In the middle of summer, the morning at Fort Canyon is still relatively cool. At five o'clock in the morning, Peng Zhicheng, surrounded by a group of guards and entourage, boarded a train from the direction of Xiayihe Town.

The train had been in Fort Canyon for most of the night, and the workers at Canyon Station had begun their intense unloading work after the train stopped at eight o'clock last night. The two wooden wagons were filled with various materials needed to maintain the production and life of the more than 3,600 local residents of Fort Canyon, such as fuel (coal), building materials, daily necessities, machinery and equipment, etc.

While the stevedores were unloading the wagons, the mechanics of the Canyon Railway Station mechanic class also carried out an emergency overhaul of the train. Today, due to the low level of metallurgy and machining on the East Coast, the integrated system of trains, which tests the overall strength of the country's industry, is still quite unreliable.

The mechanics replaced some of the more worn-out bearings for the train, and also checked the deformation of several gears, and finally, the piston connecting rod of the steam locomotive did not know whether it had not been replaced for a long time or the quality itself was not good when it left the factory, and there were obvious cracks on the surface, which made the mechanics of the mechanic class really speechless. If this is broken, the speed of the moving train will plummet by half, and there may even be other collateral problems.

After repairing the train and filling it with coal, the workers loaded the freight wagons with about twenty tons of wheat - the supply of grain to the hundred-foot cliff forts along the railway. In fact, most of the supplies carried by the whole train were grain, plus the twenty tons of wheat in the canyon fort, a total of fifty tons, and the remaining thirty tons were mobilized from the town of Xia Yihe.

In seven townships in the middle and lower reaches of the Yi River. Only Xiayihe Town, Ningjin Fort, and Canyon Fort have grain surpluses available for export. Qishan Township is self-sufficient in food, but there is basically no surplus. The remaining newly established Heyangbao, Danuma Township and Changshan Iron Mine currently need to import grain from the outside world, among which Changshan Iron Mine is a major grain importer.

To tell the truth, the agricultural conditions in the Yihe area are indeed not as good as those in the Yahu Lake Basin, because the soil here is not very fertile, and the population here is not very abundant, and Peng Zhicheng, the head of the army, is indeed not a good hand at economic construction, so the Yihe area has barely achieved grain self-sufficiency over the years, but has not been able to hand over a grain of grain to the central government for export.

Thereinto. There is a slight surplus of grain in Merlin County after several years of development, but it is also used to fill the holes in the two new settlements around it. Canyon Fort (3,500 people), Ningjin Fort (1,500 people), Xiayihe Town (4,000 people) last year a total of about 100,000 acres of registered arable land, this agricultural area has not yet implemented the three-crop rotation system a total of 4,000 tons of wheat and 2,300 tons of soybeans, an increase of 10% and 12% respectively over last year, the harvest can only be said to be average, neither bad nor too bad; The average yield per mu was 80 catties and 46 catties respectively, roughly the same as last year.

Therefore, we can see that the increase in grain production in the region is mainly due to the increase in the income of newly cultivated land, and the grain yield has not been increased. In addition, the ongoing war of La Plata did not affect the town of Baja Yi, and the peasants in this area were not transferred to the front in large numbers. As a result, food production has been maintained and has risen steadily.

Removing the daily consumption of local residents, about 1,800 tons of wheat and the same amount of soybeans can be exported from the three places. For these grains. Except for the part that should have been handed over to the national grain reserve, the rest of the part was purchased by the Yihe District Administration through a bank acceptance bill to support the food consumption of nearly 9,000 workers (including South African laborers and residents of Baiqiya Fort and Merloburg) who were building the Northwest Railway.

In addition, several other settlements under the jurisdiction of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, such as Hejinbao, Chengshanbao, and Tielingbao, also need to be supplied with food from the Yihe area, otherwise they will not be able to support it at all, after all, these settlements have been established in the past year or two, and they are far from being self-sufficient.

Of course, in addition to food consumption, the Northwest Reclamation Bureau also needs to consume a lot of meat and vegetables. Vegetables are good enough to be said that most of them can be solved locally, but the meat Yihe region can't afford it - they are still short of it. To solve this problem, it is still necessary to rely on the support of six coastal counties, such as Dongfang County, the capital where animal husbandry has developed quite well, and Xihu County, the granary of the Republic in the North Yahu area.

As a result, every once in a while, the wharves of the town of Lower Yi are flooded with boats transporting pigs and cattle. After the pigs and cattle were unloaded on the wharf, in order to prevent them from losing weight, the Northwest Reclamation Bureau was reluctant to let them walk, and the director of the bureau, Ma Jia, specially coordinated with the State Railway Administration to transport them by train to the 100-foot cliff fort, which was about 90 kilometers away.

Some of the pigs and cattle were slaughtered and eaten at the Hundred Feet Cliff Fort, some were salted and transported in heavy freight wagons in the direction of Merlotburg, and of course a small number of cowboys continued to be driven by gauchos to Tieling Castle so that the residents of this industrial town, which was dominated by skilled workers, could also eat fresh meat.

