Bright Sword Military System

Chapter 1276 Narrow Gauge
The railway is built with narrow gauge, which is 1000 mm wide track.

There is a reason why the narrow gauge is used instead of the standard wide gauge.

The first is to consider the actual situation.

The standard track is 1435 mm, which is 435 mm wider than the narrow track.

Although the 435mm is not much, but the location of the railway track is in the mountainous area west of Luliang Mountain. The width of more than 400mm means that it will be much more difficult to build a wider railway in the mountainous area.

What's more, what Yan Laoxi built in Shanxi is also a narrow gauge, which is conducive to the seamless connection between the Eighth Route Army's rail and the Datong Line and avoids unnecessary troubles... It is because Shanxi Railway is narrow gauge that Shanxi can be controlled by Yan Laoxi Datong will become an extremely important transit place for supplies: Datong’s broad-gauge train will be the terminal when it arrives at Datong, and the supplies it transports can only be unloaded and transferred to narrow-gauge trains.

The second is cost considerations.

Steel was a scarce commodity during the war, even if the Eighth Route Army had its own iron mines and steel factories.

The standard wide gauge requires about 90 tons of steel per kilometer, while the narrow gauge only needs 40 tons per kilometer, which is more than half less than the wide gauge.

The saved steel does not know how many rifles can be made.

Again, it is from the consideration of the use of seized materials.

Shanxi uses narrow gauge. The specifications of the narrow gauge rails are different from the standard rails, and the trains are also different.

If the Eighth Route Army builds wide gauges, it means that neither the steel rails nor the trains seized from the devils can be used.

You must know that after the Eighth Route Army captured Datong and Ningbei Railway Stations, it had seized seven trains and a large number of carriages piled up in the railway stations. ate.

So there is almost no room for consideration in this regard, and it must be a narrow gauge.

There is no need for Wang Xuexin to consider the construction of the railway. This task is directly directed by the headquarters.

In this regard, Wang Xuexin also had to be convinced.

Before building the railway, Wang Xuexin worried that the cost would be too high for the Eighth Route Army to afford, so he asked Yu Ping to inquire about the situation.

Yu Ping used to work with Yan Laoxi, so he has a better understanding of the construction of the railway tracks in Shanxi. He said to Wang Xuexin: "Shanxi Tongpu Road plus branch lines, the total length of the railway is about 2000 kilometers. I remember the original calculation... …if it was 9500 million silver dollars to build the standard wide gauge, it was much cheaper to build the narrow gauge at 3400 million silver dollars, but it only cost about 2000 million silver dollars!"

"Oh, you can save so much money?" Wang Xuexin was a little surprised.

According to the construction situation of the stubborn army, the budget is more than 3000 million. If he does not make a total of 6000 to [-] million, he is not called a stubborn army, and he can save nearly half of the cost?

This is simply a fantasy.

But after thinking about it, Yan Laoxi governs Shanxi differently from the stubborn army.

All the officials in the stubborn army are working for Lao Jiang, and they can get a fortune.

Yan Laoxi is different, the whole of Shanxi belongs to him, if he enriches himself by building the railway, isn't his left hand greedy for his right?

Therefore, he should do everything possible to save money.

Sure enough, I heard Yu Ping say: "Yan Laoxi is a traitor. He builds his own cement factory, builds his own sawmill, and then recruits strong men from the people to drive them to build the railway. Doesn't that mean he doesn't need money? Another On the one hand, at that time, a large number of narrow-gauge railways in foreign countries were eliminated, and all of them were sold as scrap iron. Yan Laoxi’s acquisition and installation on the railway...can you not save it?"

Wang Xuexin let out an "oh", secretly thinking that Yan Laoxi is still good at business.

Then Wang Xuexin began to worry: Yan Laoxi could import obsolete steel rails from abroad at a low price at that time. Now that Huaxia's foreign ports are basically blocked and have to go around long distances and most of them have to be transported by air, this road will definitely not work.

Although the route of the Eighth Route Army is much shorter, from Yuncheng to the iron and steel plant, including the branch line, it may be 2000 to 2000 kilometers (Wang Xuexin is not sure, because he has not calculated it in detail), Yan Laoxi needs 1400 million silver dollars to build [-] kilometers, according to this If the average price is doubled, at least it will cost [-] million silver dollars!

This is not a small amount.

Wang Xuexin was wondering if he should set aside part of the US dollars in his account for railway construction.

But soon after, Wang Xuexin found that his worry was completely unnecessary. The Eighth Route Army spent less money than Yan Laoxi in building the railway, and it was much less expensive.

The most important is reflected in the human cost.

In the past, no matter whether it was the recalcitrant army or the Jinsui army, Huaxia needed to spend money to hire laborers to build railways. It was inevitable that the responsible officials would deduct wages and so on. Therefore, even if there were strong men who were forced to build roads, labor costs were indispensable. .

The Eighth Route Army is different. The Eighth Route Army has almost no cost in terms of manpower. They only need to do one thing: take care of food.That is to say, it is enough for the common people to eat enough and work vigorously.

In fact, many places didn't even care about food, and the people spontaneously organized labor forces to help the Eighth Route Army build.

This phenomenon would be "inconceivable" if it were placed in the recalcitrant army and various warlords. They would force the people and no one would want to. The Eighth Route Army would not call it, and the people would come one after another.

In fact, thinking about it deeply, this phenomenon is quite normal.

The stubborn army and warlords are in a state of separation from the people. The country belongs to the warlord leaders. Why should the people suffer hardships in exchange for the warlord leaders to ride on the heads of the people and do their best? If the people are willing, they will be stupid.

The Eighth Route Army is an army of the people, and it is closely related to the people, especially the guerrillas, whose members are the people in plain terms...doing farm work when the farming is busy, and training during the slack. See.

In this way, helping the Eighth Route Army is as natural as helping a neighbor.

Therefore, the cost of manpower is actually food... Wang Xuexin bought a large amount of food from the stubborn army before, and now the bags are sent out as wages.

The other cost is the rails.

But it doesn’t cost much in this regard, because the Eighth Route Army launched a campaign of exchanging steel rails for bazookas and rockets...

When the Eighth Route Army was short of steel and had to eat "two lines", it exchanged steel rails for bullets, and the steel rails in exchange were melted to make guns and cannons.

Now that I think about it, it's really a waste. The processed steel rails actually melted, and they went directly to the railway without even processing them.

On the other hand, no one is interested in bullets, so they have to be replaced with rockets.

In fact, there is another advantage of using rockets to exchange: rockets are a sharp weapon against the devil's gun tower. If the gun tower can't stop the guerrillas, it will not be difficult to open a breakthrough in the devil's rail defense line.

This greatly increased the amount of steel rails seized by the guerrillas, so of course the Eighth Route Army's harvest also increased. If this is to be described in one sentence, it would be "I can't bear to let the children not be caught by wolves."

(End of this chapter)