In fact, the initiative to build a railway in the Yicheng area has been around for a long time.

It was more than ten years ago, when Qiu Haiyang had only been working in the Yicheng area for a long time, Yicheng County had just been established, the population was still less than 10,000, and Chenggao County had no shadow.

It's a pity that at that time, the Yicheng area was in ruins, and the heavy work of clearing the wasteland overwhelmed the people, and even many cadres felt exhausted; Although the new Huaxia Island next door sent some of the island's Eight Banners native soldiers to help in the battle, everyone knew how pitiful the combat effectiveness of these low-morale guest soldiers was, and everything still had to be done by themselves; Coupled with the adverse effects of the malaria incidence, which is much higher than that of ordinary areas, it was really a difficult and dark time in the history of the establishment of the Yicheng region, and the people were facing the torture of labor, death and disease at any time, how could they have the energy, ability and heart to build a 152-kilometer railway?

What's more, at that time, they were still using their strength to build a highway marked on the map as "Yicheng Second Class National Highway"! Moreover, the construction of this highway was not easy, and it was only after the New China Pioneer Team donated tens of thousands of yuan in cash and a batch of building materials under the instructions of their superiors, and at the same time selected thousands of Malay prisoners of war to go to the Yicheng area. So, where did the money, the manpower, and the materials come from to build the railway?

The construction of the Yicheng Second Class National Highway continued intermittently until the spring of three years earlier (November 1674), when it was completed with the help of his own efforts and the assistance of all parties. This 150-kilometer-long second-class national highway was built for almost ten years, costing a lot of money, materials and manpower, and even in order to build this road, thousands of Malay prisoners of war died and fled due to various factors, and hundreds of local people who went to the construction site to level the foundation also died due to labor, disease and barbarian raids, which can be described as a road soaked in bones.

But these efforts are not without their rewards! After the completion of the Yicheng Second Class National Highway, the indigenous Swazi, Tonga, and Zulu people in Yicheng and Chenggao counties were almost cleared up (at least they had been driven away from the roads and the wilderness inhabited by people on the east coast), the population and economy developed, and the circulation of goods began to speed up slowly. Coupled with the discovery of large coal mines in the northern part of Chenggao County, all this has greatly improved the utilization rate of Yicheng National Highway and its importance is increasing day by day - especially for Chenggao County, which is located in the westward inland area, this road is a veritable lifeline.

By the time of early December 1677, Yicheng and Chenggao already had nine settlements, more than 25,000 inhabitants, a large number of farmland, reservoirs, orchards, pastures, and forest farms had been opened, and the large use of black laborers (from the harvest of previous "anti-bandit" operations) also made labor-intensive enterprises such as two brick and tile wheel kilns, a lime kiln, and a cement kiln set up by the East Bank Building Materials Company slowly operate, and strongly supported the construction of the region.

Therefore, Qiu Haiyang, the former commissioner of the Yicheng District Administration (it seems that the great joy is the label of many local officials on the east coast, and has almost become the brand of the times), started the idea of the Yicheng Railway, which has been shelved for almost 11 or 2 years, at the beginning of this year, and wants to put it into practice on paper.

There is no doubt that this is a crazy plan! Even his close comrade-in-arms for many years, Xiao Jingzong, deputy commissioner of the regional administration and magistrate of Yicheng County, is no exception, and he feels that it is too unreliable! Because he felt that now the Yicheng second-class national highway has been able to play a great role, after the local Southern Vehicle Factory donated a full 100 heavy freight carriages, the transportation of all kinds of war materials between the two places is no longer a big problem, and even some civilian commodities can be transferred back and forth with the help of these convoys belonging to the state-owned Yicheng Land Transportation Company. Therefore, Xiao Jingzong felt that there was really no need to get a short three-year respite and then put himself in the construction of a new project, you must know that this is not a small burden, and it is conservatively estimated that it will take 150-2 million yuan to repair the whole line.

