On February 16, the spring of the 22nd year of Chengshun, the first train in Chinese history, and even in the history of mankind, the Type 21 train, successfully completed the manned and cargo test on the Jinling City Port Area Railway.

The Type 21 train pulled a total of 18 carriages, carrying more than 400 people and nearly 100 tons of cargo, and ran back and forth on the ten-kilometer-long port railway.

In the test, the maximum speed reached 25 kilometers per hour, and it ran smoothly for a long distance at a speed of 18 kilometers to 20 kilometers.

Although the overall speed is not very fast, its huge carrying capacity shocked the world.

More importantly, a train is not like a horse. It does not need frequent rests. As long as it carries enough coal and water, it can even run for a whole day without stopping.

If you drive during the day, you can easily cover more than 200 highways.

The most important thing is that the Type 21 train is just a test model. In order to reduce the technical difficulty and avoid any accidents during the test, the locomotive of the Type 21 train actually continues the basic design of the Type 21 test prototype.

Structure.

However, with the current basic industrial capabilities of the Chu Empire, after solving many technical difficulties of high-pressure steam engines, it is completely possible to exponentially increase the power of the train by simply and crudely expanding the cylinder diameter and adding more cylinders.

Now it only has more than a hundred horses, but as long as necessary, we can make a locomotive with a higher horsepower, reaching three hundred or even four or five hundred horses.

This means that the speed of the train can be further increased, and the cargo capacity can also be further increased.

Of course, if you want to increase the running speed and cargo capacity of trains, you need not only a sufficiently powerful locomotive, but also a series of other technical supports.

For example, the load-bearing capacity and stability of the rails must be passed, etc.

According to the estimates of many experts after the day's evaluation, they estimate that with the current overall technical level, the running speed of the train can be maintained at about 30 kilometers per hour. If the power of the locomotive is increased, the train can be upgraded to a higher speed.

Not even high speeds.

Because if this speed is exceeded, the accident rate of trains will increase significantly.

Therefore, the speed increase of the train is not simply a limitation of the train power, but also a limitation of the overall technology in many aspects.

For example, the train braking technology mentioned above may be commonplace to future generations, but for the current Dachu Empire, it wants to reduce a train with a mass of hundreds of tons or more from thirty to forty tons.

It is not that easy to stop quickly at speeds of kilometers per hour and avoid derailment without causing problems on the train itself.

In particular, strictly speaking, the train is not an integral structure, but a traction structure. You cannot rely solely on the front of the train to brake.

Each carriage must brake at the same time to brake quickly.

The current solution provided by Guangzhou Machinery Company is to set up a separate braking device in each carriage and deploy a brakeman. After the train driver issues a braking command, the brakeman will pull the brake lever in each carriage.

Brake...

Although it doesn’t look good, it is much more reliable than asking the train to slow down first, then letting the passengers jump off the train first, and then pulling the train to brake with bare hands after getting off!

Well, not to mention, during several previous internal train tests, Guangzhou Machinery Company actually used this kind of funny-looking artificial brake...

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Strictly speaking, the public train test in the Jinling Port Area was not the first train test in the Chu Empire. In fact, several years ago, someone tried to use a low-pressure steam engine to make a locomotive and then pull the train. The first one was in the Huainan Mine.

service company.

Subsequently, some companies tried to use low-pressure steam engines to build trains, but they all ended in failure... Because low-pressure steam engines, under limited volume and weight constraints, have too little power and cannot pull too many trains, so they have no practical significance.<

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Later, after the Guangzhou Machinery Company successfully developed the Type 21 high-pressure steam engine, it also conducted many internal train tests, but these were all internal and non-public tests.

Therefore, the impact is actually very limited, after all, the outside world is not very clear about it.

This is the first time that the Jinling Port Area train test has been made public and it is a successful train test. More than 100,000 people have witnessed this train test with their own eyes. Even the emperor Luo Zhixue brought a group of ministers to serve as

the first batch of train passengers.

To a certain extent, Luo Zhixue personally endorsed the safety of trains.

Even your majesty has taken the train, which is enough to prove the safety of the train.

Therefore, this time's public train operation test is a success and its significance is also great.

Later that day, news of the successful public test of the train spread throughout Jinling City.

Two days later, the latest batch of Da Chu Di News reported this train test as a front-page report. Comments said that this train test was epoch-making and had a high impact on the overall development of the empire.

Strategic significance.

At the same time, the latest news from the Ministry of Transportation was published. The Ministry of Transportation has decided to use trains on the Songjiang Railway, which has entered the final project and is about to be completed.

It is expected that in three months, the first commercial railway in the Chu Empire will be operated by train.

These news have aroused widespread public attention, but many high-level people know that these are just irrelevant news.

The real big news hasn’t been announced yet. No, it should be said that no decision has been made yet.

