Hearing this, Ma Gongwen's face suddenly became a little excited, although what Lin Zhe said was not very clear, but the meaning of the revelation was already very obvious, when the time came, he Ma Gongwen was not only the general manager of Xuzhou Railway Company, but the person in charge of national railway affairs.

I just don't know if this institution will belong to the enterprise or the cabinet in the future?

What he was thinking, Lin Zhe could guess more or less, but he didn't bother to explain it anymore, so he directly waved his hand lightly and let him out.

However, he stood up and looked at the large map of the empire on the wall.

Lin Zhe wants to draw a few black lines on this map, and he wants to let the rumbling train go to the north and south of the river!

Although he had not yet said anything about the railway plan in his heart, he had already prepared it, and he had even asked the secretariat to draft the plan.

In order to develop the railway, Lin Zhe first planned to start from the cabinet!

The Department of Communications under the Ministry of Civil Affairs was directly separated, and then the Ministry of Communications was established, and then the Ministry of Communications set up many institutions such as railways, river transportation, and shipping.

As for the independent organization of transportation agencies, it was naturally to show the country the importance that the empire attached to the development of railways and other transportation undertakings.

The creation of the Ministry of Transport and the Department of Railways was only an official political push, and he was also planning to set up an enterprise responsible for the specific construction of the railways.

The construction of railways is simply unaffordable for private capital, and even unwilling to bear it, so if you want to build railways, you can only use the royal industry with a strong official nature.

Therefore, he plans to establish a national railway company based on the existing Xuzhou Railway Company and the Zhuzhou Railway Company to be established in the future. The name has been chosen, it is the Chinese Imperial Railway Company.

This company can also be regarded as in addition to the Central Bank of the Chinese Empire. The second company with the most prefixed country name.

As for the specific way to build the railway, Lin Zhe plans to build some simple ones first. Railways with greater commercial value, such as those in mining areas and the Yangtze River Delta region.

Once the railway in the mining area and the railway from Shanghai to Dangtu are completed, there is basically no need to worry about the problem of passenger sources, and the railway will be able to make a profit in a short time.

What Lin Zhe wants is for people to see the profitability of the railway, and once people know that the railway is profitable, they will invest in it, so as to fundamentally solve the problem of railway development funds.

If Lin Zhe doesn't want to use finance to build roads directly, and it is not like borrowing foreign loans to build roads, then he can only raise funds from the people.

Of course. Direct fundraising from the private sector is a matter of the future, and as for the initial investment, it can only be raised by the royal industry.

For example, the most important railway line from Shanghai to Dangtu in the early stage will be repaired at least tens of millions, which is undoubtedly a huge amount of money that is difficult to afford for the royal industry.

Although there are many subordinate enterprises in the royal industry, the total assets on the surface have exceeded 80 million, and the annual surface profit figure is also quite large, but in fact, in addition to the textile industry, which is running well and healthily, most of the other industries are heavily indebted.

In particular, Shanghai Shipyard, Linde Machinery Factory, Jinling Arsenal and other national defense enterprises. In the past few years, in order to expand production and improve the technical level, it basically relied on borrowing for expansion, and now the Linde Machinery Factory still owes millions of loans to the Royal Bank.

As for the Xuzhou Railway Company. The railway, which was built entirely on loans, now owes more than 1.5 million yuan in loans from the Royal Bank, and can only repay this debt after the operation of the Xuzhou Railway. That's four or five years, to say the least.

All the royal estates are combined, and they have accumulated more than 30 million loans owed to the Royal Bank, some banks, and foreign banks. The annual interest repayment is nearly two million.

To put it simply, the royal industry is in addition to the textile industry. Although other industries are getting bigger and bigger, they owe more and more money, and considering that the royal industry is still in rapid expansion, many companies continue to borrow money to expand and develop.

Therefore, for at least four or five years, many business groups under the Imperial Family Industry will not be allowed to subsidize investment in other industries except the textile industry, let alone hand over profits to the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department.

The only one that can provide a steady and large amount of profits is the textile industry, which is about five million a year, and this part of the money is the capital available to the royal industry.

A considerable part of them is used for various expenses of the royal family, such as living expenses, some rewards from the royal family to courtiers, etc., and then the educational and scientific research expenses donated in the name of the royal family.

The other part is drawn by the Finance Department to support other industries!

Some of it was kept as a 'royal emergency fund', which was stored in the palace in the form of gold, and its main role was to act as a military expense or reward for the guards in case of an emergency!

What is an emergency?

For example, if a military general defects to the Beijing Division, or if someone suddenly coups d'état, or if the entire Nanjing earthquake occurs one day, the whole city is in turmoil, etc., then the royal family needs the full support of the Guards.

To put it bluntly, it is Lin Zhe's life-saving money, unless the enemy army hits the city of Nanjing, otherwise even if there is a war with a foreign country and most of China is lost, he will not take out the money and use it.

The funds that can be taken out of the royal industry every year are only five or six million, and they basically have a fixed destination, so it is not a problem for you to let the royal industry come up with a million, and you can raise millions by gritting your teeth, but there is basically no need to count on tens of millions of huge funds.

Therefore, Lin Zhe's plan was to use the old way, that is, to borrow money directly from the Royal Bank, and then use it for railway development.

This means that the royal family has its own bank, and it is the largest bank in the country and even in the Far East, and the Royal Bank is not short of funds for loans.

The only worry is that if the railway is completed and put into operation, it will not be profitable and will not be able to repay the debt!

