Guangzhou to Kowloon, but only 200 kilometers, joining the railway land acquisition to 30 meters wide to calculate, the total land acquisition area is only 9,000 acres, relaxed to 50 meters, is only more than 10,000 acres, even if the acquisition of 100 meters wide along the railway land, it is only 30,000 acres. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

At present, the average land price is three or four taels, and if you buy land according to ten taels and one acres, it will only be 300,000 taels of silver, so the purchase of land itself is not a problem, the key is that there is no market for price.

Later generations studied the land market in this era and found that 90 percent of the land transactions were under 10 acres, and there were no large-scale or piece-by-piece land transactions, because the common people would not sell their land at all, and even if they encountered difficulties, they would not sell all of them at once, and only sell some of them to tide over the difficulties.

Land in this era is an asset that can maintain its value, but the appreciation is very slow, because there are few transactions, the price can not be speculated, and also because of the few transactions, the liquidity is very poor, and there is no land transaction market at all, and the vast majority of land transactions are carried out between villagers and relatives.

Because of this reason, as early as eight years ago, Zhu Jinglun asked Hurd to secretly reserve land along the railway, and it took six years, and many lots were bought at four times or even higher prices, but in the end, there were still a few pieces of land that were not bought.

Fortunately, the area of these pieces of land is not large, and in the case that the market cannot solve it, technology can solve it, and it is enough to build a large-span land railway bridge, which leads to an increase in the cost of 100,000 taels of silver, but even if you give the other party 100,000 taels of silver, and the other party refuses to sell, you can only waste this money.

Due to the long preparation time, the land along the line has been surveyed and mapped many times by cartographers, and a landmark situation is that the map in the possession of the customs can be accurate not only to each village, but also to the number of cemeteries in each village.

As for the other elevations, mountains and rivers, that is simply the most basic.

Suffice it to say, this atlas, which consists of more than 3,000 pages and took eight years to survey, can be used directly for construction.

But during the preparations, Zhu Jinglun showed unimaginable patience, but when the construction was announced, he showed surprising rashness.

Zhu Jinglun demanded that it should be completed in one year, opened to traffic in two years, and profitable in three years.

He gave the railroad only one year, and in a country that had never built a railway, the first time to build a railway, it was so urgent, which caused a lot of risk.

Zhu Jinglun was able to patiently survey and map for eight years, not that he really had good patience, but he didn't want to cause contradictions in civil society on this issue, and he asked for a year to repair it, not because his patience was so poor, or the same reason, he didn't want to arouse the opposition of the people, he asked for a fait accompli in the fastest possible time, and when the people found out, a railway was already in front of their eyes.

The quickest profit is also to let them see tangible benefits, thereby weakening the power of conservatives to agitate the people.

According to Zhu Jinglun's request, the French consultant of the Mail and Shipping Department of the Ministry of Industry proposed that the entire railway be divided into 10 sections, each section of 20 kilometers, and that the construction be completed in the shortest possible time.

The French consultant has won the trust of the Ministry of Industry, he came here for only three years, but established a set of Ming postal system, mainly through the reform of the traditional post station, which is still in conflict with the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Industry, the traditional post station, mainly to transmit government information, and the most urgent, is the transmission of military information, it can be said that China's post station system, from ancient times to the present, are mainly for the service of the army, so it has been subordinate to the Ministry of War, but Zhu Jinglun let the Ministry of Industry accept this system, the Ministry of War is naturally very dissatisfied.

In the railways and the arsenal, the Ministry of Industry has overwhelmed the Ministry of War, and at present these two departments have become the departments with the worst relationship among the six departments.

The Frenchman's name is Louis, a post office civil servant in Marseille, with a medium income, but stable, and a fixed middle-class life, but he suddenly got tired of it, and came to the East to adventure, and as a result, he went bankrupt directly, and entrusted him to join the Ming government and worked as a consultant in the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

His main credit, not to create a set of Ming postal system, to be honest without him, Ming own officials, through digital modern management methods, can also slowly transform the traditional post station, Louis's greatest contribution is that he standardized the standards of the postal system, and at the same time with the United States and Europe docking, and the United States signed a mail ship agreement.

