"Teacher, is this an upgraded version of the rails and minecarts that we laid to increase the efficiency of transportation when we were mining the mine?"

"Yes, this is the head of the railway and steam locomotive that the dean once mentioned, and the back is a carriage that can carry ten times the weight of a four-wheeled carriage, and this wagon can carry 20 tons of rice or goods of equal weight, and this train has a capacity of 200 tons, and it travels between Shenjing and Bianliang day and night, and the speed is ten times that of water transportation, which is naturally more advantageous than water transportation.

However, this is not the first railway we have built, the first one was built in the vast and sparsely populated northwest, connecting Lanzhou and Qingtang City. ”

"Will we be able to participate in the construction of these railways next time? This is a good thing for the benefit of the country and the people! ”

"Not next time, my part-time department won't recruit students like you, and you will at least pass the professional examination of the Highway Administration Bureau after graduation before you can be assigned to me, a new company specializing in building railways."

"No wonder the teacher is so busy with his work, it's hard to come to this exam! Otherwise, there are many people who apply for the exam, and there are many people who enter, so the teacher should have an easier job! ”

"It's better if you come in next year and have a look, you don't believe me. The exam is very simple, as long as you have studied logistics or architecture, you can pass it. However, the difficulty is still whether or not to endure hardships, and after coming in, I often have to go to various construction sites for road construction to go to the field for surveying and mapping and guidance. Many people have been transferred to other road departments for emergency relief after coming in to work for a few months, otherwise will our railway company close to Shenjing still be short of people? ”

"If I want to come in, do I have to go to various places and exercise for a while?"

"That's for sure, or you're privileged. What about others? ”

"I'm not trying to be privileged! Teacher, I mean, can you put me in the hardest place? ”

"How is that possible? It's not your turn to do this kind of good thing! That's a shortcut for the most top-notch talents and the best performers in the academy, and at least the treatment of an assistant engineer when they come back. Depending on your level, it's about the same in ten years. ”

"I don't want this shortcut to upgrade to other treatments, but I want to be able to learn more practical experience so that I can do more work in my future work."

"Practical experience is also piled up with time, not to go to a difficult place to accumulate faster than others, but you have to learn more than others, summarize and study to accumulate. I went to Qingtang City with the dean last year, and the road construction conditions there were poor. To water without water. No one wants to be there. All consumables for road construction had to be transported from faraway Lanzhou. As soon as the road was repaired, hundreds of people in Huangzhou were tired and sick, and a road builder died. This matter was known to Dean Wu, and altitude sickness was not a serious illness. The doctor of the construction team was almost scolded to death by Dean Wu.

Do you know what the difficulty of building a road on the plateau is? ”

"Don't know?"

"That's something that wasn't taught in books! I also learned about it with Dean Yang. The land there is watery and icey, and there are many sections of the road that belong to the frozen soil, and the repaired roads are easy to settle and destroy when they melt in the summer. We came up with a method of filling the roadbed with sufficient height to protect the frozen soil according to the ice content of the soil foundation. So that the heat absorbed by the road surface does not affect the frozen soil foundation under the roadbed. And the subgrade drainage facilities are adopted to prevent the erosion of the subgrade by ground water, so as to achieve the purpose of stabilizing the subgrade. ”

"Does the teacher know when this road will be built?"

"The road to Qingtang City has been completed, but it will take a few years for Qingtang City to start construction."

"So I have the opportunity to get the company to add me to the design or construction staff of the project?"

"You don't have a chance, the construction unit of this project has already set up Lanzhou Construction Company, which is the number one in the northwest! It is still difficult for our Central Plains Construction Company to intervene in the northwest region. ”

"Can't I apply for a transfer to the Northwest District when I come in? Aren't they all subsidiaries of Chenji Construction Group? ”

"I've applied several times, and I've asked the headquarters to call back, on the grounds that they don't have a shortage of people there, and I can't leave the Central Plains Building, which is short of people. You come in and get in. I'm just afraid that I won't be able to get out. ”

"Didn't you say that you could be transferred to a position where there is a shortage of people in the field?"

