The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 573 Governor's Reward

The next person to report the situation was Yang Shiqi.

Yang Shiqi usually doesn't talk much in such public occasions, and this time is no exception.

Yang Shiqi only briefly reported that the Beiyang Railway Corporation had already started construction of the Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway and had already conducted surveys on the Jinpu Railway.

There is also the situation of the former "Tangshan Repair Factory", which has been renamed "Tangshan Railway Repair Factory". After reorganization, it not only hired three American engineers, but also hired more than ten graduates of the Railway Engineering Class of Tianjin Beiyang Military Academy as engineers, greatly enhancing the technical strength here.

Now, the Tangshan Railway Repair Factory can not only repair all railway vehicles, but also manufacture all components and construction tools needed for railway construction, and has even begun to design and manufacture its own steam locomotives.

Yang Shiqi reported on the Lu-Han Railway that had already been taken over and the newly built Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway.

The stock fundraising of the Lu-Han Railway and the Jin-Zhang Railway was very good, especially that of the Lu-Han Railway. Merchants and gentry were most optimistic about the prospects of this railway. The commercial shares raised by the two railways have now reached more than 36 million taels.

The China Railway Corporation has established the Joint Construction Bureau for the Lu-Han Railway and the Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway. The Corporation's chief engineer, Zhan Tianyou, personally serves as the general manager and chief engineer of the two railways, and is in charge of the construction work.

Yan Deqing, a Shanghai native who had just returned from the United States this year with a master's degree in railway engineering, and Chen Xilin, who graduated from the railway engineering class of the Beiyang Military Academy in Tianjin, were appointed as deputy chief engineers. Zhai Zhaolin, Shen Qi, Chai Junchou, Yu Renfeng, who also graduated from the railway engineering class of the Military Academy, and many students from the Shanhaiguan Railway Academy were also dispatched to form an engineering corps to build the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway and the Lu-Han Railway.

The construction of the Lu-Han Railway has been completed by more than one third, and the surveys along the line have been completed. All we have to do is to supervise the construction, which is not difficult to do.

The Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway was the one that put the greatest pressure on the Joint Construction Bureau, especially as Teng Yuzhao required that the railway be completed and opened to traffic before the end of the 29th year of the Guangxu period. Even for this purpose, 50,000 Russian prisoners of war were transferred to the Railway Corporation.

Fortunately, before the end of last year, Zhan Tianyou personally led two railway engineering students, Xu Wenhong and Zhang Honggao, to conduct a detailed survey, starting from Fengtai and traveling through mountains and rivers to Zhangjiakou. After completing the survey, they submitted an investigation report and a specific construction plan, and the massive construction work began in the early spring.

But even so, they only have two years left for construction, which is still very tight.

In order to speed up the progress, Zhan Tianyou had begun to adopt the method of simultaneous north-south construction and construction at multiple points along the Lu-Han Railway and the Jin-Zhang Railway, and some sections were even built all night long.

According to the current progress, the Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway can be completed before the end of the 29th year of the Guangxu period, while the Lu-Han Railway can be completed by the middle of the 30th year of the Guangxu period at the earliest.

The preliminary survey work for the Jinpu Railway has also been carried out simultaneously. However, Yang Shiqi complained that the Railway Corporation he presided over was somewhat unable to start construction of the Jinpu Railway before the construction of the Jinzhang Railway was completed.

Yang Shiqi also said that the Railway Engineering Class of the Military Academy was separated out and has now been incorporated into Beiyang University to form two majors: the Railway Engineering Department and the Civil Engineering Department.

He had already discussed with Cai Shaoji that the study period for the first two classes of students would only be one year. The reason was that whether it was railway construction, subsequent management and maintenance, or the Tangshan Locomotive Repair Factory, these places urgently needed a large number of railway engineers.

Finally, Yang Shiqi also introduced to everyone the chief engineer Zhan Tianyou, the general manager of the general company Kuang Sunmou, and the two deputy chief engineers of the Lu-Han Railway and Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway Joint Construction Bureau, Yan Deqing and Chen Xilin.

He praised these people highly, especially Zhan Tianyou and Yang Shiqi.

Yang Shiqi emphasized that the Guangou section of the Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway has a large slope and is more than one mile long, requiring a locomotive that can travel on the steep slope to solve the traction power problem. Zhan Tianyou even actively contacted his American classmates to look for such a high-traction locomotive in the United States.

However, there was no similar locomotive in the United States at the time. To solve this problem, Zhan Tianyou designed a zigzag line to solve the problem of large slopes and many curves.

The 1091-meter-long Badaling Tunnel and the 367-meter-long Juyongguan Tunnel have also been excavated.

