Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1192 Railways and Transportation

Returning to Dongfang Port after two years, Yu Xingguo felt a sense of strangeness.

In the train station more than 50 meters away, the siren blared and the train rumbled.At the end of the [-]s when the railway had gradually conquered the East Coast, more and more people began to choose to travel by train. After all, no one wanted to squeeze those slow passenger and cargo ships full of fishy smell or dirty soot.In contrast to trains, after changing the tiresome open-top passenger carriages into closed soft-seat carriages, at least in terms of passenger transportation, trains have left ships far behind.

Someone in the train station was repairing the rails. While Yu Xingguo was waiting for the train, he chatted with the railway workers and learned that they were replacing the damaged cast iron rails with steel rails. The steel rails were produced in the western forging plant and rolled by steam rollers. But the output is not high, and the steel is relatively "golden and precious", so it is only used on a small scale in some road sections of the capital at present, which is of experimental nature.

Yu Xingguo is naturally happy to see any progress in railway technology, such as the increase in the load capacity of the train, and the increase in the speed of the train, etc.However, in the past two years, he has also heard some bad voices. For example, some domestic officials have criticized the State Railway Administration, which currently manages the national railway system, many times in public.These people often say in a sensational tone that "the current state-run railway system is the worst form of business management", "the State Administration of Railways has many shortcomings of government agencies", "the State Administration of Railways has too many debts" and so on. Government officials, down to ordinary businessmen, have everything, but it is really strange that there are no railway professionals.

But fortunately, the top government officials are still very clear-headed, especially after Jiang Quansheng dispatched an inspection team from the executive committee to comprehensively investigate the status of existing private roads in the country, and concluded that the maintenance of privately operated roads and bridges is worrying. , Even the third-class national highways invested by the government are not comparable, let alone the first-class and second-class national highways called national defense routes.Therefore, under such an investigation report, Chairman Qiang withstood the pressure and categorically rejected the opinions of some people in China clamoring to contract the railway operation rights.

However, the State Administration of Railways is not without criticism.For example, at the beginning, because of the serious shortage of transport capacity—there are many reasons for this, but the most important one is the strong demand for building materials caused by the large-scale construction in various places, and of course there are also reasons for the frequent breakdown of trains—the National Railway The General Administration ordered the construction of the double-track project of the Ome Line. As a result, the construction boom has passed, and the demand for transportation of bricks, cement, lime, iron materials, and wood has been greatly reduced. Coupled with the advancement of train technology, it has been "swallowed" due to malfunctions. The transport capacity of the Ome Line has been greatly released, and the 300-kilometer double-track railway on the Ome Line suddenly seems a bit redundant-there is no other way, and now the executive committee can only set up more villages on both sides of the Ome Line and repair more infrastructure. , to maximize the use of this somewhat "idle" railway.

Taking into account the lessons of the Qingmei Railway, the Executive Committee has decisively stopped the double-track project of the Northwest Railway. Except for the more than 100 kilometers of double-track that have been completed so far, all others have been suspended.The construction army went to Xiayihe County and Meilin County, and began to build more than [-] kilometers of the Xiamei Railway, so as to connect the Qingmei Railway with the Northwest and Southwest Railways, form a complete railway network, and strengthen the coordination and transshipment capabilities of materials. ——Such actions will naturally cause dissatisfaction among officials and people in the Wujiang area and the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, because the local infrastructure construction is in the ascendant, and there is a demand for building materials, fuel, and food (mainly seafood and foreign commodities) in the eastern area Extremely large, the existing single-track railway is seriously insufficient in the case of frequent train failures (one wagon can carry only enough bricks to build a few standard houses), if the double-track railway cannot be built, it will greatly delay the development of the local area speed.

However, the executive committee was determined this time. They naturally rejected the request of the local government and asked them to overcome difficulties and postpone unimportant construction projects to ease the pressure on transportation.Of course, the executive committee did not fail to give two dates after the slap. For example, they asked the large state-owned trust company Dong'an Building Materials Company to speed up the progress of opening branches in these places so that some buildings can be produced locally as soon as possible. Materials (this thing is the most expensive) - such a two-pronged approach, which slightly curbed the local dissatisfaction.

"Someone wants to privatize the railway? That's a dream!" A captain of the maintenance team who was chatting with Yu Xingguo spat on the ground and said disdainfully: "The railway is the heritage of the Governor Peng when he was in office. Whoever wants to touch this, the people of the country Let's kill them together."

