At the beginning of October 1861, the first railway in Fuso was officially opened, with a total length of about 20 kilometers from Baizhu in the northern Ezo land to Fengyuan (Gofuso-ri), which was exactly 36 years after the appearance of the practical steam locomotive "Voyager" in England.

The leaders of the light and dark forces of the Hakodate Office were all present, and the only outsider who appeared was Saigo Takanaga of Satsuma.

And Saigo never dreamed that he could actually see a train in Fuso, which is a sign of this Western industry, he was overjoyed, and couldn't help but fall into a big wave of thinking, "How did Naohide and the others come up with it?" ”

To put it bluntly, it's very simple, "British production, North Rice reverse engineering cracking, and then Fuso imitation" - no way, people have accumulated hundreds of years, and it is not a dream to catch up with it in ten years.

However, there are still some places to be proud of:

First of all, Hakodate was designed and built by self-reliance;

Secondly, the rails are all self-produced, and the steam locomotive, the front of the locomotive is made of rice, and the rest of the carriages are produced by Toyohara Ironworks.

In fact, with the strength of the Northland, the front of the car has time to be self-produced, but the question is, why research this?

Fuso is surrounded by the sea, and with today's economic level, long-distance shipping is possible, but short-distance, except for the mining area, the construction of railways is really not a priority.

The railway line from Baizhu to Fengyuan is not built, because Fengyuan is the industrial center of the north, and the cargo throughput is too large - the requirements of the industrial society for logistics are much greater than that of the agricultural society!

In fact, Naohide and others have long wanted to build it, and they are afraid of attracting the attention of the shogunate, so they have never dared.

But by July 1860, the opportunity was finally ripe.

At that time, Zhixiu and others set a grand strategy of "making it public", and began to raise funds from abroad, high-profile diffusion technology and introduce talents - the primary reason is that it has reached a bottleneck period.

The market, capital, and talent all became constraints on the development of the Northland at that time, and if they didn't think about it, the inertia of the economy and organization would tear the Naohide family apart - without the shogunate's trouble, the Northland itself would have to start confrontation and even fight.

In fact, there was a way out at that time, in 1859, the box gate had been opened to the outside world, relying on the channels of the two foreign companies, the Miren Huili and the British Huitong, in fact, the northern land could survive and even live very well.

But "with a sharp blade and a murderous intent", the Northland heroes at this time are no longer the self they were a few years ago:

At that time, I was trembling, lest the shogunate would find out about my small moves, but by 1860, the annual income of the Northland's private account was estimated to be 787,000 white masters, which could be converted into the same amount of Tianbao's small judgment - to be exchanged for the value of the Wanyan coinage that year, it would be calculated three times!

Although there are 233,000 contributed by the Hongzhiwu Gold Mine and more than 40 million of the overseas Secret Treasure Hawkson Treasure, no matter how it came about, wealth is wealth!

You must know that in the past, when the shogunate was in good years, it was not an annual income of 4 million days to guarantee a small payment, and the annual income of the northern land reached 20% of the shogunate.

Considering that the Northland has always been light on taxes - the exemption of agricultural tax and industrial and commercial tax is only 10%, this potential is still tapped.

In particular, the battle of Aihui was won a great victory that year, and the self-built steamships and fish ~ thunder at the end of the year could be hotly baked, which naturally inspired everyone's ambition (ambition)!

Therefore, "it is better to be happy alone than to be happy with everyone", this external business has to be done, and the internal transaction cannot be abandoned!

Therefore, in September of the first year of Mannobu (1860), after Naohide, Hori Toshiki, and others returned to Hakodate, under the cover of the shogunate's permission to "resettle and develop the orchid industry", Kitachi changed its previous cautious style and began to develop the industry, and the number one project at that time was the railway line from Hakujo to Toyohara.

Fengyuan is the industrial base of the Zhixiu series, so the transportation from Baizhugang to Fengyuan has long been overwhelmed, but in order not to attract attention, it has not dared to build a railway, just use light rail perfunctory.

