The train driver in the courtyard

early morning.

The rising sun hung low over the tube-shaped building, and the capital city was shrouded in a faint golden light.

The gate of Qianmen Locomotive Depot was as bustling with people as usual.

The energetic workers, carrying canvas bags and iron-thick lunch boxes, walked through the gate chatting.

Sudden.

Two clear whistles were heard in the distance.

The workers turned their heads and saw a large GAZ truck loaded with goods approaching from a distance.

The security officers directed the workers to move aside while they went forward to greet them.

"Comrade, what's on the car?"

"These are production materials sent to the maintenance workshop."

The truck driver handed over a list as he spoke.

The security officer has received notice and knows that the maintenance workshop will receive a batch of materials today.

When we saw the seal of the Ministry of Transport on the form, we were ready to release it.

A series of grunting sounds came from the truck bed, and two big fat pigs poked their heads out of the bed and looked around blankly.

The security officer was confused: "Comrade, are these two sheep also production materials?"

The truck driver was helpless: "This is what your leader asked. He said that the workers need to eat meat to have the energy to work."

Security officer: "."

The employees nearby: “^_^!!”

These days, meat is real hard currency.

No matter what the reason is, if someone sends meat, it must be released immediately.

The security officer asked the workers to make way, and the truck roared into the Qianmen locomotive depot.

At this time, Director Zhang of the maintenance workshop was already waiting at the door of the maintenance workshop with a group of workers.

Seeing that there were two big fat pigs on the truck in addition to production materials, they were so happy that they couldn't stop smiling.

Director Xing has said that their work is not in vain and they can get 1 tael of meat every day as a living allowance.

"Driver Li really found us a good job." Director Zhang sighed and waved at the workers: "Unload the truck!"

After the materials were unloaded, Director Zhang led the workers to do some preparatory work.

When Li Aiguo rode his bicycle to the maintenance workshop, all preparations were ready.

Li Aiguo handed the drawings to Director Zhang. Director Zhang was now considered a "skilled worker" and he and the workers started working busily with welding guns.

The fabrication of the crane frame went very smoothly.

At this time, Director Zhang breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the workers working step by step. He walked up to Li Aiguo holding an enamel mug and drinking tea.

He saw Li Aiguo squatting on a steel pipe fiddling with a blueprint, and came over curiously.

I stared at the drawing for a long time but still couldn't understand it.

"Driver Li, what is this?"

"Iron box."

"It really is an iron box! I thought you were researching some high-tech stuff again." Master Zhang was halfway through his words when he suddenly froze, "No, driver Li, why are you researching this iron box?"

"Keep it secret for now. Old Zhang, take a look at what materials are needed to make this iron box." Li Aiguo handed the drawing to Master Zhang.

Master Zhang put down the enamel pot, took the blueprint, and frowned after just a glance: "Inner length 5.899 meters, inner width 2.352 meters, inner height 2.292 meters, thickness 8 mm
Oh, it would cost a lot to make this thing.

Especially the steel plates, which are large-sized ones. We don’t have them in our maintenance workshop yet. You need to apply to the Materials Department and ask them to dispatch them to the steel plant.”

The materials needed for a twenty-foot container are already large in size, which surprised Li Aiguo.

But when he thought about it carefully, he understood.

The maintenance workshop usually does repair work. It has also manufactured carriages in the past, but the materials were transferred from the locomotive factory.

It really makes it difficult for Master Zhang to get such a large carriage for him.

This is just a 20-foot container. If we produce a 40-foot container, wouldn’t the cost be even higher?
Li Aiguo originally planned to take the blueprints to his big money sponsor, Xing Duanchang, but when he saw Zhou Qigong, the shipping specialist of Jincheng Port, walk in, he immediately narrowed his eyes.

This container is mainly used in ports.

Based on the principle of whoever uses it pays and whoever pollutes it should renovate it, the real financier should be the port.

"Old Zhou, hey, have you had breakfast? How about I go to the cafeteria and bring you some steamed buns?" Li Aiguo looked at Zhou Qigong with eager eyes.

Zhou Qigong was shocked by his attitude: "Driver Li, do you already know?"