Yu Xingguo looked at the railway cadre from Bingtuanbao in astonishment, not understanding why he had such deep affection for railways: "I heard that someone accused the railway accident that killed 45 people in Hejin Township last year as Because of the poor management capabilities of the General Administration of Railways.”

"That's slander." The captain of the machine repair was even more angry, and a scar on his forehead was faintly flushed—he may have fought in the front line and was injured, Yu Xingguo guessed—but then he softened his tone: "That accident was purely an accident. But now the General Administration has strictly enforced the safety management system of the 'District Signaling System' in the national railway system, and also uniformly required all trains to be equipped with the latest continuous brakes from the South Depot—OK At present, only the express trains (with a speed of more than 40 kilometers per hour) on the main line have been installed, and the local trains (with a speed of 20-30 kilometers per hour) on the branch lines have not yet been installed, but this is only a matter of time.”

"Some people also accuse tax officials of being too lenient on the railway system, because they hardly collect any taxes from here, but the freight and fare of the railway are still not cheap." Yu Xingguo added.

"That's because no railway in our country has made a lot of profits so far. Even the Ome Railway, which is known as the golden line, has a meager profit because it has undertaken a lot of personnel training and technology research and development. Moreover, in order to cope with The competition of the waterway has forced the price of freight to be set very low. You know, the Ome Railway has even launched a cheap tour ticket for 5 cents now, just to attract people to travel by train. I used to I'm so proud of our country's long coastline, but ever since I graduated from Bingtuanbao and worked on the rail system, I kind of hate our relatively developed coastal shipping conditions, really, because it makes our huge rail network fall into the sea In the fierce competition, the freight rate has not been able to go up.” The captain of the mechanic explained, “Many people blame this and that, but in fact, even though our Railway Administration seems to be a bit arrogant, in terms of business capabilities, it is not universal. Incompetence is not corrupt, it is effective, so our railroads can stand criticism."

To be fair, the railway industry on the east coast has developed to this day, and in terms of its image, it is actually quite good.Take the more than 100 kilometers of the Xiamei Railway under construction as an example (this railway is operated by a separate company, the Central Railway Company holds 60% of the shares, and the rest of the shares are publicly offered to raise funds across the country), an interesting fact is: whether it is the capital In Dongfang County, Ping'an County, an important industrial town, or Qingdao County, an emerging financial center, it is doubtful whether there are one or a few middle-class well-off families who do not hold a few stocks of railway companies. The trust of the middle class of society in the railway company and the degree of pursuit of new fashion and new things.

"Currently, those who are in trouble with our railway company are nothing more than the guys from the Canal Affairs Department of the Ministry of Communications." They are a little embarrassed. They are worried that the freight rate will continue to drop under the competition of the railway, so that it is not enough to maintain the annual dredging, construction of water lifting stations, and maintenance of sluice gates. It merged and became a waterway attached to the railway. Hehe, the canal wants to compete with the railway. If it does not rely on state subsidies, its freight cannot be cheap. Some people in China were interested in investing in the canal before, but since the railway technology After so many years of development, almost no private individuals are willing to pay for large-scale dredging of the canal, which is already very telling. Investors are no longer interested in the canal, except that the country still invests huge sums of money to maintain the existing river for military purposes , Private fundraising has been extremely difficult..."

"Fortunately, the railway can't be built on the sea, otherwise I will go bankrupt." Yu Xingguo said angrily, "Then, Mr. Railway, please enjoy your work in the future, I have to go home. "

After talking with the captain of the mechanic, Yu Xingguo found that a large public carriage was ready to leave, so after paying the fare, he quickly jumped into the carriage, and then quietly waited for the carriage driven by two horses. The cart pulled by the horse, went towards the inner city along the laid cast iron light rail.

Half an hour later, the carriage stopped at a station on the north bank of the Dayu River. Yu Xingguo got out of the carriage with his luggage, and then changed to a privately operated four-wheeled carriage (generally called a "business trip carriage" by the people of the capital) ), crossed the Dayu River Bridge, and headed towards a villa area on the south bank of the river, where his home was.

Returning home is naturally a time of warmth among relatives, but, to Yu Xingguo's surprise, at this time, besides his parents and siblings, there is also a relative from Bordeaux—his cousin Genet Pasquale!

(End of this chapter)