Although Lin Zhe had the foresight of later generations and knew that building railways was generally profitable, no one could guarantee that it would be profitable after operation, and you must know that China in history did not build railways on a large scale until after the First Sino-Japanese War. Some of the major railways were built during the New Deal period in the late Qing Dynasty, after years of Westernization and the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty. The domestic industrial and commercial economic atmosphere has been relatively mature, so there are a large number of tourists after the operation of the railway.

Now. Lin Zhe also did not dare to guarantee 100% that the operation of the railway would be profitable after completion, especially the railways in some remote places.

This is also the reason why Lin Zhe chose the first large-scale railway in the Jiangnan area.

The Jiangnan region has a strong agricultural and industrial and commercial foundation, and Nanjing is also a political center, which can ensure the stability and sufficiency of the source of tourists, so that it can be relatively sure to ensure the profitability of the operation after the completion of the railway.

Lin Zhe is not a person who makes impulsive decisions as soon as his head is hot, even if the Royal Bank can provide tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of loan funds, but it is absolutely impossible for him to build any super-large railway projects such as the north-south and east-west main trunk lines now.

Whether it is governing the country and fighting a war or building a railway and running a business, you have to take it step by step!

If you want to build a railway, you must first make a section of the test railway. At the very least, you have to let the railway companies know how to build the railways, how to operate the lines, and then gradually build commercial railways with very little risk, such as the Shanghai-Nanjing line. After further accumulating technology and experience, the majority of Chinese people are fully aware of the superiority of railways, and this is the time to build those trunk railways that are thousands of kilometers long.

And when these main lines are completed, relying on the railroad to develop the industry of the entire empire, there is spare energy to build war-ready railways that have no commercial value, but great strategic value, such as the Northwest Railway. It leads to Wutai Province in Outer Mongolia and extends northeast to the Outer Khingan Mountains.

There are also southwestern regions, such as railways to Yunnan and even to Myanmar.

These railways have to be in order, and it is impossible to say that if you want to build them, they will be there. It is even more impossible to write and draw on a map and then start all work.

According to Lin Zhe's own estimates, even if it is the first stage. That is to say, the construction of railways with obvious commercial value such as the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway, and the time period for promoting the railways to the Chinese people will take more than five years. It would have been nice to have done it before 1865.

In the second stage, if the main line is to be built, the branch railway in the eastern region will be completed. It will take at least fifteen years, and it will be God's favor to be able to complete it before 1875.

As for the war-ready railway, looking at the economic and industrial development of the empire, if it goes well, it will be within thirty years, that is, around 1890, and if it does not go well, it is estimated that it will be 1900 or even longer.

You have to know that even in later China, it would take more than ten years to build those war-ready railways, and that was in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, and the railways into Tibet were not completely completed until the twenty-first century.

Therefore, the construction of railways in the entire empire is definitely not a matter of three or five years, but a super-large project with a time span of thirty or fifty years or even a hundred years.

In order to further show his subjects, especially the officials of the empire, the importance and confidence he attaches to the railway, it did not take long for Lin Zhe to make the Ministry of Civil Affairs the Department of Communications an independent ministry, and set up a railway department under the newly established Ministry of Communications, and the post of director of the railway department was high-leveled, and An Yilin, the co-director of the Ministry of Communications, concurrently served as the director of the railway department.

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, this was basically the acting department with the title of squire, which was one level higher than the governors of the provinces in terms of rank, and was roughly equivalent to the governors with the title of squire in the pre-Qing era.

At the same time, the railway development plan he had written some time ago was sent to the cabinet for discussion, which triggered the close attention of the imperial officialdom to the new affairs of the railway.

Subsequently, the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department announced the establishment of the Chinese Imperial Railway Company based on the Xuzhou Railway Company, the newly established Zhuzhou Railway Company, and the Shanghai Railway Company.

Subsequently, the Royal Bank and the China Imperial Railway Company signed a 20-year railway loan totaling more than 15 million yuan for the construction of the Zhuzhou Railway and the Shanghai Railway.

The Jiangnan Mining Company is preparing to increase the production of rails, and the Shanghai Machinery Company is preparing to use the imported British steam locomotive as a model to carry out the research and development of imitation of steam locomotives and carriages.

The Northern Timber Company, formed by the Imperial Family Industry and a number of private capitalists, prepares large-scale railway sleepers.

The Shanghai Baoshan Ash Plant, which is also controlled by Royal Industries, is preparing to expand its production capacity to provide sufficient production capacity for the cement needed for subsequent railway construction, stations and other buildings.

Under Lin Zhe's personal intervention, the various business groups under the royal family industry basically took action, in fact, even if Lin Zhe was unwilling, but the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department would mobilize all the forces that could be mobilized in order to prevent the huge investment of up to 15 million yuan from failing.

For a time, many people on the streets of Shanghai were talking about the word railway, for no other reason than the huge investment of 15 million.

That's fifteen million, which is more than the annual revenue of most provinces in the country, and it is impossible to take out these just to build a road, so it is impossible not to attract people's attention.

Fortunately, this is a purely commercial act of the royal family's industry, although people are worried that the fifteen million will be lost, but even if it is a loss, it has nothing to do with ordinary people, so they are just amazed, and there is no excessive opposition.

If it is directly used to build the railway with the imperial finance, it is estimated that the rumors will be opposed by countless people as soon as the rumors are released, and it will even be impossible to pass the financial budget at all.

Compared with the difficulties in the development of the railway, and even caused a huge direction, the development of the telegraph industry in the empire was much more low-key, and many people did not even know that the empire had begun to build the telegraph line from Shanghai to Nanjing. (To be continued.) )