Of course, this was not the case at all---- the original plan was to build an ambitious railway network.

However, because of Li Junming, when they asked the Red Mansion to configure rails and steam locomotives for the Zixia Island Railway, the Red Mansion decisively cut most of the plans, especially the refusal of steam locomotives.

The Red Mansion said in the telegram: Now the volume of transportation of goods and raw materials between the Red Wharf and the heavy industrial area along the Xiliu River is really a bit large, and it can barely be dealt with with the two locomotives brought by the old world, but it is not a long-term solution after all, so now in terms of railways, in addition to Chengdong is very busy, Boss Luo is also very busy - he and the Yellow Sea in the east of the city are of course busy with the manufacture of steam locomotives, but it will take time.

Moreover, even if there is a self-made steam locomotive in the future, it will be given priority to the use of Line 9 and its branch lines.

At the moment, Line 9 is busy, and the two Stephen tank locomotives from the Old World are simply not busy, and there are plans to extend Line 9 to extend and expand from the mouth of the West River to the east coast of Mornington Island, where a new city is planned to accommodate the arrival of new immigrants, and then a series of ranches and farms will be built there.

Because Lao Zhu and Lao Wang plan to build the food processing base there, because the food processing has a serious pollution game on the environment, especially the water source, it must be established in the east of the downwind and downstream---- which is the same reason that the heavy chemical base is established in the area of the Xiliu estuary.

However, all this planning depends on when a homemade steam locomotive can be built.

Red Mansion said in the telegram that a while ago, the board of directors of the "North Fund" was already discussing investing in a Stirling engine locomotive for the transition of steam locomotives, because the family is now in urgent need of power locomotives---- everyone is looking at Cheng Dong and Boss Luo They built the power engine, and now they want people to give people to give silver to silver, but even so, it is estimated that there will be no eyebrows until the second half of next year, when we should be able to have a homemade steam locomotive - Boss Luo They said, strive for you to have an internal combustion steam engine, But it is quite possible that it was an externally fired Stirling steam engine.

Therefore, Boss Luo and Chengdong sent a telegram suggesting Zixia Island: You can build the railway, and we can also provide the rails, but the wagons running on the rails are lightweight, and they are manpower or animal power, and even the human-powered rail cars used by Boss Luo for Cao Limei's mine in the past.

Speaking of railroad tracks, Holley said that this is relatively easy to do, because it is estimated that your railway does not have much load at all, and how much load can a manpower and animal power rail car have? So they plan to return the pig iron scrapped by steelmaking a while ago to the furnace, and then add some iron placer ore, and it is not a big problem to build dozens of kilometers of railroad tracks for you with such iron.

As for the qualified heavy rail steel, don't think about it, there are not only plans to extend Line 9 here, but also a number of branch lines to be repaired, which are not enough at home......

Immediately Sun Lao and Xia Xiaoou also called: A railway budget of 50,000 taels of silver has been formulated for your construction plan, we believe that Zixia Island does need to vigorously develop transportation, although the power machine can not be provided at home, but the non-power machine rail transit proposed by Chengdong is still feasible, after all, this mode of transportation is at least much more efficient than people shouldering......

Immediately, after the discussion of the "Northbound Fund", it was decided that Holley and their team were responsible for building railroad tracks for Zixia Island, and Boss Luo was responsible for manufacturing human-powered rail cars, and it was expected that these equipment would be transported to Zixia Island before the end of the year.

Then Yu Hewei sent a telegram to Zixia Island: Now the family needs a lot of wood, I hope you can organize manpower to cut some, good wood, preferably corrosion-resistant hardwood.

In addition, sleepers are also needed to repair railways, and your timber is transported to Mornington Island, which will be processed for you to do antiseptic treatment, so the sleepers you need to repair the railroad will also be solved by the way.

Although many men were cut down in a big way, Li Junming and they were still very happy after receiving this series of telegrams, and the brothers immediately organized a logging team of 300 people, and they cut down the forest along the west bank of the Heishui River.

