August 7, 1652, Daxing Port.

After several years of construction, the terminal port of the Wujiang River shipping (because of the large drop of the upper reaches of the Wujiang River and the waterfall, the waterway has been cut off) has finally been built for several years. In particular, the Daxing Railway Station (the terminus of the Northwest Railway), which was invested and built by the State Administration of Railways, has an extraordinary appearance and an extraordinary appearance, and a large number of stonemasons, sculptors, painters, and architectural designers who were captured (or hired) from the Far East and Italy worked together here, and built a large-scale stone building - the railway station with their painstaking efforts.

The beautiful appearance of this railway station really blinded a group of people in the cookie-cutter brick houses on the east bank, so much so that Tang Yuan, commissioner of the Wujiang District Administration Bureau, once boasted: "This is the third largest 'miracle' building in the country after the People's Grand Theater in the capital and the Qingdao County Expo Hall." ”

Although Tang Yuan's words are a slight exaggeration - because the group of reliefs outside the train station is still being carved - there is no doubt that this railway station, which combines the essence of Eastern and Western architectural cultures, is the best building on the East Bank in terms of practicality and aesthetic appreciation (murals, reliefs, sculptures).

In addition to the large amount of stone used, a lot of cast iron, wrought iron and cement materials were used in the building, which brought the whole building to a new level. With the East Coast Building Materials Company (after several capital increases and share expansions!) At present, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce holds about 60% of the shares, the East Coast Company holds 20% of the shares, the Ministry of Communications holds 10% of the shares, and the other 10% of the shares are entrusted by the Natural Science Research Institute, and the annual dividends are used to support the research and development of the Institute in the construction industry) has set up a branch in Daxing Port. A lime kiln, a brick and tile wheel kiln, a stone processing factory and a new cement kiln were built near Daxing Port.

Today's East Coast Building Materials Company has a vast layout in China. In addition to the East Coast Department Store, which was upgraded from a supply and marketing cooperative, the bank outlets are denser than it. I'm afraid that other industries are inferior to building materials companies - of course, this is also due to the peculiarities of the East Coast.

On today's East Coast, the settlements are far apart and inaccessible, so the transportation of building materials is quite cumbersome and can crowd out a lot of capacity. Don't you see that more than 70% of the capacity of the Northwest Railway is now occupied by cement, lime, bricks, stones, iron components, timber and other building materials (not including construction machinery), and the transportation volume of these materials is so large that many bulk commodities such as coal, grain, soybeans, and pickled whale meat can only be queued back and wait for wagons, which shows the tension of railway transportation forces.

In order to alleviate the current situation that railway capacity is crowded by a large number of construction materials. East Coast Building Materials Company has been carrying out crazy expansion over the years, that is, constantly transferring personnel from the old factory to prepare for the construction of new factories, preparing to build a new factory, and then transferring personnel to continue to build the next one, and so on. The United Industrial Credit Bank has also given key support to the building materials company, with a large loan amount and a relatively favorable interest rate, coupled with the company's own issuance of corporate bonds in the Qingdao financial market, which can maintain the company's rapid expansion over the years.

Today, in 1652, the scale of the company has been extremely amazing, not to mention that there are branches in every settlement, at least 60% of the settlements have brick kilns (whether they are large brick kilns or relatively backward small brick kilns), and 40% of the settlements have lime kilns (generally in places rich in limestone resources). In the whole of Uruguay, limestone and marble resources are extremely abundant), and in 30% of the settlements there are cement kilns. The coverage is already quite large.

Moreover, the company is said to continue to raise funds and personnel for further expansion. It's just that because their industry has absorbed too many indentured slaves and laborers, units such as Ping'an Coal Mine, Changshan Iron Mine, Tieling Mining Bureau, Xidahuang Pioneer Farm, and Construction Bureau under the Ministry of Communications are already extremely dissatisfied, so it is difficult to say what to do next. But for now, the building materials company that has benefited from the frenzied infrastructure operation is already a giant trust company on the East Coast.

In a new cement kiln in Daxing Port, the Daxing branch of the building materials company adopted a new technology developed by the Institute of Natural Sciences after years of research and development, that is, they used a new process in the production of cement: calcining cement at 1400-1500 degrees Celsius, sintering the mixed materials in it, and then grinding the sintered clinker into a fine powder, which is the new cement.