"What did you know?" Li Aiguo felt something was wrong.

Zhou Qigong puffed out his chest and said, "I've got five more orders for you. The trucks delivering the materials will be here soon. The Ministry of Transportation spent a lot of money this time."

Li Aiguo: "."

He felt that he should turn the maintenance workshop into a crane production workshop.

But Li Aiguo didn't care.

After all, the workers in the maintenance workshop have become skilled workers, so dealing with this small order is no problem at all.

At this time, Director Xing had already received a call from the Ministry of Transport.

"What? Five more orders, for Wuhu Port Yuxi, Basuo Port, Zhanjiang Port, Xiamen Port, and Tongling Port?" Director Xing was also shocked by the news.

After he realized what was happening, he immediately said with a wronged look on his face: "Oh, it's difficult, leader, our Qianmen locomotive section is in a very difficult situation. In order to complete the order for Jincheng Port, we have already mobilized nearly 80 masters."

A voice came from the phone: "Each order will cost an extra 200 kilograms of meat and 500 liters of diesel!"

"Hey, you are being too polite. We are a brother unit, so we have to help in any way we can. Don't worry, we will guarantee to complete the task." Director Xing's face was full of joy.

The other party said that the materials for producing the crane would be delivered soon, and the locomotive would be transported from the Datong Factory to the Qianmen Locomotive Depot, and then prepared to hang up the phone.

Xing Duanchang suddenly remembered something and suggested: "In the future, the railway crane will be sent to the port, right? We can use wagons to transport it for you on the railway, and the price is guaranteed to be very cheap.

Just 550 kilograms of pork will do. We are old friends, so we can get a discount. How about 530 kilograms of pork?"

Section Chief Xing was very skilled in selling the locomotive depot's wagons.

There are carriages specially used for transporting goods in the Qianmen Locomotive Depot.

At that time, you can directly apply for a transportation task, find a freight driver to drive a train around the country, and you can earn several thousand kilograms of pork.

This is such a good deal.

The other party was silent for a moment, and then said faintly: "Old Xing, have you forgotten that the train track is a train itself and does not need to be transported."

Xing Duanchang blushed on the spot, but laughed: "I am also considering the customers."

Ahem, luckily I was speaking into the microphone and no one saw it.

If it were in the future, Xing Duanchang would definitely be an excellent salesman.

With five orders, I can earn more than a thousand kilograms of meat alone!
Director Xing Duan became excited at that moment.

Made money.

Of course, that's a luxury.

After hanging up the phone, Section Chief Xing stood up, walked out of the office, and shouted to the deputy section chief in charge of logistics: "Notify them and ask the canteen to prepare meat dishes for lunch. We are celebrating today!"

In the morning, there was a bustle in the locomotive depot in front, and a passionate and generous voice came from the loudspeaker.

"Good news, good news. To celebrate, our locomotive depot has received six orders from the Ministry of Transport for its maintenance workshop.

Meat and vegetables are provided in the canteen at noon. There is an adequate supply of meat and vegetables. Please queue up in an orderly manner to eat. "

Wow!
The moment the sound sounded.

The maintenance workers, dispatchers, train drivers, and firemen at the Qianmen Locomotive Depot all jumped up and applauded excitedly.

Supplies are scarce this year. Although the situation on the railway is better, it is only enough to get enough food.

The workers at the Qianmen Locomotive Depot have not eaten meat for two months.

Zhou Ke rubbed his ears to make sure he had heard correctly, frowned and asked, "What happened to Duanli? Isn't it over?"

A police officer was escorting two smugglers into the office and said with a smile, "Captain Zhou, you may not know that the iron racks made by driver Li were favored by the Ministry of Transportation, and Duan Li made a lot of money from the Ministry of Transportation."

"Is it a crane? Hey, I didn't expect that someone would be interested in this thing?" Zhou Ke was a little surprised.

Zhou Ke helped in the maintenance workshop some time ago. In his opinion, cranes are just a few iron frames and a few hoists, and there is no technical content at all.

At this time, the two smugglers raised their hands and said, "Leader, we have been arrested by you. We are also from the section, right? Can we eat meat at noon?"

