On September 20, the Empire's first long-distance railway, the Nanjing-Shanghai line, began to be officially operated, and although the railway was a pure novelty, it still attracted a large number of passengers once it appeared.

From September 20th to October 20th, that is, the first month of the official operation of the Nanjing-Shanghai line, the Imperial Railway Company found that in addition to operating costs, the Nanjing-Shanghai line actually created a net profit of up to 100,000 yuan.

You must know that this is still the first month of official operation, the public's awareness and acceptance are still relatively low, and the cost of early operation is relatively high, but this is still the net profit of up to 100,000 yuan.

Doesn't this mean that the net profit can exceed one million in a year? After the operation of the Nanjing-Shanghai line enters the mature period, the operating costs will be further reduced, and the number of passengers and freight will be further increased, and the profits will be more at that time.

In this way, I am afraid that the investment of 10 million yuan invested in the Nanjing-Shanghai line will be able to be recovered in 15 years without the original projection, and it may be ten years, or even seven or eight years.

Although the period of seven or eight years and ten years is already a very long time for ordinary investment, for the railway investment of tens of millions at every turn, ten years is nothing, and it is not a matter of fifteen or even twenty years to recover the investment.

If the investment can be recouped and the loan can be repaid within ten years, then the Nanjing-Shanghai line will be able to bring millions of net profits to the Imperial Railway Company every year in ten years.

The huge profit income of the Nanjing-Shanghai line instantly detonated the investment enthusiasm of domestic capital, the most obvious of which is the Jinpu line.

Preliminary surveys have been carried out, and the Jinpu line, which is waiting for the official start of construction, will officially start construction in early October, while the extension of the Nanjing-Shanghai line will also continue to be constructed, extending to Dangtu in the short term, and the follow-up plan is to extend to Jiujiang. The branch line went south to Nanchang and west to Wuchang, but this involved crossing Panyang Lake, which was a great challenge for the empire's current bridge design and construction capacity. Moreover, at present, the empire's funds for railway investment are also limited, and most of it will be used on the Jinpu line, so although the plan to extend the Nanjing-Shanghai line to Jiujiang will also be carried out in the early stage, there will be some time before the actual construction.

Therefore, at present, the branch line of the Nanjing-Shanghai line is mainly extended to Dangtu in the early stage. In this way, it is possible to communicate the land transportation between the steel base of Dangtu and the large steel-using industrial city of Shanghai, instead of relying on water transportation as before.

Relatively speaking, the more important is the construction of the Jinpu line, the Jinpu line along the eastern plain terrain, although to cross the Yellow River, but as long as you are willing to spend money is not impossible to build, limited by the domestic bridge design and construction capacity is limited, the imperial railway company is ready to bid for the world, the Jinpu line project has just been determined. It has already launched a bidding telegram to more than ten enterprises around the world with the ability to design and construct super-large bridges.

The investment amount of the entire Jinpu Line is as high as 40 million yen, and these huge sums of money will be used for the construction of the railway and the stations along the way, the compensation for the expropriation of land along the railway, and the purchase of locomotives and carriages for future operation.

Except for the Yellow River Bridge, which needs to hire foreign companies to design and construct, the railway construction and design of the rest of the sections are handled by the Imperial Railway Company.

The main source of funds is loans and private financing!

At first, the Imperial Railways did not expect to receive much money from other sources, and they planned to rely on loans from the Royal Bank to build the railway.

To this end, the Royal Bank is also preparing to provide the necessary funds for the construction of the Jinpu line.

However, the huge income of the Nanjing-Shanghai line instantly guided the investment enthusiasm of domestic capital. Although it is said that in today's empire, as long as you dare to invest in industry and commerce, then nine times out of ten, it will be profitable. But this is only talking about industrial investment, and it is also a great test of the entrepreneur's business ability.

At present, in the huge domestic capital market, most of them are invested in light industries such as raw silk and textiles, but with the development of the domestic industrial and commercial economy, more and more private capital has begun to flow to the market.

Although the Chinese government in this era was not considered rich. However, there is a lot of private funds, and a lot of silver that flows into the country every year is precipitated in the private sector, and in recent years, these funds have begun to flow again and gradually enter the capital market.

It has even suffered from inflation to a certain extent.

More funds enter the capital market, which means that these funds need to find more investment directions!

Kindness. The investment must also have a steady profit income!

And now, the domestic railway tide has become a choice for these emerging capitals!

It is a pity that the empire does not allow private capital to directly carry out railway construction, and the current national railway construction and operation business is monopolized by the imperial railway company.

