The motion to build a railway in Yicheng area actually existed a long time ago.◎,

It was more than ten years ago. Qiu Haiyang had just worked in the Yicheng area for a short time. Yicheng County had just been established, with a population of less than 10,000, and Chenggao County was still invisible. He felt that Mr. Qiu, who had extremely inconvenient transportation in Yicheng area, made great determination to build a road traffic system connecting Yicheng Port and Chenggao Township, and completely change the appearance of Yicheng area.

Unfortunately, at that time, the Yicheng area was in ruins. The heavy land reclamation work made the people breathless. Even many cadres felt exhausted. The indigenous people whose relations gradually deteriorated brought greater security threats. Although the New Huaxia Island next door sent some island Eight Banners local soldiers to help with the war, everyone knows how pitiful the combat effectiveness of these poor morale travelers is, and they still have to do everything themselves. In addition, the bad impact of the malaria incidence much higher than that of ordinary areas, it was really a relatively difficult and dark time in the history of the creation of the Yicheng area. People were facing the torture of labor, death and disease at any time. How could they have the energy, ability and enthusiasm to build a 152-kilometer railway?

What's more, they were still trying hard to build a highway marked as "Yicheng Second-Class National Highway" on the map! Moreover, the construction of this highway was not easy. It was entirely after the New China Development Team received the orders of its superiors, donated tens of thousands of cash and a batch of construction materials, and selected thousands of Malay prisoners of war to the Yicheng area, and then it was difficult to break ground. Therefore, where did the funds come from at that time, where did the manpower come from, and where did the materials come from to build the railway?

The construction of the Yicheng Second Class National Highway was intermittent and lasted until the spring three years ago (i.e. November 1674), and it was only completed with its own efforts and the assistance of all parties. This second class national highway, which is about 150 kilometers long, took about ten years to build, consumed a lot of funds, materials and manpower. In order to build this road, thousands of Malay prisoners of war died due to various factors, one-third of them fled. The local people who leveled the foundation on the construction site also died hundreds of people due to labor, diseases and raids by barbarians. It can be said to be a road soaked in corpses.

But these efforts were not without gains! After the completion of the Yicheng Second Class National Highway, the indigenous Swazis, Tongjia and Zulu people in the Yicheng and Chengga counties had almost been cleared (at least they had driven them to fields far away from the highway and the east coast of the people). The population and economy have developed, and the circulation of goods has begun to slowly accelerate. In addition, the discovery of a large coal mine in the northern part of Chenggao County has greatly improved the utilization rate of Yicheng Second Class National Highway, and its importance has also increased day by day, especially for Chenggao County, which is in a western inland area, this road is a veritable lifeline.

When the time came to early December 1677, Yicheng and Chenggao had nine settlements, more than 25,000 residents, a large number of farmland, reservoirs, orchards, pastures and forest farms were opened up, and the large number of black laborers (from the harvest of previous "bandit suppression" operations) also led to the two brick and tile wheel kilns established by the East Coast Building Materials Company, a lime kiln, and a cement kiln, which slowly operated, and strongly supported various construction projects in the region.

Therefore, Qiu Haiyang, a former commissioner of the Yicheng Regional Administration, who has always had great praises for his great achievements (it seems that his great achievements are the label of many local officials in the East Coast, and has almost become the mark of the times), also had the idea of ​​the Yicheng Railway, which had been shelved for almost 11 or 2 years at the beginning of this year, and wanted to implement it from paper into reality.

There is no doubt that this is a crazy plan! Even his close comrade-in-arms, deputy commissioner of the regional administration, and the county magistrate of Yicheng County, Xiao Jingzong, was no exception. He felt that it was too unreliable! Because he felt that Yicheng second-class national highway could play a great role now. After donating a full 100 heavy carriages in the local Southern Vehicle Factory, the transportation of various combat readiness materials between the two places was no longer a big problem. Even some private goods could be transported back and forth with these convoys affiliated to the state-owned Yicheng Land Transport Company. Therefore, Xiao Jingzong felt that there was no need to put himself in a new project construction after just getting a short three-year respite. You must know that this is not a small burden. It is conservatively estimated that 1.5-2 million yuan will be required to be fully repaired.

