After a heavy rain in midsummer, the air was filled with a fresh smell. Outside Tielingbao Railway Station, a group of well-dressed men were standing on the wooden platform, looking forward to watching a steam train named "Dongbank Hong No. 1" drove into the station.

The train departed from Xiayihe Town, passing through five townships: Canyon Township, Baiqiya Fort, Merlot Fort, Hejin Fort and Chengshan Fort. It traveled through a 330-kilometer prairie and arrived at Tieling Fort, a major inland town. The train adopts the latest developed "East Coast Hong No. 1" steam locomotive, and the key equipment adopts the latest produced manganese and iron cylinder design, with a total horsepower of astonishing 200 horses. The entire train has twelve cars, a coal-water truck, a passenger bus car, and ten truck cars (each load is 15 tons). It took only ten hours to complete the 330 kilometers, and the efficiency is extremely high.

The "East Bank Red" train can travel directly from Xiayihe Town to the end point Tieling Fort, and the small railway bridge with a span of 40 meters on the Heihe River near Hejin Fort also contributed to the contribution. This small bridge consumed a lot of manpower. After five months of construction, it cost 90,000 yuan in sky-high construction funds, so it was barely opened to traffic. In order to build this bridge well, people on the east coast took many tricks, such as building artificial sandbanks in the center of the river, such as building a bridge pier every 6-8 meters, etc. In addition, the forged wrought iron with steam hammers on the bridge deck and manganese iron parts were also the main reason for the high construction cost of the bridge.

Moreover, the State Administration of Railways is worried that the quality and design of the Hejin Bridge are both problems, so when introducing it to the train drivers, it is repeatedly emphasized that it is necessary to slow down before boarding the bridge to prevent excessive impact and shear forces from destroying the bridge deck materials. But even so, after the "East Bank Red" train passed this time, many parts on the Hejin Bridge deck were still damaged or deformed in large quantities and needed to be replaced urgently. From this, we can also see that this bridge will inevitably become a big burden for the State Administration of Railways in the future, and the maintenance cost will be frighteningly high.

But then again, without this railway bridge, from Xiayihe County to Tieling Fort, you can only transport supplies through ferries, which is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and cost-effective, and cut off half of the entire arterial-level railway. It is a pity. Of course, there is no such a shortcoming now. Although this 40-meter railway bridge is expensive to maintain, it is still a railway bridge that can carry 150 tons of cargo. It is a 330-kilometer distance from Xiayihe Town to Tieling Fort. It takes only ten hours to go for 150 tons of cargo. Is there any more efficient transportation tool in the world?

At this time, the vest standing in front of the railway station platform was also turbulent. I remembered that six years ago, inspired by the completion of the Luomei Line railway duplication, some people in China had just decided to build such a railway in the inland northwest. In fact, neither the Executive Committee nor the Government Council had any substantial plans. They did not even make any exploration, and they were not well prepared for funds and manpower. However, someone from the State Railway Administration proposed a plan for this railway. They believed that the total construction process required about four million yuan in huge funds - this was a plan to use a large amount of slaves to reduce large expenses - it could be divided into five years of completion, with an investment of about eight hundred thousand yuan per year.

The figure of 4 million yuan was an unheard of huge sums back then. If it was implemented according to this plan, it would increase the annual expenditure of the State Railway Administration by more than 150%, which was a big challenge for the central government of the East Coast, which was still hovering between the deficit and the black letter at that time. Therefore, when some officials of the transportation and railway department proposed to build this railway with a length of broken East Coast records (of course, it is also a world record), the State Council gave them a ticket back, the reason was that the central government's finance was limited and resources should be given priority to use in more important places.

Later, in a meeting held by the government and some corporate personnel in the second half of that year, after the last time the plan was solemnly proposed, the central government, whose budget had just turned black, finally began to seriously consider it. Then, seeing the hope that the State Railway Administration of Railways was struck while the iron was hot, and the subsequent discoveries of coal mines, gold mines, manganese mines and iron mines in the Tieling area, the Executive Committee finally made up for the construction of the Northwest Railway. But at that time they had only more than 200,000 yuan in funds, and even the construction of the first phase of the railway was difficult. Fortunately, each company finally issued some funds, which made up for the shortcomings of the central government.

In this way, with the help of many parties, the Northwest Railway was finally built on a bumpy basis and was finally completed at the beginning of this year, which took five years and five months. As for the cost, although the large-scale use of slave workers caused a reduction in costs, it was still consumed in the end more than 3.9 million yuan (more than half of which were biennial bank acceptance bills, which were expected to be 50 years and 51 years as the peak period for exchanges). Even if it was spread evenly to six years, the annual expenditure was still close to 650,000 yuan, which was an extremely heavy fiscal expenditure and greatly increased the level of domestic inflation.