The top officials of the empire are considering building a large-scale railway network across the country. This is not an intra-city railway like the Songjiang Railway, which is only more than 30 kilometers long, but a large-scale railway that truly connects cities and spreads across the country.

net.

Because building a railway network costs a lot of money, requiring hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, the empire's top officials are also very cautious and have been debating it for the past two days.

The main form of debate is not about whether to build a railway or not. In fact, there is nothing to discuss. On the day when the train test was successful on the 16th, the empire's top officials had already reached a consensus, that is, large-scale railway construction is necessary.
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The disagreement among many ministers now is: How large will this scale be? How many kilometers of railways are planned to be built in the first batch?

Some say that train technology has matured and has large-scale applications. At the same time, large-scale railway construction can also effectively stimulate the development of the steel industry, etc. They strongly support the rapid launch of the national trunk railway network plan, especially the north-south strategic railway and the east-west strategic railway.

Railway.

Others believe that railway investment is huge, and railway construction should first build railways that are easy to build and are expected to be profitable, and then gradually expand and connect them, and finally build a large-scale national railway network.

These ministers still have opinions on how to build the railway.

At the same time, there are still disagreements about how to resolve the funds for railway construction.

Some say that a company specializing in railways can be set up to attract strategic investment and go public to absorb funds for construction. Others think that railway operating companies can issue construction bonds to raise funds.

Others think that funding problems can be solved through bank loans.

Of course, no one said that direct financial allocations would be used to build railways.

Investments in railway construction can easily amount to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Just relying on financial investment in construction will bankrupt the central finance of the Chu Empire.

And even if it goes bankrupt, not many railways can be built.

After all, no matter what, the central fiscal revenue of the Dachu Empire is only more than 200 million, not even 300 million, and these central fiscal revenues are like carrots and holes. They all have a destination and cannot be moved.

Tens of millions of Chu yuan were spent to build the railway.

Therefore, funds for railway construction must be raised through the market. The main disagreement among the ministers lies in the method of raising funds.

After all, railway construction funds involve a huge amount. If something goes wrong, it will easily cause violent turmoil in the domestic financial market. If something goes wrong, it will easily cause countless people to lose their money.

At the same time, it also involves the issue of railway control. The Chu Empire, under Luo Zhixue's matter, has long made public the commercial operation of railways. Its construction and operation must be led and responsible by the official, adopting a strict government-run model, and putting an end to

Private capital participation.

This is because the railway is a strategic industry related to people's livelihood and national security, and the government must have absolute control over the railway.

If the right to operate railways is liberalized, private capital may swarm in and compete viciously, and this swarm will only be limited to economically developed and profitable areas.

As for the underdeveloped economy, places where railway operation profits are not high will not have the capital to build railways.

After all, capital is profit-seeking, and they will not engage in loss-making transactions.

Only under official control can we achieve a nationwide game of chess. Railways will be built in economically developed and economically backward areas, and the railway operating profits in economically developed areas will be used to subsidize the railway operation losses in economically backward areas.
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Therefore, from the beginning, Luo Zhixue strongly stipulated that the railway should be government-run.

But in the case of a government-run company, if you want to adopt the method of listing and financing, then there will be a lot of troubles.

In response to the above-mentioned situations, a group of imperial ministers held meetings for several days, and finally, under the leadership of Luo Zhixue, came up with a preliminary railway construction and operation plan.

First of all, the Railway Management Office was upgraded to the Dachu Empire Railway Corporation. As the only railway construction and operation company in the Dachu Empire, the company is directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Communications.

The model is the same as the Dachu Empire Central Bank, a central government-run bank, is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, the Dachu Empire Grain Corporation is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the Dachu Empire Salt Company is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

It is different from many ordinary government-run enterprises under the Ministry of Industry. It is not a purely commercial organization, but more similar to a policy organization. It mainly serves people's livelihood and national security. It has the two characteristics of being nationwide and unique.
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The Dachu Empire Railway Corporation will be fully responsible for domestic railway construction and operations, and will also set up railway branches in various regions.

The first batch of four regional railway branches established were Jiangnan Railway Company, South China Railway Company, North China Railway Company, and Northwest Railway Company, which were respectively responsible for the construction and operation of railway networks in each region.

At the same time, each regional railway company will construct and operate detailed railway lines, and then prepare to establish subsidiaries, etc.

This model is different from many other large-scale railways. It is not based on administrative regions such as provinces, prefectures, and counties, but on railway lines for hierarchical management.

At the same time, in addition to the four major regional companies, the head office also has regular departments such as supervision, administration, and personnel.

Once the administrative structure for railway construction and operation is in place, the rest will be simple. We only need to raise funds to build and operate the railway according to the situation.

Based on many discussions, it was decided to apply for loans from banks in the name of the railway company to raise funds, and the plan to carve out shares to attract strategic investment or even go public was abandoned.

Even the plan to issue corporate bonds to raise funds was abandoned.

These are all to avoid subsequent trouble!
To be continued...