Chapter 401 We are really sorry that you have lost money by asking you to fund the railway construction.

Author: The best is like no water

Chapter 401 We are really sorry that you have lost money by asking you to fund the railway construction.

"train?"

Li Er knew about horse-drawn carriages, oxen-carts, donkey-carts, mule-carts and even human-pulled cars, but this train was unheard of.

"Your Majesty, does he know the track of Qin?"

"Of course we know this." Li Er is considered to be familiar with military books and history books. "Qin Zhidao and Qin Rail are the sharp weapons for the Qin people to control the world."

After a pause, Li Er said slightly doubtfully, "Is this train of yours a carriage running on the Qin track?"

"If that's the case, I'm afraid it won't work." Li Er shook his head repeatedly. "The Qin Railroad is made of wood. Once it rains, it will be severely damaged. And daily maintenance is also very cumbersome and time-consuming. If it spans thousands of miles, how much manpower and material resources will be used. Three years.

?I’m afraid

Three years later and three more years later, I couldn’t do it.”

Li Yunze picked up the tea bowl on the side and said, "What if the track is made of iron?"

"iron?"

Li Er was stunned for a moment, "If the rails don't wear out naturally, they will also rust due to rain. The most important thing is, where did the Tang Dynasty get so much iron?"

"Rust prevention is not a problem. Since I said it, there will be a solution." Li Yunze took a sip of tea and asked, "How much iron does Datang produce annually?"

This is considered a state secret, but Li Er still gave the answer, "It's about seven or eight million kilograms."

"More than five thousand tons?" Li Yunze calculated in his mind, "It can almost build the distance from Chang'an City to Jingyang."

"What?" Li Er was still complacent that Datang could produce millions of kilograms of iron every year, but when he heard that so much iron could only be built to Jingyang, he was naturally very dissatisfied.

"Please ask your Majesty to go to Lijiazhuang tomorrow." Li Yunze asked, "I will show the specific matters to your Majesty."

As the saying goes, empty words are useless, especially for something that has never been seen before, it is better to show it intuitively.

Knowing that Li Yunze was going to bring out something good again, Li Er immediately nodded and said, "Yes."

At noon the next day, Li Er arrived at Lijiazhuang with Fang Xuanling, Du Ruhui, Wei Zhengchang, Sun Wuji and a group of nobles.

Li Yunze, who greeted everyone, looked at them and said simply, "What is about to be displayed is a powerful military weapon. Are all the people who come here reliable?"

Li Erxin said, "Everyone is already here. If you say this, how can I name who to send back?" Wouldn't that mean that they will immediately become alienated from each other?

"This is natural." Li Er, who was walking down the slope, waved boldly, "They are all my confidants."

Everyone burst into tears of gratitude, and there was a drama on the spot where the king and his ministers got along well with each other.

After all these steps were completed, Li Yunze led everyone to a specially renovated house.

This house is very large, with no furniture or other items except for the large sand table on the floor.

"This is." Looking at the large sand table on the ground, Li Er and others were shocked.

"This is Chang'an City." Li Yunze simply walked onto the sand table and pointed to the lower position with a wooden pole. Chang'an looked like a courier box. "This is the departure station."

Li Er also followed his example and took off his boots, and simply walked up.

As for the others, they were worried about trampling on such a beautiful thing, so they could only stand in a circle against the wall and watch.

"This is the railway track." Li Yunze gestured to the toy train track next to Chang'an City. "It uses stones as pads, wood as sleepers, and iron as the track. Starting from Chang'an City, we go all the way north through Jingyang, Yunyang Fangzhou, and Linzhou.

, Yanzhou, Yinzhou.”

The wooden pole in his hand went all the way north along the toy track, and finally arrived at Shengzhou, which is Yulin, on the bank of the Yellow River.

"This distance will be traveled along the river banks and valleys as much as possible. The entire construction will be almost 1,500 miles. It is expected to use iron."

Having said this, Li Yunze looked around and smiled, "More than 150 million jins."

"How many, how many?!"

Everyone thought they heard wrongly and stared at Li Yunze in disbelief.

"For more than 150 million kilograms, there is no ceiling."

Li Yunze has no intention of promoting Datang Technology to the Zenith Star. The technologies he supplies are controlled on the basis that they can develop on their own.

Don't even think about high-speed rail. Even if Li Yunze could get things, he wouldn't be able to find so many professional and technical talents.

Modern railways are also impossible. All they can provide are the early railway states, the simpler the better, which will not exceed the upper limit of affordability of this era.

