After a rainstorm in the middle of summer, the air is filled with a fresh smell. Outside the Tielingbao railway station, a group of well-dressed men are standing on the wooden platform, watching with anticrity a steam train named "East Coast Red No. 1" entering the station.

The train departed from Xiayihe Town, passed through the five townships of Canyon Township, Baiqiya Fort, Meiluo Fort, Hejin Fort and Chengshanbao, crossed the prairie of 330 kilometers, and arrived at Tielingbao, which is located in the inland town. The car adopts the latest research and development of the "East Coast Red No. 1" steam locomotive, the key equipment adopts the latest production of ferromanganese, double cylinder design, and the total horsepower has reached an astonishing 200 horsepower. There are 12 carriages on the whole train, one coal and water car, one passenger car and 10 freight cars (each with a load of 15 tons), and it only takes more than 10 hours to complete the 330 kilometers, which is extremely efficient.

The "East Bank Red" train can travel directly from Xiayihe Town to the end point of Tielingbao, and the small railway bridge with a span of 40 meters on the Heihe River near Hejin Fort also contributes to it. This small bridge consumed a lot of manpower, and after five months of construction, it cost 90,000 yuan to build a sky-high price, and it was barely able to open to traffic. In order to build this bridge, the people on the east bank have adopted many tricky methods, such as building an artificial sandbar in the center of the river, such as building a bridge pier every 6-8 meters, etc., and the wrought iron and manganese iron parts forged by a steam hammer on the bridge deck are also the main reasons for the high construction cost of the bridge.

In addition, the General Administration of Railways was worried about the quality and design of the Hazu Bridge, so it repeatedly emphasized that it was important to slow down before entering the bridge. Prevent excessive impulse and shear forces from damaging the bridge deck material. But Rao is so. After the "East Coast Red" train passed this time. Many parts on the bridge deck of the Hajin Bridge are still heavily damaged or deformed and need to be replaced urgently. It can also be seen that the bridge will inevitably become a big burden for the General Administration of Railways in the future, and the maintenance cost will be frighteningly high.

But then again, without this railway bridge, from Xiayihe County to Tielingbao, you can only transfer supplies by guò ferry, which is time-consuming, laborious and costly, and cuts the utility of the entire arterial railway by half. It's a pity. Of course, there is no such shortcoming today, although the 40-meter railway bridge is expensive to maintain, but it is also a railway bridge that can carry 150 tons of trains. The entire 330-kilometer journey from Xiayihe Town to Tielingbao can be carried in 150 hours for 150 tons of goods.

At this time, the vest standing in front of the platform of the railway station was also full of emotions, remembering that six years ago, encouraged by the completion of the double line of the Luomei Line railway, some people in China just decided to build such a railway in the northwest inland area, in fact, the Executive Committee and the Government Council did not have any substantive plans. They didn't even do exploration, and they weren't fully prepared financially and manpowered. But someone from the State Administration of Railways proposed plans for the railway. It was also thought that the completion of the project would require a huge sum of about four million dollars - and this was still a plan to reduce the large expenditure by using a large number of slaves - which could be divided into five years, with an annual investment of about 800,000 yuan.

The figure of four million dollars in that year. It's a huge sum of money that has never been heard of before. If this plan is implemented, it will increase the annual expenditure of the State Railway Administration by more than 150%, which is a big challenge for the central government of the east coast, which is still hovering between deficit and black at that time. Therefore, when some officials from the transportation and railway departments first mentioned the construction of the railway, which broke the east bank record (and of course the world record), the government council gave them a return vote, citing the limited central government finances and the priority of resources to be used in more important places.

Later, in a meeting held by the government and some business people in the second half of that year, the plan was solemnly put forward for the last time, and the central government, which had just turned the budget into black letters, finally began to seriously consider it. Subsequently, the State Administration of Railways, which saw hope, struck while the iron was hot, coupled with the successive discoveries of coal mines, gold mines, manganese mines, and iron ores in the Tieling area, the Executive Committee finally made up its mind to start the construction of the Northwest Railway. However, at that time, they only had more than 200,000 yuan in funds, which was enough to build the first phase of the railway.

In this way, with the help of various sources, the Northwest Railway was finally stumbled and finally completed at the beginning of this year, taking five years and five months. As for the cost, although the cost of using a large number of slave workers has been reduced, it still cost more than 3.9 million yuan in the end (more than half of which are two-year bank acceptance bills, which are expected to be the peak period of redemption in 50 and 51 years), and even if it is evenly distributed over a period of six years, the annual expenditure is still close to 650,000 yuan, which can be called an extremely heavy financial expenditure, and it has also greatly increased the domestic inflationary process.