Zhou Ke: "."

Police officer: “.”

noon.

When the bell rang, the workers rushed to the canteen carrying their lunch boxes.

Soon, a long line formed at the cafeteria entrance.

In order to prevent accidents caused by the large crowds, Zhou Ke brought several public security comrades to maintain order at the door.

Seeing Huang Jing coming over with three lunch boxes, Zhou Ke asked with a smile: "Huang Jing, why are there so many lunch boxes?"

"There are those from my master, and those from comrades at the port." Huang Jing said as she lined up at the end of the line.

"Don't queue up. By the time it's your turn, the food will be cold." Zhou Ke rushed into the cafeteria with a lunch box and shouted, "Old Chen, get three boxes of meat and vegetables."

Seeing that Zhou Ke, a railway police officer, openly cut in line, other workers didn't care, except a young man who was dissatisfied.

He grumbled to his master, "He made us wait in line, but he went through the back door. This is too unreasonable."

"Snapped!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he was slapped on the forehead.

Master Zhou's eyes widened as he said, "Captain Zhou Ke is hungry and is here to maintain order. How could he be the kind of person who uses the back door?"

"But, he clearly helped the female driver get food." The young apprentice was not convinced.

Master Zhou lowered his voice and said, "Do you know who that female driver is? She is Li Aiguo's apprentice Huang Jing. This meal must be for driver Li. If it weren't for driver Li's crane, would you be able to eat meat?"

The young disciple suddenly fell silent.

After all, everyone knows that the crane order earned Qianmen Locomotive Depot more than a thousand pounds of profit.

Li Aiguo certainly didn't know all this. At this moment he was sitting face to face with Zhou Qigong in the studio.

When Zhou Qigong saw the iron box drawing, he felt a little confused: "Driver Li, do you really think that our Ministry of Railways is a sucker, right?
An iron box is just a blueprint. The professors at our Maritime College can draw seventy or eighty of them a day.

You actually want to exchange another 5,000 kilograms of meat with us now?"

Li Aiguo was not angry either. He lit a cigarette, took a puff and said, "This iron box has a nice name, it's called a container."

"The name 'container' does have some meaning, but no matter how nice it sounds, we have no use for this iron box."

Zhou Qigong felt a little guilty when he said this.

Because he had just studied the drawings.

Although the iron box on the drawing has a simple structure, the data is clearly marked, as if it has been carefully designed. Li Aiguo is not the kind of person who likes to keep people in suspense, so he asked directly: "Lao Zhou, you are in charge of shipping, how do you load and unload bulk cargo at Jincheng Port now?"

Speaking of his profession, Zhou Qigong opened up: "Loading and unloading cargo is almost the most important and most difficult job at the dock.

Because there are many types of goods, the loading and unloading methods for each type of goods are also different.

Bulk cargoes like coal require different grabs.

Different slings are required for different packaging of groceries.

Bulk cargo and general cargo are also not conducive to multi-layer stacking and space saving.

In order to facilitate loading and unloading, bulk cargo and sundries are usually packed in large bags.

Due to the difficulty in loading and unloading bulk cargo, it is not uncommon for ships to wait at the port for a week.
In addition, due to the lack of reliable packaging, bulk cargo and piece goods are bound to be damaged or lost during the transportation and loading and unloading process.

Extreme weather such as heavy rain and snow can easily cause devastating transportation accidents, which has become another important cost and risk in sea transportation.

This problem is not only a problem in our Tianjin Port, but also exists in other domestic ports and even international ports.

And the bigger the port, the more serious the problem.”

Zhou Qigong is considered an expert, but his head still hurts when he thinks about loading and unloading cargo at the port.

At this time, Li Aiguo pointed to the blueprint and said seriously: "Containers can perfectly solve all the problems you just mentioned."

After hearing this, Zhou Qigong frowned and looked at the drawings.

Li Aiguo went on to say: "Containers have a uniform size, and all bulk cargo can be loaded into containers. To load and unload goods, you only need to load and unload containers."