"This is too time-consuming." Before Li Er could say anything, Fang Xuanling, the housekeeper of the Tang Dynasty, shook his head repeatedly. "Building such a railway from Chang'an City to Yulin would use up the iron production of the Tang Dynasty for more than ten or twenty years."

, this is simply impossible.”

Li Yunze ignored him, but took out a toy train, placed it at the departure station on the edge of Chang'an City, and then started it.

Watching the toy train swaying across the river, through the valley, dragging the long carriage and finally arriving in Shengzhou, Li Er's eyes shone and asked, "What is this? What can it do?"

"This is called a train. You can think of it as a kind of machine beast."

Li Yunze picked up the toy train and handed it to Li Er, "Using coal as food, it can drag a million kilograms of objects and move forward at a speed of more than a hundred miles per hour."

He emphasized that "as long as there is sufficient fuel and smooth roads, we will probably start this morning and arrive in Shengzhou before dark tomorrow."

‘Hiss~~~’

A series of gasping sounds suddenly sounded in the room.

That's Shengzhou, a place more than a thousand miles away!

"And this." Li Yunze took the toy train back to Chang'an City, got on another track and drove eastward to Luoyang City.

"If you want to go from Chang'an City to Luoyang City, you can leave at dawn in the morning and arrive at night when it gets dark. You'll arrive early and arrive late at night."

The sound of breathing in the room became louder.

Most of the people here have been on the battlefield and know how terrifying such speed is.

Not to mention being able to carry a large number of people and supplies, this is like a divine weapon descending from the sky.

What is an important military weapon? There is no doubt that this is it.

If other people say such things, everyone will think that they are just talking nonsense, and they can just sneer at them.

But what Li Yunze said, they all believed that he would be able to do it.

"This is really true." The most excited person was Changsun Wuji. His family was in the iron smelting business and had a lot of money.

"If this railway can be built to reach the Western Regions."

"We should go north first and go deeper into the prairie."

"It's all nonsense. We should go east and reach Jiangdong."

"We have found a large copper mine in the south, so we should build it southward."

Many nobles started chatting and discussed where the railway should be built.

As for Fang Xuanling, Du Ruhui and others, their faces were very ugly.

There are definitely benefits to this thing, but the problem is that "it costs so much that even twenty years of work may not even be able to complete it. The manpower and material resources required are simply countless, and the national power of the Tang Dynasty will be hollowed out!"

"

"This thing is very good, but it is not necessarily good for usability. Just to spread so much iron, countless soldiers would have to be used to patrol it day and night. That's iron!"

"It's okay to walk through dangerous mountains and rivers, but it's okay to walk through fields, houses, villages, towns, and even ancestral tombs. What should I do?"

"It's not right, it's not right, it costs too much, there are too many things to do, and it's a lot of trouble. Apart from the convenience of using troops, there is no benefit."

In summary, civil servants are basically opposed to it because it costs too much and involves too many things.

The military generals all agreed, because it didn't require them to worry about it, but it made it very convenient to mobilize troops and transport supplies. Of course, they agreed.

This is a typical example of how the butt determines the head.

If it were the nobles who were prime ministers and ministers of this and that, they would immediately complain in all kinds of ways.

After a quarrel, everyone looked at Li Er.

On such a major matter, the only one who can really make a decision is their emperor.

Li Er, who had been staring at the sand table and playing with the toy train in his hand, finally raised his head and looked at Li Yunze who was silent. "What should I do if I don't have enough iron?"

"I made a promise to those tribal nobles at the dinner party yesterday." Li Yunze said with a smile, "I always speak like a stick in my mouth. Now that I have said it, I will do it. Let's do this. This road from Chang'an City to Shengzhou All the railway construction expenses are mine."

Not surprisingly, the whole audience was shocked again.

That was the iron output of the Tang Dynasty for more than ten or twenty years. What a huge investment it was.

As expected of Li Caishen, he is so rich.

Li Er nodded slightly, "What should we do when we encounter fields, houses, villages and ancestral tombs on the road?"

"Buy it with money." Li Yunze immediately stated, "As much land as you requisition, you will be compensated with double the land. If you requisition the houses, you will be compensated for other people's houses, and they must be built better and more beautiful. If you ask people to move the graves, you will not only have to re-select the Feng Shui treasure land. , and also provide sufficient compensation money.More

We need to make it clear to everyone that this is a good thing that benefits the country and the people."

"We need to let the people know that if their hometown is connected by train, they can set off with local specialties in the morning, arrive in Chang'an City or other places to sell them at noon, get on the train home in the afternoon, and still eat them when they get home in the evening. Serve dinner."
To be continued...