In order to speed up the progress, Zhan Tianyou also organized and implemented blasting methods during the excavation, using Laclos explosives used in mine development with strong explosive power and more stable performance.

This type of explosive can not only achieve the blasting effect, but also ensure the safety of construction to the greatest extent possible. However, this type of explosive is used in tunnel engineering for the first time in the world.

He even innovated the railway construction method and created the "shaft excavation method", which involves excavating two vertical shafts in the middle of the tunnel and then excavating in opposite directions, which means that six working faces are under construction at the same time, greatly improving construction efficiency.

The Huailai River Bridge with a length of more than 210 meters and steel beams, which is under construction at the same time, is also about to be completed.

Yang Shiqi also suggested on the spot that after the completion of the two railways, Teng Yuzao should give generous rewards to the engineers who participated in the construction of the two railways, led by Zhan Tianyou.

Yang Shiqi also mentioned that the Guangdong-Hankou Railway was built by the businessmen who invited Zhan Tianyou, who was born in Guangdong, to return to Guangdong to oversee the construction of the railway.

In addition, Jiangsu also planned to build a railway and wanted to hire Zhan Tianyou as a railway engineering consultant.

What interested Teng Yuzao was that Yang Shiqi also said that Yuan Shikai was worried about the Yellow River Bridge on the Beijing-Hankou Railway that was being built by the Belgians. Considering the safety of the river, he specially asked Yang Shiqi to appoint Zhan Tianyou to inspect the bridge project.

Due to the outbreak of the war, the iron bridge built by the Belgians was only half built, and Teng Yuzao was unable to take over the construction for a while. Finally, Teng Yuzao and the Belgians agreed that they would still have to continue to build and complete the bridge.

At this time, Yuan Shikai proposed that Yang Shiqi send the chief engineer Zhan Tianyou to inspect the bridge built by the Belgians. Naturally, he was worried that the huge amount of water in the Yellow River during the flood season would cause damage to the iron bridge, and thus threaten the operation of the Lu-Han Railway.

Although Teng Yuzhao had learned from Li Yaoting's report that Yuan Shikai was making a fuss about the convenient transportation after the operation of the Lu-Han Railway, thereby rapidly developing Henan's economy.

Of course, Teng Yuzhao was also very clear that Yuan Shikai’s move was not entirely out of concern for the people’s livelihood in Henan. His greater purpose was to collect more taxes so that it would have more financial resources to rapidly expand the Henan Army.

Only on this point did Yuan Shikai and Teng Yuzhao agree that they were both willing to ensure that the Lu-Han Railway was unimpeded.

The situation reported by Yang Shiqi encouraged everyone.

In the past, the imperial court had to borrow money at high interest rates to build railways, and the construction was often delayed. Li Hongzhang had suffered greatly from this in the past. But now that Teng Yuzhao had taken over the construction of the railways, not only did he not borrow a single ounce of silver in foreign debt, he was also able to build two railways at the same time!
Zhou Fu, who had been in the Beiyang Center for a long time, was even more impressed. He secretly sighed that if Teng Yuzao promoted Westernization at such a speed, it would probably produce great results in three to five years, not to mention ten years. As for Teng Yuzao, he was even more excited.

Teng Yuzhao was very clear that if the completion time of the Lu-Han Railway and the Jin-Zhang Railway was according to what Yang Shiqi said, the completion and opening to traffic of these two railways would be more than two years ahead of the historical time.

Moreover, in Teng Yuzhao's memory, the Lu-Han Railway eventually cost nearly 44 million taels of silver, and the Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway also cost nearly 7 million taels of silver. The total cost of the two railways was 50 million taels. Now, the commercial shares raised alone have reached 36 million. In addition, he has tens of thousands of free laborers, so the cost of building the railway will be even lower.

You have to know that there was almost no engineering machinery to build the railway at that time. The labor cost for building two railways for two years was estimated to be more than 6 million taels, especially in mountainous areas where the cost would be higher.

The transportation of materials for construction alone is a huge expense.

By this calculation, he only needs to spend another 10 million taels of silver to complete the construction of the two railways.

Moreover, Yang Shiqi and Huang Chujiu joined forces and purchased a large amount of land near several major stations along the line, taking advantage of the fact that many people had not yet realized that the railway would bring huge changes to the areas along the line.

Among them, the Lu-Han Railway includes a small and even unknown village - Shimen, as well as areas around where stations are to be built, such as Baoding Prefecture, Shunde Prefecture, Zhengzhou, Xuzhou, Xinyang Prefecture, Hankou Jiangan, and Hankou Dazhimen.