But now with the completion of this railway, it can be said that everything has paid off. The closed inland industrial and mining areas have a thoroughfare leading to the coastal zone, and the exchange of materials and personnel on both sides is no longer barrier-free, and the villages and towns along the railway line will surely usher in opportunities for great development under the tilt of national policies. In fact, this is very understandable, the country spent a lot of money to build a railway, if the line is not rich, if the property is not rich, then it is still Mao, is it stupid to be the government?

"I've been looking forward to this railway for six years." After dusting off some of the soot that was blown to his sleeves by the wind, the vest turned around and walked back to the waiting room, and said with a smile to the officials around him: "The era of great development has come, and the resource conditions of Tieling are very good. Originally, there may have been a bit of a disadvantage in terms of location, but now that the railway is connected, this disadvantage has been erased a lot. The two backbone enterprises of Tieling Special Steel Plant and No. 1 Heavy Machinery Factory will surely bring a new round of development and progress of basic industries to our country. Not to mention, our ferromanganese has been used in many departments and has been made into bearings, cylinders, wheelsets, gears and other mechanical parts; The steam engine newly produced by the first heavy plant is also closely watched by various departments, and sooner or later it will be applied to locomotives, ships, factories and other occasions on a large scale. Overall, the prospects are very good......"

Ma Jia said that Tieling Special Steel and Yizhong are two large manufacturing enterprises, but the future development of Tieling is by no means limited to this. Recently, the Northern Arsenal, a leader in the military industry, has cooperated with the Dayuhe Arsenal, the first munitions factory in the East Bank Republic (the East Bank Company holds 65 percent of the shares, and the government holds 35 percent of the shares), to spun off part of the business in the comprehensive workshop of the former Da Yuhe Arsenal and relocated it to Tielingbao, and established a new specialized manufacturing enterprise, the Western Forging Factory, in which the Northern Arsenal holds 60 percent of the shares and the Da Yuhe Plant holds 40 percent of the shares.

The establishment of the western forging plant has made up for the gap in the domestic forging industry on the east coast. Nowadays, with the gradual development of the East Coast industry, the demand for high-quality, high-specification, and different sizes of forging parts is increasing, and it is more and more incapable of relying on the old-fashioned hydraulic forging hammers in the comprehensive workshop of the original Dayuhe Arsenal to do processing, and even the size of the processed parts is gradually unable to keep up, which has affected the upgrading of the domestic machinery industry on the East Coast.

In such a situation, the Western Forging Plant came into being. Under the planning of the Government Council, the first heavy machinery factory, the railway machinery processing factory, the North Arsenal, and the Dayuhe Arsenal, four enterprises with machining capabilities, will use the latest technology and the latest industrial achievements to produce the large-scale steam forging hammers required by the western forging plant, so as to replace the already old hydraulic machinery and improve the forging and processing capacity of the plant. In addition, the Institute of Machinery of the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Technical Department of the Western Forging Plant will also work together to start the research and development of newer and better forging equipment with the funds allocated by the state, and of course, the stamping equipment will also be developed at the same time to ensure the comprehensive and diversified production capacity of the plant.

It can be seen that Tielingbao and its surrounding areas are indeed another industrial center built by the state (Ping'an County is currently the only heavy industry and energy center in China), after all, the risk of putting all the eggs in one basket is too great, and it is not in line with the original intention of the executive committee's western development policy, so the rise of the machinery industry here is also the proper meaning.

However, the concentration of machinery, energy and metallurgical industries in this area has also put forward higher requirements for local infrastructure and transportation facilities. Therefore, after the railway was opened to Tieling Fort, the tens of thousands of workers (most of them slaves) who participated in the construction of the railway were not disbanded. On the contrary, under the leadership of the above, they drove to Tieling Fort in batches, and then built a large number of buildings nearby, and the factories, streets, roads, reservoirs, canals, houses and other facilities were not left behind, and the huge Tieling Fort almost became a large construction site covered with smoke and dust.

In addition, the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, represented by Ma Jia, the State Administration of Railways represented by Peng Zhicheng, and units such as the Ministry of Communications reached a rare consensus and began to urge the newly appointed 11 members of the Executive Committee to do their best to approve the plan for the fourth phase of the Northwest Railway, which was jointly applied for by them, that is, to extend the railway from Tielingbao to the Wujiang River. In this way, all kinds of industrial products in the Tieling area can be transported here nearby, and then loaded onto the sea, which is convenient and fast. After all, this section of the lower reaches of the Wujiang River, the river is wide and deep, and it can be directly navigated by seagoing ships, which is of great value.

They had even chosen the end point of the railway, which would later be the port of Salto. At present, the Ministry of Immigration has relocated more than 1,000 Ming immigrants who have just arrived here to build castles and docks here. Together with the next few residents, they will build settlements, wharves and railway stations in the area named Daxing Port (meaning the prosperity of the western and Wujiang regions) in preparation for the future opening of railways to the area. (To be continued......)