According to incomplete statistics, the daily consumption of grain and non-staple food, the building materials and machinery and equipment needed for the construction of factories and towns, the supply of railroad tracks and building materials for the construction of railways, and miscellaneous things such as personnel, weapons, and daily necessities in the settlements under the jurisdiction of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau probably need to transport more than 15,000 tons of materials from Xiayihe Town to Baiqiya Fort every year. Based on a 60-ton steam train that carries a load of 60 tons and a two-day round trip (loading, unloading and maintenance along the way), it can transport about 900 tons of materials in a month, and it is almost 10,000 tons a year.

Of course, this is an ideal situation, in fact, it is impossible to achieve such a large transportation volume in reality - this is because the first phase of the Northwest Railway (Xiayihe Town to Baiqi Yabao section) is still a single line, and it is impossible to open trains at the same time to save time; The second reason is that the reliability of the train is not very high at present, and it often breaks down halfway, which obviously wastes a lot of time.

In order to solve this problem and fully ensure the transportation of all kinds of materials required for the construction of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau, the State Railway Administration has specially prepared two trains in the railway station of Xiayihe Town, and at the same time strengthened the scheduling to maximize the utilization rate of the existing railway line; In addition, there is also a steam locomotive on standby in each of the three railway stations of Xiayihe Town, Canyon Fort and Baiqi Cliff Fort to replace the damaged locomotive at any time.

However, even so, according to normal circumstances, as long as the first phase of the Northwest Railway is not opened for a day, then the various materials required by the Northwest Reclamation Bureau cannot be fully guaranteed, because even if the railway is built, the transportation capacity is still insufficient (which shows the difficulty of developing inland areas). However, the black humor is that the capacity of the inland river transport fleet that transports all kinds of materials from the coastal areas to Xiayihe Town is also quite insufficient, and it is thankful that half of the 15,000 tons of materials needed for a year can be transported, so the State Railway Administration can also pat its chest at this time and say that our railway has not delayed the construction of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau......

On the head of the train parked in the Canyon Fort Railway Station, the stoker constantly shoveled the crushed standard Tacheng refined coal into the furnace, and the fire in the furnace became more and more vigorous, and the boiler air pressure had almost reached a normal level. The steam engine was constantly puffing water vapor, and smoke was billowing from the chimney, and occasionally some sparks escaping from the chimney even ignited the leaves of a dead tree next to the tracks, causing a wave of confusion among the workers in the train station, and the train driver and stoker laughed at it.

At half past five o'clock in the morning, only a long whistle was heard, and the cylinders on both sides of the steam locomotive began to work slowly, and the train gradually increased its speed, heading straight for the hundred-foot cliff fort fifty or sixty kilometers away. Peng Zhicheng and others sat in the last passenger car (there are a total of 8 carriages, the first is a coal water car, the 2nd to 7th is a cargo compartment, and the 8th is a passenger car), at this time, in addition to their group, there are only a dozen technicians from all walks of life who went to Baiqi Cliff Fort and Merlo Fort on business.

After the train started, Peng Zhicheng lay on the railing of the open-top carriage, looking at the large flat fields along the railway line and the fleeting cattle and sheep, and couldn't help but feel emotional. This is the power of industry, and if there is no such thing as a big killer of the industrial crown of the train, it will be extremely difficult for the people of the East Coast to open up the minerals in the inland areas.

However, even if there is a steam train with a cargo capacity of more than 60 tons, the northwest region, which is not far away, is still a little inadequate, which makes people feel a little regretful. Peng Zhicheng knew that this was his own impatience, and now the pace of the people on the east coast to develop the territory under the jurisdiction of the Northwest Reclamation Bureau has been quite fast, but due to factors such as the shortage of manpower and the impact of the war, their pace of developing this area has been slowed down a lot.

If it weren't for this war, maybe the railroad would have been opened to Merlotburg by now, and the railroad to Hejinburg would have been almost half built. Alas, on the one hand, the war has broadened the future living space for the country - after all, the opportunity is rare now, and if it wants to wrest territory from Spain in the future, it may have to face the common attack of the whole Catholic world; On the other hand, the war has also brought huge amounts of wealth to the country - such as a large number of beef cows.

Of course, the side effects of the war are also quite obvious, such as the lag in transportation construction. The lack of transportation capacity not only restricts the development of the domestic economy, but also restricts the construction of transportation facilities. War, or development, is a painful choice. In any case, since the war has been going on for a year and a half, it will certainly not be acceptable to everyone without a satisfactory result, but at the same time, transportation construction cannot be left behind. Now that the next five-year plan has already mentioned the priority of developing the transportation industry, the construction of some new railway projects, such as the first phase of the Northwest Railway, can be put on the agenda. (To be continued......)