On the second day, after a night's rest, they had a simple meal in the canteen of Anka Village, and everyone continued to hurry, and as the carriage started, Anka Village gradually faded out of everyone's sight.

Slowly, the farmland and plantations came to an abrupt halt and became a desolate savanna scene, and the straight paved gravel roads in the wilderness stood out against the surrounding wilderness, just like the subway station built in the farmland, which made people feel lonely.

I don't know how long I walked, but a long strip of object suddenly appeared on the south side of the road, and from a distance it looked like a river lying on the horizon extending east-west, but it was bulging on the ground, and it was very regular, it should be something artificially built.

As the carriage continued to move forward, everyone felt more and more that the object was not simple, and it gradually moved closer and closer to this side of the road, and it seemed that there was no end to the situation.

It was only when the building was finally parallel to the highway that everyone could see its full picture, two ballasts laid on the ground with gravel blocks, about ten meters wide side by side, and on the stones lay thick trimmed wooden strips, which seemed to be thick iron bars with red rust.

The crowd began to say, "What is that?" ”

The Aryans preached to them: "That's the railroad." ”

"Railroad?"

"Yes, a kind of transportation rail, like a road, can transport people and goods, but it is not a horse-drawn carriage, but a steam-spraying locomotive, and the locomotive pulls a cargo box behind it, as long as you know that this is a road."

"Mr. Aryan! The thing on the other side is called the railway, and the iron bar on it is the source of its name, right? But is there really a car that can run on it? ”

Aryan: "Yes, but it's not called iron bars, but rails, you should be familiar with this kind of thing, tracks are very common in some mines, but they used to be wooden tracks, and they were used to pull minerals by minecarts, and then the British took the lead in improving this kind of track, and then acted on the land, and it also formed a railway, in fact, there are similar things in the Far East, but the kind is concave, and the ruts are driving in it (Qin Chi Road), and the railway is convex, and the wheels are specially designed to travel between the two rails. ”

"What is the wood and gravel laid under the railroad tracks? Can't you just put it on the road? ”

"The wood is called sleepers, and the stones that are laid at the bottom are called ballast, and their function is to bear the pressure of the rails, because the steam locomotive is quite heavy, and it is pressed against the rails, and if there is nothing underneath to lay the mat, the rails will cut into the dirt like a knife cutting tofu."

"I see, so we can understand!"

Aryan continued: "Not only that, but ballast also cushions shocks, stabilizes the track bed, reduces noise and drains water quickly. ”

"And how much pig iron is needed for this kind of road?"

Aryan: "I don't know, but it's indispensable, these railways are often measured in kilometers, and many railways in Europe and the Americas are measured in kilometers. ”

Aryan's words drew a chord of people who could not imagine how much iron would have been spent on such a thing called a railroad.

By 1870, the total length of the world's railways exceeded 210,000 kilometers, of which the United States and Germany were the emerging forces in the construction of railways, Britain and France played a stable role, and the relatively backward railways of Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia also developed greatly.

The 60 kilometers of the first railway in East Africa are nothing in the world, and they are even lagging behind many colonies, and after the construction of the first railway, it has not been opened to traffic until now, and has been idle for a while since it was built.

So some people also noticed this and asked, "Mr. Aryan! Then why didn't you see the steam locomotive you mentioned on it? ”

"I'll ask Mr. Velix first." Then Aryan turned around and spoke to Villix in German.

After a while.

"Okay, now I already know the general situation, the railway of the East African Kingdom is different from most countries in the world, so it is lacking in technology, which causes the railway in front of us, East Africa is called the first railway, and the first railway has been waiting for the locomotive to be developed after it is completed, but just now Mr. Alex told me that the finished locomotive has completed the final test in Austria, and it will be officially transported from Austria to East Africa for trial operation next month."

In the end, Heixingen Vienna Energy Power persuaded Ernst to maintain the original plan, after all, everyone had worked hard for so long, and the results were about to come out, how could they change their attention casually.

What a place is Austria! You don't know, but according to the Aryans, the railroad is now useless.

"Mr. Aryan, the role of this railroad sounds no different from that of a road, why do you have to work so hard to build a railroad, I think it's good to have this spare money to build a few more roads."

Aryan: "Then you are very wrong, the difference between railways and roads is quite large, I tell you this, the carriage we are making now relies on horses to provide power, and horses have to consume food, but also to eat, drink, and sleep, and physical strength will be consumed with the distance, and there is not much pulling, but there are not so many problems on the railway, the locomotive running on the railway relies on the steam engine to provide power, how powerful the steam engine is, you should have seen it, and the steam engine only needs people to constantly fill the boiler with coal to continuously generate energy. ”

Everyone came to East Africa by steamer, so they had seen the big chimney of a steamer.

"Mr. Aryan, that big chimney on the steamer!"

Aryan: "Yes, it's that thing, just like boiling water will have steam hitting the lid of the kettle, and the water vapor will form a high pressure in the confined space, repeatedly pushing the piston to move, and the piston will drive the gears and crankshaft, and finally make the wheels work, if you have seen the steam engines used for survival in textile mills, you can probably understand its operation more intuitively. ”

The textile mills were indeed the easiest place to come into contact with the steam engine, especially in the Far East, where the first railway was actually built in 1865 by the British capitalist Durand outside the Xuanwu Gate in Beijing. The British "ran very fast on the railroad with a strange car" in order to win the approval of the Qing government. However, instead of receiving appreciation, the railway caused panic among the Qing rulers. As a result, the Empress Dowager Cixi ordered the commander of the concession army to dismantle it on the grounds of "losing my danger, harming my fields, and hindering my feng shui". China's first railroad died.

This railway has existed for a very short time, so many people have not seen it, but there are many textile mills in the Far East, after all, the impact is not as shocking as the railway.

The first time they see a machine running on a steam engine in a factory, most people will say, "Very good technique." The first time you see a steam locomotive, you are afraid, and the English writer Charles Dickens had a very mixed feeling about the railway, admiring both the power of the railway and the fear of its uncontrollable power. In Dombey & Sons, Dickens describes the destructive power of the railroad by describing the changes in the "Starg Garden": "Everywhere you can see the traces of earthquakes. The analogy of "earthquake" vividly shows the sense of devastation caused by the construction of the railway, and also hints at the lasting damage that is difficult to recover from after the disaster. The author also uses negative words such as "crumbling", "messy", "mixed" and "dilapidated" to make readers feel the sense of fragmentation and chaos brought about by the construction of the railway, which gives people a huge visual and psychological impact.

(End of chapter)