However, Qiu Haiyang changed his mind with just one sentence and actively supported the construction of this railway. The original words of Chief Qiu Xiao Jingzong were not very clear, but the meaning was quite clear. He, Mr. Qiu, did not know which boss he had taken, and actually obtained the permission to set up a new small-scale iron smelting plant in Yicheng area, and it had been approved by the Government Council. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce officially issued a document and issued a loan with the Industrial Credit Bank.

The emergence of this "miracle" project made Xiao Jingzong stunned and was also extremely excited. You should know that the Chenggao coal mine in Yicheng area has large reserves, shallow burials, high quality, and can stably provide vital energy and even raw materials for basic industries. If an iron smelting plant is really set up and operated stably, the local economy will simply take off because the market is ready-made! In the river, the new China, Yicheng hundreds of thousands of citizens, and a larger number of non-national labor workers, if such a market is not enough to be called big, then there is nothing to say.

Of course, if an iron smelting plant is established in Yicheng area, then the Kanghua Steel Plant that New China Island dreams of is basically gone (in fact, the project has been shot), because the Executive Committee obviously cannot set up two iron smelting plants in these two neighboring places so close, which is not economical and does not conform to the deployment of the country. In the future, Kanghua Iron Mine to be precise, it was an iron gold companion mine, located near Sualala in later generations, and a small amount of silver output is likely to provide raw materials for the upcoming iron smelting plant in Yicheng area. Therefore, this iron smelting plant, which has been initially decided to be located on the beach of Yicheng Port, has also supplied iron ore and coal, and is not far away, and the conditions are still quite good, and the future prospects are optimistic by many people.

Of course, the one who was most dissatisfied with the establishment of this iron smelting plant was undoubtedly the New China Development Team. They sent a large-scale delegation back to the local area to fight for it, but they only tried to accelerate the development of the investment in pyrote, gold and silver resources of Kanghua Port, which made them very frustrated. The reason was that in addition to Qiu Haiyang Luziye, who was the commissioner of the Yicheng Regional Administration at the time, perhaps New China Island is a colonial status and Yicheng region is a formal land status, which is also one of the important reasons. That is, the local bosses do not want to say that sensitive enterprises such as steel smelting are built in the colonies, so as to compete with local enterprises for business, and even, if it were not for Qiu Haiyang's efforts to fight and the Yicheng region is indeed good, this small iron smelting plant might not be built. After all, although the Yicheng region in Hezhong is nominally local, it is actually a second-class citizen in actual operation.

However, Commissioner Qiu Haiyang and the 200,000 people in New China Island have also been "punished" because after introducing Yicheng Iron Smelting Plant, he was announced to be transferred to the position of captain of the New China Development Team. The irony of the world is probably this, but maybe Mr. Qiu didn't care too much about it.

After the Yicheng Iron Smelting Plant project, the construction of the Yicheng Railway was no longer an insignificant matter, but a necessary and imminent matter. So, Xiao Jingzong, who was acting as a commissioner of the regional administration, has begun to actively plan and gritted his teeth and squeezed out 50,000 yuan from the already low-cost regional finances. At the same time, he organized a team to continue to go into the mountains to clear out, arresting indigenous prisoners including the Tongjia people, Zulu people and Swazi people, and acting as the main force in building the railway.

Otherwise, the planned mileage of 152 kilometers can drag down the finances of the entire region. You must know that the Ministry of Finance of the Central Committee, the State Administration of Railways and the Central Railway Company have only less than 300,000 yuan in railway construction funds each year. At this rate, it is probably not necessary to take at least five years to open to traffic on the Yicheng Railway. How can this be done to help people wait! Therefore, Xiao Jingzong recently asked his old superior, Qiu Haiyang, who has been transferred to the captain of the New China Development Team, and asked him to help him think of a solution and give some support. There is no one else.