Seeing that Zhou Qigong still didn’t understand, Li Aiguo had to explain again: “For example, a cargo ship is loading at Jincheng Port.

There might be a bundle of apples shipped to Guangzhou and five boxes of flashlights shipped to Qingdao.

The way you are doing it now, it can only be packed in large bags.

The big bag contains all kinds of things, soft, hard, square, round.

There are many things to consider when loading things onto a ship and placing each item where in the cargo hold.

Apples are afraid of being pressed and cannot be placed inside.

But the first stop is Qingdao and the last stop is Guangzhou.

In other words, after arriving in Qingdao, in order to unload the ship, the apples from Yangcheng must be unloaded first before the flashlights can be unloaded.

As a result, the loading and unloading efficiency is very low because special arrangements are required.

If it is switched to containers, all the goods to Qingdao will be loaded into one container.

Once the ship docks, the container will be lifted directly onto the dock using the dock's crane equipment.

The time consumed will be reduced by dozens of times, and the cost will be reduced.

These are just two types of goods and two ports. If there were hundreds of goods and dozens of ports, the time and labor costs saved would be astronomical.

"

Zhou Qigong's eyes widened as he listened, and he became excited. He finally added: "Driver Li, this kind of container should be able to be directly loaded on trains and trucks, right?
In this way, the container can be directly hoisted onto the transport vehicle, which improves the turnover rate of the cargo yard.
In addition, the container is an iron box, which is collision-proof, fire-proof, and rain-proof. Such a simple thing actually has so many benefits. "

As expected of a shipping expert, he immediately realized the brilliance of containers.

This thing is worth even ten thousand kilograms of meat, let alone five thousand kilograms.

Li Aiguo said: "The only criterion for measuring whether a device is useful is whether it can improve production efficiency and save production costs.

Just like a wheel, it's just a round thing, the structure is very simple, but can we live without the wheel now?"

“This metaphor is so apt.”

Zhou Qigong picked up the blueprint and became more and more excited the more he looked at it.

He was already acutely aware of it by now.

If containers can be widely used, domestic and even global shipping will probably undergo revolutionary changes.

just
Zhou Qigong immediately realized the problem with the container technology: "Driver Li, if we only have boxes, it may not be enough.

How to transfer, how to stack, and even how to design the ship all need standards.”

Li Aiguo said: "That's right, the container is just a tool, how to make the tool move is the most difficult and important part.

I have designed some of the standards, but a national standard like this cannot be accomplished by one person alone.

So we still need the help of your transportation department."

Li Aiguo has already purchased standard technology from the system, but if this thing is not promoted on a large scale, it will not produce any effect at all.

"I will go to the department now and report this situation to the leader." Zhou Qigong said as he stood up.

At this time, Huang Jing had already brought back the food. Seeing Zhou Qigong was about to leave, she smiled and said, "Leader Zhou, this is meat."

"No, I don't have time to eat now." Zhou Qigong said this and ran out of the studio.

"Hey, are all the people at the port so busy? This is meat and vegetables." Huang Jing was a little confused.

"Don't worry about him. It's good that he left. The two of us can have three servings of meat dishes."

Li Aiguo was very happy.

Huang Jing: “.”

The meat dish is pork stewed with vermicelli from Qianmen Locomotive Depot. The fat chef is from Northeast China and his cooking skills are authentic.

After eating and drinking, I ate two cucumbers as after-meal fruit.

Li Aiguo rubbed his stomach and staggered to the maintenance workshop and started working in production.

Zhou Qigong didn't come back until evening, but Li Aiguo didn't care.

After all, although container technology may seem simple, it is indeed related to the overall work of domestic shipping, and transportation leaders must be particularly cautious.

Five days passed in the blink of an eye, and there was still no news from Zhou Qigong. Li Aiguo felt that something was wrong.

"Did this kid suffer a defeat?"

Things turned out pretty much as Li Aiguo had expected.

After Zhou Qigong reported the container technology to the leaders of the transportation department, it soon gained the attention of the department leaders.

However, someone immediately raised objections.

The unified containers are indeed convenient for transportation.

However, international shipping still uses bulk cargo transportation, and containers are not practical at all.

