Chapter 336: Railway Traffic

At the mouth of the La Plata River in Songzhou, a group of German engineers, accompanied by Han officials, surveyed the surrounding geographical environment and made preliminary preparations for the construction of the railway from Huaiyang Province (Rosario) to Songjiang (Buenos Aires).

The natural environment of the northern and southern regions of the Han country is huge, with Songjiang Province as the dividing line, the north area relies on the main channel of the Paraná River, tributaries, and the main channel of the Paraguay River, and the inland river transportation is developed, and the agricultural products, livestock, and industrial processing zones in the coastal areas of the waterways and tributaries are transported by waterway and are distributed to other parts of the country and overseas, therefore, water transportation is the main mode of transportation in the northern region, and more than 60% of the civil ships built by the two shipyards of Xinjing Shipyard and Xinghe Shipyard are used to supply the needs of the northern region. The remaining 40 percent is used for ocean transportation.

In the area south of the Songjiang River, the rainfall is declining in a gradient, the inland river channel is reduced, the river basin is weak, and several inland rivers with abundant water volume are greatly reduced compared to the northern river channel, and cannot form an interconnected water transportation network, and do not have the conditions for the development of water navigation, therefore, the transportation in the southern region still relies on traditional manpower and animal power.

Four-wheeled horse-drawn carts and ox-drawn carts served as the main means of transportation.

According to the geographical and natural climate differences between the north and south of the Han Dynasty, the government has formulated different transportation development strategies, and in the northern region, relying on the waterways of the Paraná River and the Uruguay River, the ports along the river are used as the starting point to build a number of short and medium-distance railways connecting the inland areas, and the commodities and materials in the inland areas are transferred to the river ports by means of railway transportation, and then transferred to the waterway transportation to distribute the commodities and materials to other regions.

At the same time, taking into account the country's strategic planning, in the next ten years, three trunk railways will be built in the northern region,

The first starts from Chang'an (Córdoba), and connects Yongnian City (Tucumán City), the capital of Jinzhou (Catamarca Province and Tucumán Province), and Zhangqiu City (San Salvador-Dehui) to the north, in which the railway section from Chang'an to Yongnian City has been built and opened to traffic by British businessmen in 1876, and after the war in Argentina, a number of funds were compensated to British businessmen, and the Han government took over the control of the railway, and then on the basis of the original railway, it will continue to be built to the north to connect Zhangqiu City.

The southern section of the railway route is the section of the railway from Huaiyang Fu (Rosario) to Songjiang, which is being surveyed and observed by German engineers, and is expected to start construction in May 1880 and be completed by the end of the year.

The Songjiang-Zhangqiu railway will be the first long-distance railway in the Han country, because the Huaiyang Chang'an section and the Chang'an Yongnian section were completed and opened to traffic in the Argentine period, and the Han government only needs to connect the two sections of the Huaiyang Songjiang section and the Yongnian Zhangqiu section of the short-distance railway, and the distance of more than 1,000 kilometers from Zhangqiu to Songjiang can be shortened to just two days to complete, which saves about a month compared with the original land and waterway alternate mode of transportation.

The second main railway line starts from Huaiyang Province and connects Yunxi City (Paraná City), Xianghe City (Posadas) and Xing'an County (Pasu Fengdu) to the north. It is expected to start construction in two years, and it will take one and a half to two years to complete and open to traffic.

The purpose of the construction of the Huaiyang-Xinghe railway is twofold: first, to connect the frontline areas bordering Brazil to facilitate the future mobilization of troops, and second, to strengthen the external transportation capacity of Yangzhou (Rio Grande do Sul) and Los Angeles (Santa Catarina) to reduce the transportation costs of the two places as local industrial bases.

Yangzhou and Los Angeles are rare coal producing areas in the La Plata region, with proven coal reserves accounting for 90% of Brazil's total coal reserves, and are the earliest industrial bases and heavy industry centers built in the region.

The scarcity of coal resources is a major problem in the development of local industries, so while effectively using the coal reserves of Wuzhou and Yangzhou to develop industries, it is also necessary to purchase coal from Colombia, the ninth largest country in the world in terms of coal reserves, and actively explore and develop the coal resources of the Congolese colony has become a focus of the government's work in the next stage.

More than 60 years between the second eighties of the nineteenth century and World War II, the industrial field has not yet moved towards the sophistication and integration of the 21st century, the use of local reserves of coal resources and through the purchase and mining of coal mineral resources in the Congo colony, can fully meet the needs of local industrial development, if a foreign war breaks out again, the foreign trade and transportation routes of the Han State are cut off, and the Han State can also use the rich local timber resources to burn the cut wood into charcoal for inland shipping, printing and dyeing, In industrial fields such as grain processing, there is no need to fear the risk of industrial development being choked by others.

The third railway line in the north starts from Wuzhong City (Montevideo), the capital of Wuzhou (Uruguay), passes through Yangzhou Hexi County (Santa Maria) and Xing'an County in the north, and finally ends in Dongsheng County (Ruoinvia).

In the Wuzhong-Dongsheng railway section, it is planned to build two branch lines, one is the Wuzhong to Wuling (Pelotas) and Hexi County branch line, and the other is the Hexi County to Xinjing (Alegre Porto route). )

Wuzhou, Yangzhou and Luozhou are not only the light and heavy industrial bases of the Han Kingdom, but also important grain producing areas, because they are located in the area east of the Paraná River, coupled with the superior natural environment, they are also habitually called Jiangdong three states by the local people.

The northern region is the key area of industrial and agricultural development of the Han Kingdom, although the northern region has alternative conditions for water transportation, but in terms of railway construction, the northern region has still been favored by the government's policy, and the southern region, which accounts for nearly half of the total land area, in the next ten years of development planning, only plans to build a long-distance railway trunk line starting from Yanling (La Plata) and ending at Shanyang City (Neuquén City), the capital of Huazhou (Neuquén State), and relying on Yanling - Several short-distance railway spurs in the Sanyo Railway section.

The mineral resources of Han are mainly distributed in the three prefectures of Jinju (Catamarca and Tucumán provinces), Songju (Buenos Aires Province), and Shouzhou (Santa Cruz Province).

Among them, Jinju is rich in copper, gold, lithium and other mineral resources, with the highest reserves, Songzhou mineral resources are mainly limestone and other rock ores, and the proven mineral resources of Shouzhou are mainly gold and silver mines, and the mineral resource reserves of the three states account for about 70% of the total in the original Argentina region.

Songju and Jinju are located in the north, and only Shouju is located in the southern inland region, although the Cuyo Basin and Neuquén Basin in the northwest, the San Jorge Bay Basin and the Magellan Basin in the south have found a total of more than 300 million tons of oil reserves and 27 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil reserves in the 21st century, and Argentina has become a net oil exporter and the fourth largest shale oil resource reserve after Russia, the mainland and the United States, but it is limited by the current level of technology. Oil and shale oil resources could not bring fiscal revenue to the government, and only the gold and silver mineral resources in Shouzhou made Li Mingyuan excited, and decided to build the southern railway line, on the one hand, to use the local gold and silver resources to attract Chinese immigrants to move in, and on the other hand, to mine gold mines, replenish the gold reserves of the central bank, and stabilize the national financial system dominated by the gold standard.

Of course, after the completion of the construction of the four main railway lines in the north and the south and the accumulation of certain railway construction technology in the local side, the Pacific regional railway connecting the other side of the Andes will also be put into operation based on the main railway line of the north and south.