At the beginning of December, the Nicole sent the fifth batch of immigrants from Macao, a total of 6,000 men and women, and Li Junming knew that after the arrival of this batch of immigrants, the number of immigrants in the next batch would be reduced by one-third, and the Macao side would intercept part of the population and stay in the Wanshan Islands in accordance with the prescribed proportion.

The migrants were settled on the west bank of the Heishui River, where in addition to flat land, there were large areas of forest.

After weighing up, Li Junming and his team decided to settle some of these migrants near the open-pit coal mine in the middle of Heishi Road, where there is not only a large area of grassland to cultivate, but also very close to the open-pit coal mine - it is clear that one of Li Junming's goals is to make full use of this group of labor to expand the open-pit coal mine nearby.

The development of open-pit coal mines in the upper reaches of the Heishui River and the improvement of navigation on the Heishui River were the third major projects of Zixia Island in the second half of 1659.

At present, the output of the Heishui Coal Mine has finally increased somewhat, and the coal mine has basically maintained a dynamic equilibrium state of 200 strong laborers working 10 hours a day, with a daily output of about 30 tons of coal.

As the deputy governor, Wei Dongli was in charge of the matter, and he had recruited a lot of strong laborers some time ago—after all, the wages were good, and food and drink were included, so many men had recently been able to come here to earn an extra sum of money while the farm work was relatively leisurely.

In fact, the most labor-intensive part of the coal mine is not to dig coal, but to transport the coal to the small wharf by the river, and then load it onto the small wooden boat on the wharf and transport it to the semi-open-air stacking yard in Zixia Town - except for the small wooden boat, the rest of the entire loading, unloading, and transportation process is carried on the shoulder, so this process is very time-consuming and laborious, inefficient, and also takes up a lot of labor, otherwise, doubling the output of the open-pit coal mine is not a problem.

Therefore, Wei Dongli has been asking the Red Mansion to provide various transportation and loading and unloading equipment to the coal mine---- such as tower cranes for small docks, and even hopes to build a branch line from the railway to connect the coal mine pit with the port of Zixia Town.

For this reason, the board of directors of the "Northbound Fund" held a special meeting to discuss this matter, and now everyone is more and more aware of how important the existence of the open-pit coal mine on Zixia Island is to us, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it has an important strategic position, not to mention that every time the Nicole passes by Zixia Island, it has to be replenished with coal - almost every month, hundreds of tons need to be replenished.

And in the near future, all of our hybrid sailing ships will need to use Zixia Island as a midway supply base, obviously, with the increase in the number of our ships in the future, the importance of that open-pit coal mine will become more and more prominent, so Wei Dongli's request is very reasonable and important, and the various projects around improving the supply capacity of the coal mine are indeed necessary.

The conclusion of the council's discussion is similar to that of Wei Dongli: the main bottleneck restricting the supply capacity of coal mines is indeed the lack of loading and unloading transportation conditions.

As for the question of building a railway branch line raised by Wei Dongli, Yu's answer is: it is not economical - unless the railway that runs through the north and south uses steam locomotives for large-scale transportation, and the railway can only use manpower or animal power to pull goods, it is no problem for such a railway to engage in small-scale bulk cargo transportation or passenger transportation, but for ores such as coal, such long-distance transportation with manpower and animal power is completely thankless. Yu Hewei stressed that with such good conditions as Heishui River navigation, coal mines do not need railway transportation at all.

Mr. Yu's opinion was supported by the board members, who muttered that in that case, the river would be polluted.

You must know that the predecessor of the board of directors of the "Beishang Fund" is the living materials committee when it just crossed over, except for a few "old guys" who are over forty years old and Luo Zhengyi Yu He Wei, who was later added, all the ladies of the Red Chamber are members of the council---- especially now, Captain Gu often runs to the sea and is not present, Sun Lao is running at both ends, Lao Ba is a bodhisattva, and the ladies are always very active in the operation of the fund, so their opinions often affect the decision-making of the "Beishang Fund".