As a result of these efforts, Louis gained the trust of the Shipping Division, and his advice was adopted. And immediately asked the architectural company from the United Kingdom to design according to this plan. The British offered to hire more engineers, foremen and construction workers at the same time, and their costs would rise at least threefold.

The cost was tripled, in exchange for a doubling of the speed, and the British thought that the gains outweighed the losses, but the emperor's request, the Ministry of Industry did not dare to refuse.

Although the railway did not allow British financiers to provide financing services, the railway construction project was handed over to the British company, and the railway tracks, locomotives and other equipment were also fully produced in the British, because in this era, the railway industry was still the first in the technology of the British, and the French were able to produce their own locomotives, only 30 years, and Germany was about the same, and it could not catch up with the British at all.

British engineers were hired and British railway equipment was used, but in the end the operation was not carried out by the British, but by the Swedes, because after the news of the construction of the railway, the Swedes were also very active in wanting a piece of the pie, and Sweden had built a lot of railways over the years, and they were confident that they could also help build the railway.

However, the Ming government believed that Sweden's railways still needed to purchase a lot of equipment, and chose to cooperate with the United Kingdom. However, after signing an operation service with the Swedes, the Swedish Railways were hired to operate the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway for two years, during which time they trained Chinese drivers, operators and maintenance personnel, and after the completion of the schedule, the Swedish companies would receive a training fee equivalent to the operating fee, but they did not have to pay much for the training.

Two years after joining, Chinese workers will not be able to manage the railways themselves, will still disassociate themselves from Swedish companies, and will not pay for their training.

Such a contract greatly blocked the opportunity for the Swedes to obtain a long-term contract through delay, and it was also the reason why Zhu Jinglun chose the Swedes, because for companies in small countries, Daming has more say. And if it is a British company, they will procrastinate, and in the event of a conflict of interests, they are very willing to use the power of the state.

Historically, Zhang Zhidong built the Jinghan Railway, employing Belgians, and this railway was in the hands of the Qing court, while the Guangdong-Hanzhou Railway had problems because of the intervention of the Americans and the British, and finally spent a lot of money to nationalize, and it was also because of the intervention of foreigners, which led to the Sichuan-Han Railway Road Protection Movement, and finally destroyed the Qing Dynasty.

Zhu Jinglun had to take precautions, so he asked the British to contract to repair the railway, and the British had no loopholes to exploit after repairing the money, but they would rather operate a Swedish company with less experience than use a British railway company.

It took three months to design the construction plan, recruit technicians and road builders, and in June 1868, construction of the railway began.

Everywhere you can see the busy scene, hundreds of Chinese workers are young and strong, pushing and pulling a huge stone mill with a diameter of two meters, shouting the number to run over on the ground, not without steam rollers, but the number is limited, and often broken, and finally the contractor simply found these big rollers, especially this kind of stone mill that is taller than people, or they specially customized, a total of only ten, one for a road section.

This kind of thing, historically, during the Anti-Japanese War, the Chinese used it a lot, when building the Yunnan-Burma Highway, and the most used was when building airstrips in China.

The big mill is pulled by people because it is too heavy, and it is not good to use livestock, which is inconvenient to command. The little grinders of two or three feet were pulled by oxen or donkeys.

After the size of the mill has been rolled, the workers will also use a mallet to smash, a bowl-sized stone mallet, one person can operate, in the smooth ground of the milled mallet out a semi-circular pit, and then spread soil, stone and sand, continue to roll, mallet beating.

After that, the British will come to inspect it, use tools to check the hardness of the foundation, measure the flatness of the ground with instruments, and then lay the tracks.

Ten sections, none of which employed 1,000 workers, were built in just three months, and the rails ordered in England had not yet been produced.

The British did not expect that the Chinese could complete the task ahead of schedule with primitive tools, and they originally planned that this would be half a year's work.

However, the flat road section is not the difficulty of construction, the real difficulty is in the tunnel and bridge.