The light rail is made of wood wrapped in iron sheets, and then a horse-drawn carriage is used to run on it, which is the method before the advent of railways.

But if the light rail works, then why do you need the railway!

The sleepers and roadbed under this section of light rail were built according to the standards of the railway, and the rails had already been pressed in the Fengyuan Iron Works, and even the locomotive was transported from the United States.

Therefore, the project was started at the first order.

However, it was snowing at that time, and the construction cost and risk in winter were too high, so the opening of the whole line was delayed until October this year.

If you count the cost of the light rail period, the 20-kilometer railway with locomotives cost 151,000 white main cars, which can be called an inch of money.

But after it is built, Naoxiu believes that all the whining and strange words will disappear quickly, and it doesn't smell fragrant for forty kilometers in an hour?

Besides, railway construction is a lot of money, but the effect of this economic pull is to not only digest a lot of steel, but also create a lot of jobs - of course, the premise is that it is useful, otherwise it will be haha.

Of course, Naohide is not ready to build railways in Hokkaichi on a large scale, except for the wharves such as Hakodate, Monbetsu, Otaru and Wakkanai, that is, to build some short-distance railways in mining areas such as Kushiro, after all, this thing is still closely related to the degree of industrialization.

But Saigo, who got on the first train, didn't know, he was full of pride and enthusiastically consulted Naoxiu:

"How much will it cost to build the 3,000 Fusangli Railway?"

"Three thousand Fusang, you can pull you down!"

Xixiang is very aggrieved, what's wrong, look down on people, I can't build it in ten years?

So Naoxiu carefully calculated the account for him:

3,000 Fusang is about 12,000 kilometers, and the cost of land acquisition from Baizhu to Fengyuan is negligible, but how can the 12,000-kilometer-long railway not count this cost? Considering the barren mountains and mountains plus an additional construction fee, it will not cost 10,000 days per kilometer.

Therefore, the 3,000 Fusangli railway will cost at least 30 million days to guarantee a small deposit - this must also be self-produced by the rails, otherwise the cost will increase!

Zhixiu saw that he was a little cute, so he exchanged it for US dollars:

"It's about 120 million US dollars, and if you calculate it for ten years, it's 12 million a year, isn't it?"

Saigo glared at Naoxiu, didn't he make fun of me? What do you do with the US dollar, I don't know how to drop the small judgment of Tianbao?

In fact, he didn't know, Naoxiu spit out a groove he didn't understand:

In the original world of Naoxiu, after the success of the Restoration, the government desperately looted in 1872, and the financial expenditure that year was 135 million yen, which was equivalent to about 136 million US dollars (about 84 million taels of Chinese silver) at the exchange rate at the time.

"Huh?"

Don't be surprised, the annual income of the Qing court at that time was only about 80 million taels of silver, how could Fusang He De make 84 million taels!

So this is a paper game, the official exchange rate is the official exchange rate, foreigners don't recognize the people and don't recognize it, in fact, 135 million yen at that time was only equivalent to 12 million to 14 million taels of silver - print a piece of paper as gold, Saigo was also in the center at that time, right?

Putting aside the bad taste, in fact, Naoxiu thought that even if printing paper made a fortune, it would only cost more than 20 million US dollars a year, and then sixty percent would be used to build a railway, this picture is too beautiful, I dare not think about it~

In fact, what Naohide is worried about is that after these group of international students come back, they are so ambitious that they will have to paint the walls with dung, but they still have themselves and Okubo in the north, so it is not a big problem; But Saigo is different, he will have no restraints when he returns to Kagoshima, but don't make the fallen four heroes into three heroes, then the fun will be great!

After Naohide's persuasion, Saigo finally gave up his plan to build the 3,000 Fuso-ri Railway in ten years.

Later, he carefully inspected the industry in Toyohara, and Okubo gave a special introduction to the gains and losses of Hokkaichi's agriculture over the years, and finally, Naohide gave Saigo a special training, which sent him on a cargo ship back to Kagoshima.