However, Qiu Haiyang made Xiao Jingzong change his mind with just one sentence, and actively supported the construction of this railway. Commissioner Qiu's original words Xiao Jingzong can't remember very clearly, but the meaning is quite clear, that is, he, Qiu somebody, didn't know which bigwig's way to go, and actually got the permission to set up a new small-scale iron-smelting plant in the Yicheng area, and it has been approved by the Government Council, officially issued by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, and issued a loan by the United Industrial Credit Bank.

The appearance of this kind of "miracle" project made Xiao Jingzong stunned, and he was also extremely excited. You must know that the Chenggao coal mine in the Yicheng area has large reserves, shallow burial and high quality, which can stably provide vital energy and even raw materials for basic industries, if an ironmaking plant is really set up and operated stably, then the local economy will simply take off, because the market is ready-made! There is nothing to say about the hundreds of thousands of nationals in Hezhong, Xinhua, and Yicheng, as well as the many more non-national laborers, if you count the Swahili coast, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and even India.

Of course, if an ironworks are set up in the Yicheng area, then the coveted Kanghua Iron and Steel Plant on New Huaxia Island is basically no longer a play (in fact, the project has already been shot), because it is obviously impossible for the Executive Committee to set up two ironworks in these two places so close to each other, which is not economical and in line with the deployment of the state. Later, the Kanghua Iron Ore Mine—to be precise, was an iron-gold associated mine, located near the later Suarala, and produced a small amount of silver—most likely to provide raw materials for the ironworks to be established in the Yicheng area. Therefore, this iron-making plant, which has been preliminarily decided to be located on the seashore of Yicheng Port, has the supply of iron ore and coal at the same time, and the distance is not very far, the conditions are still quite good, and the future prospects are optimistic by many people.

Of course, the most dissatisfied with the establishment of this ironworks was undoubtedly the Xinhua Pioneer Team, who sent a large delegation back to the mainland to fight for it, but only to get the investment to accelerate the development of the pyrite, gold and silver resources of Kanghua Port, which made them very frustrated. The reason for this, in addition to Qiu Haiyang Luziye, who was the commissioner of the Yicheng District Administration at the time, may be one of the important reasons why Xinhuaxia Island is a colony and the Yicheng area is officially a national territory, that is, the local bigwigs do not want to talk about sensitive enterprises such as steel smelting to be built in the colony, so as to compete for business with local enterprises - even, if it were not for Qiu Haiyang's efforts and the fact that the conditions in the Yicheng area were indeed good, this small ironworks would probably not be able to be built. Although it is true that the Yicheng area is nominally local, in practice, it is actually a second-class citizen.

However, Commissioner Qiu Haiyang, who was cursed by 200,000 people on New Huaxia Island, has also been "punished", because after single-handedly introducing the Yicheng Iron Works, he was announced to be transferred to the position of captain of the New Huaxia Pioneer Team. The irony of the world is probably nothing more than this, but maybe he Qiu didn't care too much.

After the Yicheng Iron Works project, the construction of the Yicheng Railway is no longer an insignificant matter, but a necessary and urgent matter. No, Xiao Jingzong, who was newly acting as the commissioner of the district administration, had already begun to actively plan, gritting his teeth and squeezing out 50,000 yuan from the already not very rich regional finances, and at the same time organizing a team to continue to go into the mountains to clear the mountains, and wantonly capture aboriginal captives, including Tunga, Zulu and Swazi, as the main force in the construction of the railway.

Otherwise, the planned mileage of 152 kilometers can bring down the finances of the entire region, and you must know that the Central Ministry of Finance, the State Railway Administration, and the Central Railway Company together only invest less than 300,000 yuan in railway construction every year. At this rate, the Yicheng Railway will be opened to traffic, and I am afraid it will take at least five years, how can people afford to wait! Therefore, Xiao Jingzong recently begged his old superior, Qiu Haiyang, who had been transferred to the captain of the New Huaxia Pioneer Team, and asked him to help him think of a way to give some support, but there was no one.

