K is the first letter of Konstantin's name, 001 has no special meaning, it is the meaning of the first, and the first train is named "Konstantin", and the subsequent East African imported steam locomotives will not be named again unless there are special circumstances, and the number starting with K is uniformly used, such as the K-002 locomotive that is being transported to the city of Dar es Salaam by sea.

Looking at the humble environment of the railway station in Dar es Salaam, Konstantin instructed the Dar es Salaam city government: "Dar es Salaam, as an excellent port, undertakes about 35% of the import and export trade in East Africa, and with the development of the times, railway construction is the general trend, and the future expansion of the first railway is also imperative. In order to isolate the old port from the railway, you can add an extra security check when you go out of the city to check for suspicious people or goods. ”

At present, the first railway, which has just been opened to traffic, cannot realize the dredging of the inland to the coast of East Africa, but this is only because the first railway has only completed the preliminary plan, and Ernst has already considered the future development of the first railway when it was designed.

That is to borrow from the plan of the previous Tanzan Railway, on the basis of which the first railway road will be built from the city of Dar es Salaam to the Zimbabwe region.

One of the most difficult projects was the crossing of the Zambezi River, which required the construction of a strong bridge, and the first railway was not the only river in the area.

In the previous life, the Tanzan Railway built 320 bridges and dug 26 tunnels, spanning two countries, costing more than 900 million yuan, spending nearly 8 years, and finally nearly 70 people from the Far East paid for it. It is conceivable how much manpower and material resources were spent on such a railway at that time.

If East Africa were to build this railway, it would be very difficult, because including the Zimbabwe section, the total length of the railway would be more than 2,000 kilometers, hundreds of kilometers more than the Tanzan Railway, and the difficulty of crossing the Zambezi River would skyrocket.

However, the East African Kingdom has a huge advantage over Tanzania and Zambia in the previous life to build the first railway, one is land, the East African Kingdom does not have the difficulty of expropriating land, although the previous life Africa is very backward, but the private ownership of land has learned the same, plus large and small tribes, greatly delaying the construction of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway.

Secondly, the Kingdom of East Africa does not need to consider casualties in the construction of the first railway, casualties are just a number for the East African government, single digits, five digits do not matter to East Africa, and countless projects in history have proved that as long as you are willing to fill in human lives, nothing can be done.

Finally, and most importantly, the Kingdom of East Africa is a large agricultural country and a large grain exporter, an advantage that most African countries in the previous life could not match.

As we all know, East Africa is the region with the best agricultural conditions in Africa, but in the previous life, Tanzania and other countries were only barely self-sufficient in food, and the construction of railways required a lot of labor, which would cause a decrease in the original agricultural production population, but when Tanzania built the railway, its agricultural production efficiency would not be improved out of thin air, and the pressure on food supply would be greater.

In the previous life, when Tsarist Russia built the Trans-Siberian Railway, the most workers were only close to 90,000 people, and the difficulty of building the Siberian Railway was much higher than that of the first railway.

At the same time, the first railway is not very long, even if the Transvaal Republic is subsequently settled and the first railway is extended to the territory of the Transvaal, its length will only reach about one-third of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The construction environment of the first railway is also stronger than the Siberian Railway, the Trans-Siberian Railway has to pass through the permafrost section, corresponding to the swampy section in East Africa, and it is much easier to deal with the swamp than the permafrost.

In fact, the comparison between the first railway and the Trans-Siberian railway is a bit big, and the first railway is not worthy of the Siberian Railway, and it should be compared with the Canadian Pacific Railway in the same period.

Canada had been an independent nation since 1867, and in 1871 the West Coast province of British Columbia was tempted to join the Union on the condition that a transcontinental railroad be built within 10 years to connect it with eastern Canada.

Canada, like the Americans, built railroads in a routine of how fast and as easy as possible, so Chinese laborers became the first choice, accounting for about 4-6% of the total workforce (historically 5-9%).

This is a routine with northern Myanmar, although East Africa secretly made a bad move in the Far East, preaching the encounter of Chinese workers in the United States (continent), but the Canadians are thick-skinned, they hired some Far Eastern businessmen to set up a labor agency in Columbia, specializing in recruiting Far Eastern compatriots to be road builders (real history), saying that there are noses and eyes, and they are specifically looking for acquaintances, everyone is a relative, it is impossible to lie to you! So the success rate is quite high.

However, these are all later stories, the current Pacific Railway in Canada and the First Railway in East Africa are still only on paper, and East Africa is a little ahead, after all, the first town to the city of Dar es Salaam has been completed.

At first, the idea of the first railway was to replicate the Tanzan Railway, but after the occupation of Zimbabwe, this plan was expanded, and if the subsequent war against the Boers went well, the South African section should also be added, and finally it should reach about 3,000 kilometers, which is more than 1,000 kilometers shorter than the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The Canadian Pacific Railway has to cross the Rocky Mountains, but the eastern terrain is mainly plain, so the difficulty is comparable to that of the first railway, and its main problems are similar to those in Russia, and the winter is long.

The similarities between East Africa and Canada are also sparsely populated, but the presence of a large number of blacks in East Africa saves a lot of effort in East Africa from having to go to the Far East, India and Italy like Canada.

Moreover, East Africa does not count blacks, and the population is larger than that of Canada, but the population of Canada is relatively concentrated, mainly distributed in the southern part of Canada in the previous life (at this time, northern Canada was still terra nullius).

At the same time, the total domestic economy of the Kingdom of East Africa is also higher than that of Canada, which is an achievement of the Kingdom of East Africa itself without counting the wealth of the Hexingen consortium.

The agricultural conditions of the East African kingdom are stronger than those of Canada, and the export of tropical cash crops is particularly developed, almost monopolizing more than 40 percent of the entire German region and more than 20 percent of Eastern Europe, and is still expanding its advantages, in addition to grain exports far exceeding Canada, the export of mineral resources is not much different from the two, mainly because East Africa has digested a large part of it.

In other words, the overall economic level of East Africa far exceeds that of Canada, and without relying on the support of the Hexingen Foundation, East Africa itself has long had the economic ability to build railways, but it has to use East Africa's resources and industries as collateral to borrow from financial institutions, which is the basic procedure for railway construction in all countries today.

As the ruler of the East African Kingdom, the Heixingen royal family, from the perspective of national security, is certainly unwilling to let foreign (except Austria) capital enter, and can completely digest it by itself, so the funds for the construction of the first railway are first lent to the East African government by the Heixingen Bank, and the economic benefits brought by the first railway in the future will be repaid, so that the left hand will be turned into the right hand, and the soup will not spill over.

(End of chapter)