Of course, West

People like Xiang are strong-minded, and they can only influence, not influence.

But the Northland does have an advantage, so the impact on him is still quite big:

The first is scientific research.

The General History of the World: The World After 1500 concludes, "Science began to have little effect on industry,......, and it was mostly done by skilled craftsmen of extraordinary ability." But after 1870,......, laboratories of industrial research, equipped with expensive instruments and well-trained scientists who systematically studied the problems specified, replaced the attics and workshops of the lone inventors. ”

On this point, Saigo was deeply touched:

By the time he was studying abroad, Naoxiu's laboratory in Beimi had become famous with the expansion of the Vanderbilt family's estate.

It's not because of deliberate swagger, but according to the patents recorded, the powerful people of Beimi have discovered the strength of the laboratory - if it weren't for the captain Vanderbilt's fame, the laboratory would have been eaten alive long ago.

But Saigo was in Fengyuan, but he found a research institute of the same model, and even made a lot of black technologies that were not available in the outside world, such as the punch on the machining, which is also rare in Beimi, but the punch he saw was obviously self-made by Fuso - in fact, he was rare and strange, and he couldn't tell the difference between the punch and the hydraulic press.

In fact, since the invention of the hydraulic baler by the British Brahma in 1795, the hydraulic machinery has been making continuous progress, and by 1859, there was a hydraulic press with a pressure of 7000KN in Osmaga.

Fengyuan was also the first to use a bulky air hammer purchased from outside, but it was only recently that it cooperated with Beimi's laboratory to develop a generation of hydraulic presses.

As for the punch, thanks to the ingenuity and patience of the Oriental people, it has long surpassed Tongji.

There is also a black history in this:

Agriculture to light industry, and then the development of heavy industry, this is the path of general industrialization.

Zhixiu originally thought so, but he found out just as he was doing it, no-the white master is such a talent, what about the technology tree?

Due to the principle of self-preservation, he could not give up mining, steel smelting, and ordnance manufacturing, so the research and development of the Northland was quite chaotic for a while.

It was still Gakujiro who was a bystander, and he finally determined the essence of the Naoxiu mouth cannon, so he boldly asked:

"What exactly do you want?"

That's a good question.

In fact, the foundation is not solid and then Naoxiu still wants to be insatiable, hoping to catch up with the first industrial innovation, and does not want to give up the opportunity of the second innovation:

The first industrial revolution was the era of "coal and iron" and "steel and port", marked by the Watt steam engine, the Jenny spinning machine, the Stephenson steam locomotive, and to put it bluntly, the basic industry (mining, metallurgy, and mechanical processing industry) piggyback on the rise of light industry;

The second industrial revolution is the rise of new energy (petroleum, electricity) and chemical industry (coal chemical and petrochemical) - while basic industry and light industry are developing rapidly, heavy industry has begun to take the lead.

With such a reason, Zhixiu understands that greed is too sick to hurry up!

Therefore, he will reveal the research direction to Gakujiro in detail, and then gather the efforts of everyone to pour out what is necessary, what can be competed for, and what needs to be caught up.

"Isn't this just differentiated competition", Naoxiu, who suddenly realized, found that he had already known that the book said that the latter can only do this!

Fortunately, I found it early, otherwise it would have become a triple fear - "pat my head, pat my chest, and then pat my thigh", that is, "from 'taking it for granted' to 'bragging' and finally 'regretting failure'".

Draw inferences from one another, this scientific research is like this, and the economy has to take medicine according to the prescription, so don't look at Naohide and Okubo who fooled Saigo into a daze, in fact, they were all paid for tuition.

In October of the first year of Bunkyu (1861), Saigo was sent on a cargo ship back to Kagoshima.

After that, Naohide and Okubo looked at each other and smiled, and another piece of the puzzle was completed - this is exactly "the chaos at the end of the curtain is like a chess game, and the heroes are competing for the first"!