In addition, in years of continuous experimentation and pondering, the East Coast technicians have also invented a new kiln design-they dry the cement mixture slurry in a horizontal chamber, and the gas that dries them is the kiln top exhaust gas that was originally released into the atmosphere, and this exhaust gas containing high heat is guided to the chamber by the pipeline, and then goes to the chimney and is discharged into the atmosphere. In this way, the charge that enters the chamber through the grinder is dried by the waste heat generated during the calcination of the previous batch of charge, which greatly saves fuel consumption and improves production efficiency.

This method of production was also inspired by the design principles of the brick wheel kiln by the technicians of the Institute of Natural Sciences, and they began to apply for funds from 1640 to conduct experiments and eliminate various technical difficulties, among which it took a long time to find a high-temperature resistant lining. Fortunately, they finally solved most of the technical difficulties the year before last, and were accepted by the building materials company, officially entering the promotion stage - the building materials company gave the new technology a figurative name: tunnel cement kiln, the patented technology of this cement kiln is shared by the investor building materials company and the research party natural science research institute.

The new cement produced by the building materials company has been tested with this new technology, and after two tests of screen (to test the grinding process of cement powder) and strength, it was found that the new cement completely surpassed the old cement produced on the east coast. In particular, they did a certain cement tensile test, and the strength of the sample of the new cement was 162 kg after seven days, which exceeded the minimum acceptance standard of 150 kg, and the test was a complete success.

The emergence of this new type of cement is undoubtedly a boon for the East Coast Republic, which is now undergoing "modernization", because it means that many facilities have been greatly strengthened, while the cost has been steadily reduced.

The first to enjoy the fruits of the new cement were a few new settlements around Daxinggang – the last of the year, almost all of whom came from Shandong and Jiangbei – Yidu Township near the village of Chapiqui, Fu'an Township near the village of Laureles, and Jugang Township near the small town of Constitución.

The three new settlements, each with a population of only one or two thousand, have only just completed the preliminary land consolidation work, and the shrubs and weeds on the ground have just been burned. But there is no doubt that there are still plenty of roots and grass seeds buried beneath these seemingly fertile lands, and when spring comes, they will compete fiercely with the wheat seeds planted by the settlers, which will inevitably make the yield of these first-year "raw lands" very low - perhaps only a few dozen catties per acre, and a large amount of barren grain.

On the whole, however, this was not a big problem, and under the coordination of the State Pioneer Administration, which was in charge of the pioneering, Jingjiang County, Yong'an County, and even Daxing Port, which had a surplus of grain in the Wujiang area, could continue to provide a large amount of grain for the pioneers to eat -- if it was really not possible, it could also be transported to the area of Shangcheng Port further south, which was very convenient in short.

In addition to reclamation, local residents are mainly focusing on the construction of farmland water conservancy, reservoirs, urban buildings, water supply facilities and sewage pipes. In particular, the centralized water supply and urban sewage facilities are key projects to be inspected by the Ministry of Health, and there is no room for sloppiness -- the people on the east coast have learned a bloody lesson in this regard, because the urban sewage system is backward and many residents have poor hygiene habits, which greatly increases the incidence of diseases, and in the east coast, where there is a shortage of medical treatment, the consequence of a vicious epidemic is often the death of hundreds or even thousands of people, and this is a consequence that no one can bear.

Don't you see that the British colonies in North America were often plagued by diseases, and a settlement with only a few hundred people, as a result of poor hygiene awareness and poor sanitation facilities (people and animals were drowning too close to residential areas, water sources, and there were no special personnel to deal with these excrements that could be full of germs), a single epidemic could wipe out an entire colonial settlement - this was a common occurrence in the early history of North American colonization, so no one on the East Bank dared not pay attention to the construction of sanitation facilities in settlements.

According to professional estimates, the urban sewage and water supply systems of these four settlements, including Daxing Port, require a total of about 6,000 tons of cement, and red bricks may require tens of millions, which is almost a quarter of the annual output of the brick kiln factory of the Daxing branch of the building materials company, and the consumption is astonishing enough.

But no matter how expensive it is, it has to be built, isn't it just for the people of the East Coast to build brick kiln factories, lime factories and cement factories here? Well, perhaps some of the building materials are used to build railways -- the 46-kilometer section of the Daxinggang-Fu'an Township section of the Northwest Railway Phase IV has been completed, and the construction crews are continuing to build the railway from Fu'an Township to the east -- but this is not the main use, and the real use is still the urban construction of a few settlements and the big hole in the Daxinggang wharf, which swallows up building materials.

The building materials factory continuously produces all kinds of building materials, and the settlers seize the favorable strategic opportunity period to continuously contribute to the construction of the country, such a country is a country with a calm and sober mind! (To be continued......) R1292