Zhou Qigong had to explain: “Now Xiaomeijia does have containers, but their containers have not formed a standard.

The container developed by Driver Li is a standard container with uniform size, uniform loading and unloading standards, and uniform transportation standards.

According to my calculations, if standard containers are used, transportation time can be saved by 80% and transportation costs can be reduced by 60%. "

In order to convince the leaders of the ministry, Zhou Qigong also invited two senior experts, Professor Chen and Professor Liu from Dalian Maritime University, to help.

They took out the prepared statistical data and presented them to the leaders in the department.

After seeing the data, some leaders were shaken.

It is suggested that a batch of containers could be manufactured first, several transportation experiments could be carried out, and finally a decision could be made whether to adopt containers for large-scale transportation of goods.

At this time, another leader raised an objection: "As far as we know, the centralized containers abroad are mainly concentrated in Xiaomei and Western European countries.

Big Brother does not use container transportation.

If we use containers for transportation, will it be suspected of being a terrorist act?"

Although the leader used a question mark, his tone sounded unquestionable.

As soon as this suggestion was put forward, those leaders who had originally planned to support the transportation experiment gave up their support.

Everyone knows the seriousness of this question.

Zhou Qigong was also shocked and quickly stepped forward to clarify: "All of our container technologies were developed by driver Li.

It has nothing to do with foreign technology.”

There was still silence in the meeting room, and the leaders all lowered their heads and did not respond.

Zhou Qigong hesitated for a moment, then puffed out his chest and said, "I think there is nothing wrong with the technology! As long as it is good technology, we should use it!"

As soon as these words were spoken, the faces of the participants suddenly changed.

"Comrade Zhou Qigong, you are making a mistake!" The opponents immediately stood up.

Zhou Qigong insisted, and his leader, who had always admired him, stood up and smoothed things over: “Engineer Zhou has always been a technician, so he may not have a clear understanding of some things.

How about this, when you go back, write a report and submit it to the Ministry."

Several technical leaders from Dalian Maritime University also stood up to explain on behalf of Zhou Qigong.

The matter was finally brought to light.

But at this time, no one will support the promotion of container technology.

The big boss stood up, looked around, and patted the table: "Let's put the container technology aside for now!"

In this way, Zhou Qigong spent five days but ended up in failure.

Inside the Li family’s house.

After Zhou Qigong recounted his experiences over the past few days, he picked up his glass and drank it all.

"Driver Li, you know what? I've been hitting walls everywhere these past five days. All I've hit is a cold, hard 'south wall'!"

Zhou Qigong put down his wine glass, clenched his hands violently, his knuckles turned white from the force, his face full of resentment and unwillingness.

"I just can't understand why we have to shrink back just because the Russians haven't come up with technology?!"

Having said this, he slammed the table.

The cups on the table trembled, and the dim light swayed a few times with the movement.

The light and shadows flickered on his face, making his haggard and lost look even more prominent.

Li Aiguo picked up the wine glass, took a sip, and said slowly: "Old Zhou, even if there is no Ministry of Transport, we still have the Ministry of Railways."

Zhou Qigong was delighted when he heard this, but he soon realized a serious problem: "But, will the leaders of the Ministry of Railways agree?"

"How can we know if we don't try?" Li Aiguo poured a glass of wine and handed it to Zhou Qigong: "Comrade Zhou Qigong, are you willing to fight alongside me?"

"Driver Li, as long as you can use me, I am willing to do my best."

Zhou Qigong didn't hesitate at all. He picked up the wine glass, clinked glasses with Li Aiguo, and drank it all.

As the spicy liquor went into his stomach, Li Aiguo narrowed his eyes.

In fact, he was somewhat confident that he could convince the railway leaders.

Unlike the leaders of the Ministry of Transport, most of the comrades in the Railway Department were former railway soldiers, and most of them had been on the battlefield.

Comrades who have been to the battlefield know that on a battlefield full of artillery fire, no matter whether it is the enemy's weapon or your own weapon, as long as it can destroy the enemy, it is a good weapon.

The most important thing is that this weapon was actually designed and manufactured by ourselves.

(End of this chapter)