After all, Lin Zhe also knows that the nationalization of railways in the future is a major trend on a global scale, and it is better to directly nationalize it at the beginning if private capital is involved.

However, although private capital cannot directly invest in the construction of railways or take shares in railway companies, they can buy railway construction bonds issued by the Imperial Railways, although the interest rate of these bonds is not too high, but the interest rate of these bonds is not too high, and the interest rate is not high, and the risk is very small.

If it is a five-year or even ten-year long-term bond, then the annual interest rate will not be less than that, and it is basically slightly higher than that of Treasury bonds.

After all, those who can spend a lot of money to buy railway construction bonds are some capital institutions, money banks, banks, and even some companies, and the amount of their funds is relatively large, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands or even millions, and if the number is large, it is already good to have an annual interest rate of four or five points, and if there are seven or eight points, they will rush to throw money over.

Don't look at only a few points, if you invest 10,000 yuan, the example of a year is only a few hundred yuan, but what if it is 10 million? That's hundreds of thousands.

In addition, the investment of large amounts of money is actually more strict on risk control, and sometimes it is better to have less returns, but it is also necessary to ensure the safety of the principal.

This is also the reason why many large capitals like to buy all kinds of bonds and even government bonds.

Nowadays, the private capital market is more sought after for railway construction bonds, so the Imperial Railway Company simply took advantage of the trend to increase the scale of construction bond issuance.

The first installment is 5 million, and the 5 million bonds have just come out, they have been snapped up by major financial institutions, and many people have never even heard of this railway construction bond, but they have already sold out.

This batch of construction bonds, together with the 5 million loan provided by the Royal Bank, a total of 10 million yuan of funds became the start-up capital of the Jinpu line.

Originally, it was planned that the loan funds would be mainly from the Royal Bank, and they would provide loans of up to 25 million yuan, in addition to a number of other private banks in China, and some foreign banks also participated in providing loans, with a total loan of 30 million yuan, and about 10 million yuan of funds will be raised from the public.

Of course, this huge amount of up to 50 million yuan cannot be paid at one time, and the Imperial Railway Company expects that the construction time of the Jinpu line may be as long as five years, and it will take more than four years at the earliest, so these funds are also allocated in batches.

However, the current situation of issuing construction bonds is relatively gratifying, so the Imperial Railways will also appropriately reduce the number of loans and increase the issuance of construction bonds.

According to the revised plan, the Imperial Railways will borrow a total of 20 million yuan from the Royal Bank and some other foreign capital, and private banks.

The remaining 20 million yen will be raised through the issuance of construction bonds.

In order to strengthen the credit guarantee of construction bonds and loans, the railway company will use the operating income of the existing Beijing-Shanghai line, Zhuping railway and Tangshan railway as collateral, which is mainly to ensure the ability to repay the principal and interest of the Jinpu line after the completion and opening of the line.

No matter when the Jinpu line is opened, his repayment of principal and interest starts from the first year.

After the start-up funds were in place, because the huge funds represented the huge annual interest expenses, the Imperial Railway Company did not dare to delay for a moment, and strived to be completed and opened to traffic as soon as possible.

The construction of the Nanjing-Shanghai line created the largest investment since the establishment of the empire, and the current Jinpu line has refreshed this investment record by more than four times, as high as 40 million investment, which reached almost 10% of the fiscal revenue in 1864.

You must know that in 1864, the budget revenue of the empire was only 400 million yuan.

However, it would cost 40 million yuan to build a railway, so it is impossible to build a railway directly with government funds.

In order to speed up the construction, the Imperial Railway Company was building at the same time in several places at the same time, starting from Tianjin to the south, Nanjing to the north, and at the same time at Xuzhou, Jinan and other intermediate stations along the construction at the same time.

If it were not for the construction in the same place at the same time, it is estimated that the construction period would be greatly extended, and the construction would not be completed in five years, and if it was not completed and put into operation for a long time, the interest on the loan and bonds of 40 million yuan alone would directly drag down the entire Imperial Railway Company.

Ma Gongwen and a group of executives of the Imperial Railway Company naturally would not allow this to happen, so the construction of the Jinpu Line has just begun, that is, at multiple points at the same time.

In the first month, more than 10,000 workers were working along the various sections!

1864 is undoubtedly a memorable year for the development of the empire's railways, the year the Nanjing-Shanghai line was opened to traffic, and the Jinpu line was officially built, representing the empire after the early exploration and development of small railways in mining areas, and officially carried out a large-scale development period.

This year was of great significance not only for the railways themselves, but also for the economic development of the empire. (To be continued.) )