But speaking of which, this Captain Qiu is indeed righteous to his old subordinates! Now that he is a high-ranking official at the provincial and ministerial level, he not only promised to provide 50,000 yuan worth of food, tools, medicines, tents, building materials and other materials in the Yicheng area every year, but also provided a large number of black laborers as "consumables" for the construction of the Yicheng Railway.

These promised "consumables" are not available in New China for the time being. However, considering that their army and navy would soon head north against the wind and operate in the waters near the island, it was inevitable that they would land somewhere off the coast of Swahili and plunder, so there was no need to worry about the arrival of a large number of slaves. The Yicheng District Administration only needs to prepare food, labor tools, and enough overseers, and can sit back and wait for the arrival of these free laborers, which will greatly reduce the construction cost of the entire railway.

Xiao Jingzong also took a heavy carriage to Chenggao County in the inland area today. This second-class national highway has been running stably for three years now, the road condition looks pretty good, although there are some potholes, uneven, but for the standard of the second-class national highway, it is also very different, only need to take out one or two hundred thousand yuan of special funds for maintenance and repair every year, almost can be maintained.

On the road, there was a convoy transporting gunpowder, projectiles, gun parts, military boots, bedding, tents, and other war materials to Chenggao County. He knew that this was a team that was delivering supplies to the officers and men of the garrison brigade who were suppressing bandits in Chenggao County, and that the recent arrest of the natives was very urgent, and the fighting had become frequent, so the consumption of all kinds of materials had also increased sharply, and it was necessary for the Yicheng County side to urgently transport a batch of supplies to come and support.

In this way, the role of the Yicheng second-class national highway in military preparedness is also quite huge, it can be seen as the tentacles and blood vessels of the people on the east coast reaching out to the inland Swazi settlements, continuously transporting soldiers and military supplies into it, and then constantly sweeping the indigenous settlements, opening up the territory for the country at the same time, but also looting back a large number of labor and materials, and strongly supporting the construction of the place, on the whole it is still a relatively cost-effective business.

Of course, with the continuous advancement of the people on the east coast to the inland areas and the increasing population of pioneers, the tentacles and blood vessels of the Yicheng second-class national highway seem to be a little insufficient, and Chenggao County needs a thicker blood vessel to connect with the outside world, especially when the coal resources and grain in the interior have begun to be gradually exported in recent years.

Therefore, the construction of the Yicheng Railway has become imperative! Not to mention anything else, the Guangchenggao Coal Mine, which is rich in reserves and easy to mine, is something that is very coveted by major domestic shipping enterprises and the navy, and the demand is extremely great.

"The construction of this railway will be a top priority for the regional administration in the next few years. Compared with this important tentacle that penetrated deep into the interior, everything else seemed to be less important, including the colonization activities of Mao Jun and Tang Moyu's gang in the area of Yiyang Bay in the south. Alas, it's also their bad luck, it's not that my old Xiao doesn't help them! That piece of broken land, there are almost no competitors, when to occupy it or not, compared with the Chenggao Coal Mine, the official operation of the Yicheng Iron Plant, and the full line of the Yicheng Railway, these are all fart! Sitting in the rickety carriage, Xiao Jingzong sighed softly and said to himself: "After all, railways and factories are the future of a region, not anything else. If you are vigilant, it is the best help for the development of the region to capture some natives over there and come back to build roads. ”

In fact, as Xiao Jingzong just said, after the Yicheng Iron Works project was approved, the entire regional administration office was almost crazy, and all the work is currently revolving around the construction of the Yicheng Iron Works, the Yicheng Railway, and the Chenggao Coal Mine.

In this way, Mao Jun and Tang Moyu, who are carrying out colonization activities in the south with some people, are indeed more embarrassing. Their originally relatively "unrestrained" actions had to be restrained, because the replenishment of troops and materials would become extremely slow, and the original plan to advance with Yang Liang's troops and penetrate South Africa had almost come to naught.