of more than 35 kilometers per hour, can pull a large number of people and materials from the coastal areas to the inland hinterland hundreds of kilometers away in one breath, which is a miracle existence.

It is September 1649. The Northwest Railway has been built with Chengshan Fort and is currently advancing towards the end of the railway. It is expected that this major artery-level railway will be fully connected by the end of this year. The coal mines, gold mines, iron ore, special steel and machining bases in the Tieling Mining area will be linked to the core area of ​​the East Coast. From then on, it has continuously made its own contribution to the development of the East Coast Republic.

Given that the population of the seven towns along the railway is not very abundant and their economic strength is average, the State Administration of Railways has not yet had the idea of ​​re-tracking this railway. Compared with the 180-kilometer-long Luomei Line (the railway has been re-tracking), it is difficult for the Northwest Railway to balance income and expenditure in a short period of time that can be predicted. Unless the country continues to focus on immigration here for many years - in fact, the Ministry of Immigration is preparing to do this - and revitalize the economy here, there will be a glimmer of hope of profit. However, even so, it will take several years. During this period, the Northwest Railway can only be maintained by state subsidies until the population and economy of the towns along the route reach the critical point.

However, there is still a hidden worry on this railway line, that is, the Heihe River surface west of Hejin Fort, with a span of more than 40 meters. As we all know, railway bridges and ordinary highway bridges are completely of two levels. The impact and shear forces they have to bear are far stronger than those of wooden bridges under low-speed and low-load conditions. If the bridge material is not up to standard, it will be a collapse.

When the railway was built to Hejinbao the last time, the State Administration of Railways had actually considered building a railway bridge on the Heihe River. Because if there was no railway bridge, all the materials transported to Chengshan and Tieling had to be loaded and unloaded at the Hejinbao Wharf, which not only increased a lot of workload. More importantly, it greatly reduced the transportation efficiency, which was undoubtedly unbearable by the Northwest Reclamation Bureau.

After the State Administration of Railways announced that it would temporarily give up the construction of the railway bridge, Ma Qi, chairman of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, was immediately dissatisfied. For this reason, he specially led a group of people to the ferries on both sides of Hejin Fort to inspect and collect materials, and then went directly to the Executive Committee and the State Administration of Railways, asking them to draw professional and technical personnel and allocate additional special funds to strive to build the railway bridge in the shortest time to ensure the transportation efficiency of the Northwest Railway.

What a vest is? Soon, under his "nonsense" and the Executive Committee finally agreed to build the Heihe Bridge - a railway bridge that can carry a train with a cargo capacity of 120 tons. To be honest, the difficulty of this railway bridge is not the bridge piers, but the material of the bridge deck. To be more precise, the bridge deck that bears load must be made of very tough materials. As for the bridge pier, there are not so strict requirements. To put it bluntly, even if the piers are made of wood, they can last for a long time, and the technical difficulty is mainly the material of the bridge deck.

After argumentation, the technicians of the State Railway Administration decided to customize various types of wrought iron parts in the comprehensive workshop of the Dayuhe Arsenal, and then connect them through fasteners such as screws and buckles. As for why steel is not used, I'm sorry, the East Bank has not yet lit up the steel rolling technology tree and cannot be used. As for cast steel, some of the early East Bank rails were indeed cast steel, but because the castability of the steel is not good and the quality is not stable enough, the mass-produced things such as railway tracks have long been completely switched to cast iron.

All wrought iron parts are forged by steam hammers. Since the models and sizes of various components are specially made and the production quantity is not large, the cost is quite high. I believe that if it weren't for the great face of the vest, this railway bridge would probably be difficult to build. According to the preliminary calculations of the Finance Department of the State Administration of Railways, the total cost of this railway bridge is likely to be tens of thousands of yuan. If the construction process is not smooth, it is not impossible to exceed 100,000 yuan.

Tens of thousands of white silver were used to build a bridge. If the people from the Army Department knew about it, it would be a big deal! They have been forced to lay off several infantry and artillery companies, and their financial situation is relatively difficult. Unexpectedly, the white shirts are so extravagant. A bridge costs tens of thousands of yuan, and there are probably still some troubles in the future.

In any case, the construction of the Heihe Bridge is still crucial to improving the transportation efficiency of the Northwest Railway. The bridge has entered the stage of full construction. The construction team of the State Railway Administration has sorted out some shoals in the center of the Heihe River and then used them specifically as places for placing bridge piers. After the on-site survey by Viviani, a senior researcher in Viviani who is engaged in mathematical research at the Academy of Natural Sciences, suggested that the construction team place a pier every 6-8 meters (a pier every 6 meters of railway bridge built by Japan in North Korea in the late 19th century) to try to share the load and ensure the safety of the bridge.

However, after the bridge piers were too many, it also caused some trouble for the flood discharge in Heihe, which had already erupted in the autumn of autumn. Due to the construction of settlements, railways, highways, stations and docks, the forests upstream and downstream of the Heihe River Jinbao section were cut down in large quantities, and some wetlands that originally acted as flood discharge reservoirs were also artificially filled. In addition, the negative impact of the construction of the Heihe Bridge on the flood discharge in the lower reaches, a flood broke out near Heijinbao in May. The flood destroyed a village near the river bank, swept away more than a dozen villagers and dozens of livestock. In addition, some sleepers stored on the dock were also taken far downstream. If the flooded farmland was included, the loss was quite considerable.

Although this flood outbreak was affected by extreme heavy rainfall factors - the precipitation in the place was more than 200 mm more than last year, the increasing frequency of human activities also aggravated the risk of flood outbreaks. For example, residents of Hejinbao like to plant soybeans, which can easily lead to wetland siltation; for example, in order to broaden the Heihe waterway, the natural storage effect of the wetland itself was completely lost, which led to changes in the flood area, thus aggravating flood disasters. In short, this flood disaster sounded the alarm for the East Coast people who have been developing rapidly over the years, requiring them to consider more environmental factors when carrying out development and construction activities to avoid causing huge disasters to their future lives.

In order to solve this problem, especially after the construction of the Heihe Bridge began, this problem became more prominent. The Northwest Reclamation Bureau and the governments of Hejinbao have formulated a huge artificial reservoir plan. They decided to convert some wetlands on both sides of the Heihe River into artificial reservoirs, and use artificial reservoirs to adjust the water storage capacity. As for the swamp wetlands that were drained during the process, they can be filled with confidence and boldly and used for arable land. These are very fertile shallow silt and good fertile fields. If they are used to plant grains or soybeans, the harvest should be good.

In addition, the Heihe River bed also needs to be cleaned regularly. Because every time the rainfall increases, the river water will become very turbid, and the amount of silt and sand carried upstream will also increase greatly. Over time, it will affect shipping and water storage capacity. People on the east coast are basically familiar with these things. During the dry season in winter (it happens to be a slack season), people in their jurisdiction will generally organize people in their jurisdiction to dig rivers, which has almost become a fixed project in rural areas in various places. This type of mass large-scale infrastructure project is generally regarded as a kind of corvee, because local governments will not pay wages to anyone, and in some places, even villagers even require food to be prepared by themselves. But in general, everyone is not very resistant to this project, because the facilities built are not to be used for everyone themselves?
Chapter completed!