Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 335 Railway Transportation

At the mouth of the Río de la Plata in Songzhou, a group of German engineers, accompanied by Han officials, surveyed the surrounding geographical environment and made preliminary preparations for the construction of the railway from Huaiyangfu (Rosario) to Songjiang (Buenos Aires).

The natural environment in the north and south of the Han mainland is very different. With Songjiang Prefecture as the dividing line, the northern region relies on the main channel of the Paraná River, its tributaries, and the main channel of the Paraguay River. The inland river transportation is well developed. The agricultural products, livestock, and industrial processing areas along the waterways and tributaries are transported by water and distributed to other parts of the mainland and overseas. Therefore, water transportation is the main mode of transportation in the northern region. More than 60% of the civilian ships built by the Xinjing Shipyard and Xinghe Shipyard are used to supply the needs of the northern region, and the remaining 40% are used for ocean transportation.

In the area south of Songjiang, rainfall decreases gradually, inland rivers decrease, river basins are small, and the few inland rivers with abundant water volume cannot form an interconnected water transportation network because the length of the basin is much shorter than that of the northern rivers. Therefore, the conditions for developing water transportation are not met. Therefore, transportation in the southern region still relies on traditional human and animal power.
Four-wheeled horse-drawn carriages and ox-drawn carts served as the main means of transportation.

Based on the geographical and natural climate differences between the north and south of the Han Dynasty, the government formulated different transportation development strategies. In the northern region, relying on the waterways of the Paraná River and the Uruguay River, and taking the ports along the river as the starting points of the railways, a number of medium and short-distance railways connecting the inland areas were built. The goods and materials from the inland areas were first transferred to the river ports by rail transportation, and then transferred to water transportation to distribute the goods and materials to other areas.

At the same time, considering the country's strategic planning, three trunk railways will be built in the northern region in the next ten years.

The first line starts from Chang'an (Cordoba City) and connects Yongnian City (Tucumán City), the capital of Jinzhou (Catamarca Province and Tucumán Province), and Zhangqiu City (San Salvador de Juíy City) to the north. The Chang'an to Yongnian City section of the railway was built and opened to traffic by British merchants in 1876. After the Argentine War, a sum of funds was compensated to the British merchants, and the Han government took over control of the railway. Then, on the basis of the original railway, it will continue to be built northward to connect with Zhangqiu City.

The southern section of the railway route is the Huaiyangfu (Rosario) to Songjiang section that German engineers are currently measuring and observing. Construction is expected to start in May 1880 and be completed by the end of the year.

The Songjiang-Zhangqiu Railway will be the first long-distance railway in the Han Dynasty. Because the Huaiyang-Chang'an section and the Chang'an-Yongnian section were both completed and opened to traffic during the Argentine period, the Han government only needs to connect the Huaiyang-Songjiang section and the Yongnian-Zhangqiu section. The journey of more than 1,000 kilometers from Zhangqiu to Songjiang can be shortened to just two days, saving about one month compared to the original transportation method of alternating land and water transportation.

The second railway line starts from Huaiyang Prefecture and connects Yunxi City (Paraná City), Xianghe City (Posadas), and Xing'an County (Passo Fundo) to the north. Construction is expected to start in two years and take one and a half to two years to complete and open to traffic.

The purpose of building the Huaiyang-Xinghe Railway is twofold: first, to connect the frontline areas bordering Brazil to facilitate the future mobilization of troops; second, to strengthen the external transportation capacity of Yangzhou (Rio Grande do Sul) and Los Angeles (Santa Catarina) and reduce the transportation costs of the two places as local industrial bases.
Yangzhou and Luozhou are rare coal producing areas in the La Plata region. The proven coal reserves of the two states account for 90% of the total coal reserves in Brazil. They are the earliest industrial bases and heavy industrial centers built in the country.

The lack of coal resources is a major problem in the development of local industry. For this reason, while effectively utilizing the coal reserves in Wuzhou and Yangzhou to develop industry, the government also purchased coal from Colombia, the ninth largest country in the world in terms of coal reserves, and actively explored and developed the coal resources in the Congo colony, which became a focus of the government's work in the next stage. In the more than 60 years between the late 1880s and World War II, the industrial sector had not yet developed the sophisticated and integrated large-scale industrial system of the 21st century. The use of local coal resources and the purchase and mining of coal mineral resources in the Congo colony could fully meet the needs of local industrial development. If a foreign war broke out again and the Han country's foreign trade transportation routes were cut off, the Han country could also use the rich local timber resources to burn the cut timber into charcoal to supply inland shipping, printing and dyeing, grain processing and other industrial fields, without having to fear the risk of industrial development being strangled by others.

The third northern railway line starts from Wuzhong City (Montevideo), the capital of Wuzhou (Uruguay), and goes north through Hexi County (Santa Maria) and Xing'an County of Yangzhou, and finally ends in Dongsheng County (Joinvia).

In the Wuzhong-Dongsheng railway section, two branch lines are planned to be built, one is the Wuzhong to Wuling (Pelotas) and Hexi County branch line, and the other is the Hexi County to Xinjing (Porto Alegre route.)
Wuzhou, Yangzhou and Luozhou were not only the light and heavy industrial bases of the Han Dynasty, but also important grain producing areas. Because they were located east of the Paraná River and had a superior natural environment, they were habitually called the Three States of Jiangdong by the local people.

The northern region is the key area for the development of industry and agriculture in the Han Dynasty. Although the northern region has alternative conditions for water transportation, it still receives policy support from the government in terms of railway construction. The southern region, which accounts for nearly half of the total land area, only plans to build a long-distance railway trunk line starting from Yanling (La Plata City) and ending in Shanyang City (Neuquén City), the capital of Huazhou (Neuquén State), as well as several short-distance railway branches based on the Yanling-Shanyang railway section in the development plan for the next ten years.

The mineral resources of the Han Kingdom are mainly distributed in the three states of Jinzhou (Catamarca Province and Tucumán Province), Songzhou (Buenos Aires Province), and Shouzhou (Santa Cruz Province).

Among them, Jinzhou is rich in copper, gold, lithium and other mineral resources with the highest reserves. Songzhou's mineral resources are mainly rock mines such as limestone. Shouzhou's proven mineral resources are mainly gold and silver mines. The mineral resource reserves of the three states account for about 70% of the total in the original Argentina region.

Songzhou and Jinzhou are both located in the north, and only Shouzhou is located in the southern inland area. Although the Cuyo Basin and Neuquén Basin in the northwest, the San Jorge Bay Basin and the Magellan Basin in the south have discovered a total of more than 3 million tons of oil reserves and 270 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil reserves in the exploration in the st century, Argentina has become a net oil exporter and the fourth largest shale oil resource reserve country after Russia, mainland China and the United States. However, due to the current technological level, oil and shale oil resources cannot bring fiscal revenue to the government. Only Shouzhou's gold and silver mineral resources attracted Li Mingyuan, and he decided to build the southern railway trunk line. On the one hand, he used the local gold and silver resources to attract Chinese immigrants to move in, and on the other hand, he mined gold mines to supplement the central bank's gold reserves and stabilize the national financial system based on the gold standard.

Of course, after the four north-south railway trunk lines are completed and the local side has accumulated a certain amount of railway construction technology, the Pacific region railway connecting the other side of the Andes will also be put into operation based on the north-south railway trunk lines.

(End of this chapter)