However, Captain Qiu is indeed righteous to his old subordinates! Now that he is a provincial and ministerial-level official, he not only promises to aid Yicheng area with 50,000 yuan worth of grain, tools, medicines, tents, building materials and other materials every year, but also provides an additional large amount of black labor to serve as a "consumable" for building the Yicheng Railway.

These promised "consumables" in New China are not available yet. However, considering that their army and navy will head north against the wind soon and go north to the waters near the Sebastian Island, it is inevitable that they will land somewhere on the Swasili coast and robbed them in large numbers, so there is no need to worry about the arrival of a large number of slaves. The Yicheng Regional Administration only needs to prepare food, labor tools and enough supervisors to wait for the arrival of these free labor, which will greatly reduce the construction cost of the entire railway.

Today, Xiao Jingzong also took a heavy carriage to Chenggao County, an inland city. This second-class national highway has been operating stably for three years and the road conditions look pretty good. Although it is a bit bumpy and uneven, the standards of the second-class national highway are quite similar. You only need to spend 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a year for maintenance and repair, and you can almost maintain it.

On the way, there was a group of convoys transporting gunpowder, projectiles, gun parts, military boots, quilts and other combat preparation materials to Chenggao County. He knew that this was a team that transported materials to the officers and soldiers of the security brigade who were suppressing bandits in Chenggao County. Recently, the arrest of native people was very urgent, and the battle became frequent, so the consumption of various materials also increased sharply, and Yicheng County needed to urgently transport a batch of supplies to support.

In this way, the Yicheng Second-Class National Highway plays a huge role in military combat readiness. It can be seen as the tentacles and blood transfusions of the East Coast people extending to the inland Swazi settlement areas, continuously transporting soldiers and military supplies, and then continuously sweeps the local people's settlement areas. While expanding the territory for the country, it also plunders a large number of labor and materials, effectively supporting local construction. Overall, it still seems to be a relatively cost-effective business.

Of course, with the continuous advancement of the inland areas by the East Coast and the increasing number of pioneering populations, the tentacles and blood transfusions of Yicheng Second Class National Highway seem to be a bit insufficient at present. Chenggao County needs a thicker blood vessel to connect with the outside world, especially when the mainland's coal resources and grain have begun to gradually transport out of the country in recent years.

Therefore, the construction of Yicheng Railway is imperative! Not to mention anything else, the large amount of high-quality coal mine with rich reserves and easy mining is something that major domestic ship transport companies and navies are very envious. It has a huge demand. It is not reliable to transport by freight and horse-drawn carriages after all, so you have to board the railway.

"The construction of this railway will become the top priority of the regional administration in the next few years. Compared with this important tentacle that penetrates the inland, everything else seems to be less important, including the colonial activities of Mao Jun and Tang Moyu in the southern Yiyang Bay area. Alas, they are also unlucky, it is not that I, Lao Xiao, don't help them! There are almost no competitors in that piece of broken land, when will it be occupied? Compared with the formal production of Chenggao Coal Mine, Yicheng Iron Smelting Plant, and the full line of Yicheng Railway, these are nothing!" Sitting in the shaking carriage, Xiao Jingzong sighed softly and said to himself: "After all, the railway, the factory is the future of a region, not anything else. If you are alert, capture some natives there and come back to build roads is the best help for regional development."

In fact, as Xiao Jingzong said just now, after the Yicheng Iron Smelting Plant project was approved, the entire regional administration almost went crazy. At present, all the work is planned to be carried out around the construction of Yicheng Iron Smelting Plant, Yicheng Railway, and Chenggao Coal Mine. Even the newly added immigrants every year are considered to be arranged around the coal mines and national highways, and large-scale land reclamation is carried out to provide necessary food for the future.
Chapter completed!