The exact figure for the whole journey is 197.95 kilometers, which is equivalent to 123 miles, and the most difficult section is in the Kowloon section, because the terrain here is narrow, there are many mountains, and it is necessary to build tunnels and bridges if it is impossible to get around.

The Kowloon section alone needs to build 40 bridges, and there are as many as 130 bridges to be built on the entire route, of course, most of them are small bridges, and there are only 10 really large bridges, and there are only 3 difficult ones, namely Shixia Bridge, Dongguan Bridge and Shilong Bridge.

In fact, it was originally necessary to build only seven large cross-river bridges, but because there were three pieces of land that could not be bought, it was technically impossible to bypass, so three long-span land bridges had to be built on these three pieces of land.

In the original history, several bridges took 4 years to complete, but in this era, the attitude of the Ming Dynasty towards Britain was much stronger than that of the Qing government at that time.

The Ming Dynasty was completely self-funded, and the Qing government had to borrow 1.5 million pounds from the British in that era, and the Ming Dynasty itself tendered construction companies in the United Kingdom, and the Qing Dynasty had to sign a contract to hire the British with high salaries in that era, and the Ming Dynasty gave an annual salary of 10,000 pounds to no British engineer in this era, and the Qing Dynasty gave 35,000 pounds in that era.

In this era, the Ming Dynasty is the master who spends money, and the British in that era are the uncle.

Therefore, if Zhu Jinglun wants to complete it within a year, the British must increase their technical strength and complete it within a year, and they have to build ten bridges at the same time.

Another historical difficulty point was the tunnel construction on the Kowloon Peninsula.

At that time, the Kowloon Peninsula was a British colony of the New Territories, and the British devised two schemes, the first of which was to go north from Tsim Sha Tsui, cross Beacon Hill, and then follow the shores of Sha Tin Hai and Tolo Harbour to the border. The advantage of this option was that it could pass through Tai Po, the administrative centre of the New Territories at the time, but the disadvantage was that the 2.4-kilometre-long Beacon Hill Tunnel needed to be excavated. The second option is to run northwest along the coast from Tsim Sha Tsui, pass through the shores of Tsuen Wan and Castle Peak Bay, and then head north to Tuen Mun and Yuen Long to reach the border.

At that time, the British chose the first option, which was expensive but could reach the northern port of Dapu in the New Territories, while the Ming chose the more economical second option.

Daming's choice of the second option is not for cost considerations, because if there are conditions, the construction of the Dapu line is actually the most cost-effective, which can promote the development of Dapu Port, and the additional benefits far outweigh the costs, and the most important thing is the land issue.

The Yuen Long Line mainly passes through the western coast, and most of the land along the way is sandy land by the sea, and even wasteland in many places. The Taipo Line crosses the middle of the Kowloon Peninsula, and it is too difficult to buy a railway site from the center.

So in the end, the second option was chosen, preferring to detour through the wasteland on the west side of the Kowloon Peninsula rather than take a straight line in the middle. However, the place through which this line passes is rather barren and the distance is longer than the first option. The advantage is that only a few shorter tunnels need to be excavated, which is technically much simpler than the first option.

Simple means reliable, and it means fast.

Historically, the British built the Beacon Hill Tunnel, which took a total of five years and killed 50 Chinese workers, although the Ming Dynasty dug more tunnels, but they were completed within a few months, although there were also casualties, but only three people died.

The reason why the casualty rate is so low and the speed is so fast, in addition to the short project and the convenience of simultaneous construction, there is also a very important reason, the introduction of Nobel's latest research and development of safety powder, yellow Dana gunpowder. The elder Nobel sold gunpowder to the Canton-Kowloon Railway, which his son produced in a factory in Sweden.

The genius son of the old Nobel finally invented a safe nitroglycerin gunpowder, and Zhu Jinglun had to be praised in this field, when the old Nobel used all his connections to pass the news to Zhu Jinglun, his business had actually been done.

But at this time, Zhu Jinglun put forward a request, asking Nobel to produce these gunpowder in Daming, and Zhu Jinglun promised that if this gunpowder was as reliable and powerful as promised, the Daming Arsenal and the Mauser Company, which was trying to produce new rifles, would use this gunpowder.