"Then you just wait to be transferred to Jiangnan Construction Group, which is short of people and is about to die of exhaustion! There are water conservancy projects and projects to fill the lake everywhere, but there is no one to guide the construction. Mosquito malaria is severe. If you want to go, you can also be promoted quickly. ”

"It doesn't matter, didn't Dean Wu develop artemisininin! Malaria is easy to do! The technical content of filling the lake is not high, and the difficulty is much lower than that of building bridges, opening mountains, and digging holes. If I do well, I can become an assistant engineer in three years......

The above is a conversation between a pair of teachers and students of the Engineering Branch of Chenji Academy.

The first experimental railway to be built in the first year of the empire was the most difficult plateau railway, the first section of the Qinghai-Tibet line from Lanzhou to Xining. Both the standards and facilities are of the highest technical content, and this railway embodies the crystallization of many technologies in the railway technology tree in the secret database of the public digestion.

Whether it is the railroad tracks and reinforced concrete sleepers that reflect the capacity of heavy industry, the road without cutting corners has shocked many tribes and ethnic minorities in the northwest. In the Middle Ages, when steel was wealth, it was difficult to recoup the cost of building a railroad made of the finest high-quality steel rails when there was not enough capacity.

Due to the elimination of the Western Xia and the opening of the Hexi Corridor, most of the business travelers taking the Qingtang City route were reduced, and both freight and passenger traffic fell sharply. The political significance of the construction of this railway is far greater than the economic significance, and the stainless steel rails that are almost equivalent to gold have blinded the squinting eyes of the Tibetan people, which is a very intuitive demonstration of the national strength and wealth of the Chinese Empire, which is very in line with the Han rulers' consistent tradition of face engineering. Of course, the military expenses and public security management expenses that were originally saved in the Tibetan region could be spread out into the amazing budget of this railway, and the leaders of the Tibetan tribes, who had completely surrendered, also honestly handed over their rights, and no longer restricted their clansmen from entering the newly opened saline-alkali factory, potash factory, and food processing factory as porters and milkmen. Abandoning nomadic customs and integrating into city life was the plan to completely tame the Tibetans. Cities without social division of labor and trade will die, and will people who are accustomed to living in cities be able to return to their tents?

As for the other railways connecting the major cities, they are being built little by little in a hurry, and the speed cannot be compared with this one. The reason is very simple, the capacity of waterways and highways is sufficient to meet the current demand, and it is still difficult for the railways that spend money like flowing water to compete with the inland waterway shipping industry and the horse-drawn carriage transportation industry with mature technology and developed equipment. Many partners who have invested in the road network and post stations are opposed to the construction of the railway. Only when the full industrialization is carried out and the infrastructure is backward and the actual demand can take the initiative to stimulate transportation prices to meet the operating costs of the railway, then promote the 2000000 km national railway network plan.

The western regions still rely mainly on roads for transportation, while the eastern regions still rely on water transportation. The cost of building a road network is still too much for 2 million tonnes of steel to be produced in five years.

If the demand for steel for construction and large-scale projects is not met, the crossing will not start a railway construction plan that costs more than 170 to 200 tons of steel per kilometer (70 kilograms per meter of rails, plus steel bars in concrete sleepers and a large number of bolts and other fasteners). A few hundred kilometers of railways would consume several years of surplus steel quotas (the balance of the dedicated output left for the railways is only 30,000 tons per year, and the crossing of the steel industry, which has almost monopolized the steel industry, is really unable to achieve a growth rate of more than 30% in the national steel production under the premise of a shortage of industrial workers). Marine steel is also a new major steel user after the construction, home dining and kitchenware industries. The resources left to the railway system each year are so limited that if it weren't for the fact that the people were well aware of the importance of this system, this quota would not have been retained, and it would have been exhausted by the subordinates and partners of other systems. (To be continued......)