But now with the completion of this railway, everything can be said to be rewarded. The closed inland industrial and mining areas have a thoroughfare leading to the coastal areas, and the exchange of materials and personnel on both sides is no longer accessible. The villages and towns along the railway will surely usher in the opportunity for great development under the tilt of national policies. In fact, this is easy to understand. The country has spent a lot of money to build the railway. If the line along this line is not rich and the resources are not rich, then you will still be a bad person. Are you stupid?

"I have been waiting for this railway for six years." After dusting off some coal ash that was blown by the wind, my vest turned and walked back into the waiting room, and smiled at the officials around him, saying, "The era of great development has arrived. Tieling's resource conditions are very good. It may have had some disadvantages in terms of location, but now the railway is connected, this disadvantage has been smoothed out a lot. Tieling Special Steel Factory, the first heavy machinery factory, these two backbone enterprises, will surely bring a new round of basic industry development and progress to our country. Not to mention, our manganese and iron manganese have been used by multiple departments and have been made into various mechanical parts such as bearings, cylinders, wheel sets, gears, etc.; the steam engine newly produced by the first heavy factory is also closely watched by various departments, and will sooner or later be widely used in locomotives, ships, factories and other occasions. In general, the development prospects are very good..."

Ma Jia talked about Tieling Special Steel and Yihe Heavy, two large manufacturing companies, but Tieling's future development is not limited to this. Recently, the leader in the military industry, Northern Arsenal, cooperated with the Dayuhe Arsenal, the first arms factory in the East Coast Republic, (the East Coast Company holds 65% of the shares and the government holds 35% of the shares), to divest part of the business in the original Dayuhe Arsenal comprehensive workshop and move it to Tieling Fort, and a new professional manufacturing enterprise, Western Forging Factory, was established, of which Northern Arsenal holds 60% of the shares and Dayuhe Arsenal holds 40%.

The establishment of the Western Forging Factory has made up for the gap in the forging industry in the East Coast. Now, with the gradual development of the East Coast industry, the demand for high-quality, high-spec, and different sizes of forging parts is getting bigger and bigger. It is becoming increasingly difficult to process the old hydraulic forging hammers in the original Dayuhe Arsenal Comprehensive Workshop. Moreover, even the size of the processed parts is gradually unable to keep up, which seriously affects the upgrading of the domestic machinery industry in the East Coast.

Under such circumstances, the Western Forging Factory came into being. Under the planning of the Government Council, four enterprises with machining capabilities, the First Heavy Machinery Factory, the Railway Machinery Processing Factory, the Northern Arsenal and the Dayuhe Arsenal will use the latest technology and the latest industrial achievements to produce the large steam forging hammers required by the Western Forging Factory as soon as possible to replace the already relatively old hydraulic machinery and improve the factory's forging and processing capabilities. In addition, the Institute of Machinery of the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Technical Department of the Western Forging Factory will also work together to use the funds allocated by the state to start researching and developing and updating forging equipment. Of course, the stamping equipment will also be developed at the same time to ensure the comprehensive and diverse production capacity of the factory.

It can be seen from this that Tieling Fort and its surrounding areas are indeed another industrial center that the state focuses on building (Ping'an County is currently the only heavy industry and energy center in China). After all, it is too risky to put all eggs in one basket, and it does not conform to the original intention of the Executive Committee's western development policy. Therefore, the rise of the machinery industry here is also a sign of its existence.

However, after the machinery, energy and metallurgical industries gathered here, they also put forward higher requirements for local infrastructure and transportation facilities. Therefore, after the railway was opened to Tieling Fort, the team of tens of thousands of workers (mostly slaves) who participated in the construction were not disbanded. On the contrary, under the leadership of the superiors, they drove to Tieling Fort in batches, and then built construction, factories, streets, roads, reservoirs, canals, housing and other facilities nearby. The huge Tieling Fort has almost become a large construction site covered with smoke and dust.

In addition, the Northwest Reclamation Bureau represented by Ma Vest, the State Railway Administration represented by Peng Zhicheng, and other units such as the Ministry of Transportation, rarely reached an agreement and began to instigate the 11 members of the newly-employed executive committee to approve the fourth phase of the Northwest Railway that they jointly applied for as soon as possible, that is, the railway will continue to extend forward from Tieling Fort and to the border of the Wujiang River. In this way, various industrial finished products in the Tieling area can be transported here nearby, and then loaded into ships to sea, which is convenient and fast. After all, this section of the river in the lower reaches of the Wujiang River has a wide river and deep water, and can be directly connected to navigated ships, which is of great value.

They even chose the end of the railway, which was the port of Salto in later generations. At present, the Immigration Department has moved more than a thousand Ming immigrants who have just arrived here, and built castles and docks here. They will work with several subsequent groups of residents to build settlements, docks and train stations in this place named Daxing Port (meaning the prosperity and development of the western and Wujiang areas), to prepare for the future opening of the railway here. (To be continued, please search for astronomy, novels are better, updated and faster!
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