The Tianjin-Zhangjiakou Railway is relatively simple. After all, the economy along the railway in the mountainous area is underdeveloped and the population is small, so only some land was purchased in Zhangjiakou.

Teng Yuzao actually doesn't really care whether it makes money or not. The most important thing is that this gives Teng Yuzao hope of speeding up the construction of railways. He will do his best and ultimately strive to complete every railway built with the least official investment. Only in this way can the domestic railway network be vigorously developed in a short period of time.

Now, he is full of confidence, but Teng Yuzhao is very clear that to fulfill the ambition of building a domestic railway network, he still has to rely on a large number of technical personnel led by Zhan Tianyou.

Teng Yuzao smiled and said to Zhan Tianyou, "Juancheng, tell me, what difficulties are there in building the railway? Do you have any good suggestions? Please put them forward."

When called by Teng Yuzao, Zhan Tianyou, whose face flushed slightly with excitement, stood up, first expressed his gratitude to Yang Shiqi who praised him highly, then bowed slightly to Teng Yuzao before speaking.

"General, General Manager Yang has praised me so much that I feel ashamed to accept it."

Then Zhan Tianyou said firmly, "There are always difficulties, but even the European and American powers will encounter various difficulties when they build railways. We have a large number of people in our country, and the people are the most hardworking. In addition, the Marshal has given us huge human support. I will work hard with my colleagues in the company to overcome these difficulties."

"Since we now have sufficient manpower, I am confident that we can not only complete the project within the time stipulated by the Marshal, but it is even possible to complete it several months ahead of schedule."

"In addition, I have two suggestions regarding railways."

Seeing Zhan Tianyou looking at him, Teng Yuzao couldn't help but laugh.

"Juancheng, if you have any suggestions, please tell me. You are our greatest expert in railways, so please tell me now."

Zhan Tianyou said, "Marshal, there is no unified standard for railway gauge in the world. Even the railways in the European powers are different. As far as I know, there are thirteen different gauges of railway tracks of various widths. The widest is more than two meters, and the narrowest is only more than 700 millimeters."

"Although broad gauge and narrow gauge have their own advantages and disadvantages, if the track gauge is not unified, it will still cause a lot of inconvenience. For example, if more railways are built, they must be interconnected to form a network. If the track gauge is different, they cannot be connected at all."

"The European powers are generally small countries. Although their track gauges are not uniform, it is still easy to make them uniform within the country. But it is different in our country. Railways are built in various provinces. Now there are many differences. For example, the railways built with the help of the French in Yunnan and Guangxi are narrow-gauge railways."

"So I suggest that we should adopt the British standard, which is a track gauge of 1435 millimeters, or 4 feet 8 and a half inches."

“Another suggestion is to promote the use of Jenny’s automatic coupler.”

Teng Yuzao was very clear about the significance of the unified domestic railway gauge standard and naturally strongly supported it.

Jenny's automatic coupler is also of great significance to the rapid operation of trains.

This Jenny automatic coupler is the trailer hook used on all train carriages in later generations. However, this trailer hook was not invented by Zhan Tianyou. Even a hundred years later, many Chinese people still believed that this hook was invented by Zhan Tianyou.

It turns out that as early as 1860, an American named Miller invented the vertical plane train coupler, but this coupler still had various problems, which attracted the attention of another American named Jane.

In 1868, Jennet improved the configuration of Miller's coupler, produced a new type of automatic coupler, and applied for a patent for the invention.

In 1873, Jenner continued to improve the new automatic coupler and the iterative product was patented again.

From then on, the new automatic coupler invented by Jenne was promoted by railways across the United States and soon became popular around the world.

Teng Yuzao nodded immediately and said, "Both of Juancheng's suggestions are very good. They will be of great benefit to domestic railway construction."

"I will personally write to the Military Affairs Council and ask it to issue a document to force all new railways in each province to have a unified track gauge, and require all self-made or purchased train carriages to have a unified automatic hook device, otherwise they will not be allowed to run."

Teng Yuzao smiled excitedly and said, "As for General Manager Yang's request that I reward those who have made contributions to the two railways under construction by the Beiyang government, I fully agree. As long as you complete the projects on schedule, I will reward you with 200,000 silver dollars. The specific distribution will be decided by General Manager Yang."

Teng Yuzao said to Yang Shixiang, "The Lotus Mansion is to encourage and support talents who have made outstanding contributions to the promotion of Westernization and political achievements, as well as those who have made outstanding contributions to the development of education, scientific research, industry and commerce, and military achievements."

"From now on, all will be rewarded generously. You will take the lead in this matter. The Governor's Office will set aside 2 million silver dollars every year as a reward fund, and you will be responsible for formulating the specific regulations."

(End of this chapter)