…

After more than a year and nearly two years of research and development, the latest research of the train can already use a three-cylinder steam engine to pull ten carriages, and the speed has been reached, when the train is empty, 28 kilometers per hour, and when fully loaded, 11 kilometers per hour.

However, despite this, the latest generation of trains still has a major drawback, that is, it has to set up facilities along the railway line to add coal and water, and it also takes a lot of time to add coal and water to the locomotive on the way.

Later, at Li Yan's suggestion, the researchers switched to using three to four locomotives as the power of a train - one to two in front and one to two in the back, so that not only can the train come and go freely, saving the trouble of turning around, but also can pull and push, make the power larger, so that it can carry more carriages, and then use more carriages to load coal and water, so that the train can run faster and longer. In addition, this design has the advantage that even if there is a problem with one locomotive, it will not delay the use of the train.

On top of that, set up some supply points along the road.

This allowed the large and medium-sized trains to be reluctantly put into use.

Compared with the immaturity of the train, because of the guidance of Li Yan, a professional who understands steelmaking, the rails in Dazhong are still very advanced, even compared with the rails of later generations, they are not too bad.

Therefore, seeing that the train was barely put into use, Li Yan immediately ordered: build the railway!

According to Li Yan's original intention, he first built a railway directly from Bianliang City in Tokyo to Yanjing.

And yet—

As soon as Li Yan's idea came out, it was immediately opposed by countless people.

Someone said, "How can you get caught up in the tricks of a train?" ”

Some people say: "Building the railway will lose my danger, harm my farmland, hinder my feng shui, and never repair it!" ”

There are also people who say: "Building a railway, laboring the people and losing money, and wasting national strength is tantamount to Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty repairing the Grand Canal, which may bring disaster to Dazhong!" ”

Wait a minute......

In short, many people stubbornly blocked Li Yan's construction of the railway.

For these people, Li Yan didn't bother to take a look, and some regretted that the rectification movement ended too early!

But then again, there are some objective practical factors, even Li Yan has to consider.

For example, the production and transportation of railroad tracks.

Although Li Yan began to reform iron ore a long time ago, and "tinkered" out of extremely advanced steelmaking technology, he also ordered people to explore new iron ore.

But up to now, Dazhong still mainly relies on the six major iron ore mines of Liaodong Iron Mine (Anshan Iron Mine), Xingzhou Iron Mine, Cizhou Iron Mine, Xuzhou Iron Mine, Yanzhou Iron Mine and Weisheng Iron Mine to produce iron and steel - the total output of these six iron ores accounts for more than 95% of the country.

It is not that the steel produced by these iron ores is not enough to lay rails, but that the transportation at this stage is too laborious.

Therefore, when laying railroad tracks, it is necessary to take into account the location of the iron ore mine – which can save a lot of time and money.

In this way, Li Yan's original idea was to directly build a railway from Bianliang City in Tokyo to Yanjing, which is somewhat uneconomical in the current initial stage - at present, the transportation of rails and sleepers is very difficult, if it is reluctantly repaired, it will have to pay a lot of price, which is really a bit more than worth the loss, and after the railway is paved to a certain scale and a new iron ore is found, this problem can be completely solved.

Therefore, Li Yan could only temporarily make concessions - temporarily repair from Xingzhou to Cizhou.

The reason why I chose to take this paragraph first.

First of all, there are iron mines in both places, which is convenient to start.

Secondly, this section of the road is a traffic artery, and it will definitely be a section of the main road in the future.

Again, the terrain here is flat and easy to repair.

At the same time, Li Yan ordered people to intensify the exploration of new iron ore in Sichuan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, Anhui, Hubei and other iron-producing areas in China in later generations.

As for the distribution of iron ore in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and central and southern China, Li Yan is not very clear, so he can only let the local government explore it little by little.

In short, Li Yan asked people to search for iron ore all over the country, and then build a steel mill at the location of the iron mine to produce iron rolling, in preparation for the next step of laying railways across the country.

This is undoubtedly a big game of chess, I don't know how many years, how much it will cost to complete, and it is even possible that when Li Yan dies, the "nine vertical and nine horizontal" railway network that Li Yan wants to see and the dream of "One Belt, One Road" farther away may not be realized.

But despite this, Li Yan still resisted all the pressure and forcibly pushed this matter with iron-fisted means.

In order to better implement his ideas, Li Yan ordered the establishment of a Ministry of Railways, which was personally responsible for himself, and appointed a very capable Hu Shijiang as a scholar, and in order to ensure that the Ministry of Railways had sufficient money to repair the railway, and in order to ensure that the Ministry of Railways not only did not need the imperial court to invest money but also made money for the imperial court, Li Yan transferred Zhang Wei, who was very good at making money and managing money, to the Ministry of Railways as a waiter.

While overhauling the railway, Li Yan did not forget the research and development of trains.

In view of the fact that the prospects of steam locomotives are not great, and sooner or later they will be eliminated by more advanced technologies, Li Yan officially proposed the concepts of "diesel locomotives" and "electric locomotives".

The advantages of diesel locomotives are fast starting, high horsepower, and high thermal efficiency. The disadvantage is that the structure is complex, the manufacturing and maintenance costs are large, and the pollution caused is large.

The advantages of electric locomotive are that the thermal efficiency is twice as high as that of steam locomotive, high power, strong overload capacity, large traction, fast speed, short maintenance time, low maintenance amount, low operating cost, easy to achieve multi-engine traction, can use regenerative braking and save energy, and will not cause air pollution and low noise.

From Li Yan's subjective wishes, Li Yan certainly hopes to develop electric locomotives.

However, this electric locomotive has higher requirements for science and technology, especially under the premise that "electricity" has not been widely discovered and used.

In addition, although the diesel locomotive has many disadvantages, its advantages are also obvious, that is, the diesel locomotive can carry its own fuel and water, as long as the standard track is given, it can run at any time, and is not affected by other aspects, unlike the electric locomotive, which has very high requirements in all aspects, and the application field has limitations, and can only be used as a means of transportation on the electrified railway.

The most important thing is that Li Yan doesn't know in which direction researchers will make breakthroughs and progress, so it is good to have one more research direction.

All in all, although it was controversial and difficult, the "big railway" project named by Li Yan himself was forcibly launched under Li Yan's iron fist.

On the day of the establishment of the Ministry of Railways, Li Yan said to Wu Shijiang and Zhang Wei: "I want to use the train to move the capital, and I hope that the two Aiqing can fulfill this small wish of mine." ”

……

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PS: Kavin, it's amazing, I wrote it all day before I wrote this chapter, and I really can't write the second chapter, so that's it for today, sorry!