After sending off the Expedition Legion, Zhu Cijiu had to wait for their news. In this era when communications were basically yelling, it was great to send messages across the ocean. It was a good idea to have a round trip in one or two months. He could still rush for 800 miles abroad. He had to wait abroad. He didn't like this feeling, but the phone and telegram only existed in his memory. Now there was no electricity at all, so he could only do nothing.

Life should continue without electricity, and the rise of the Ming Dynasty could not stop. After the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, he immediately launched the JD Railway project. What is the JD Railway? It is the railway between Beijing and Dongdaying. This section of railway is about 250 miles long, with two-way and two lanes. He plans to build it in three months.

It takes 250 miles to practice in three months, which means that it is necessary to practice at least three miles a day. Is it possible? There is no doubt about this, there is no problem at all, because Zhu Cijiu is preparing to recruit many migrant workers, and the specific number of them needs to be learned through experiments.

This experiment is actually to build a large dispatch station in the west of the capital. This dispatch station is mainly used to park trains and turn around for trains. He is planning to build the station in the north of the city, but the railway tracks have to extend to the west of the city. Because Wang Gongchang is on the west of the capital, it just so happens that the train also needs a huge arc to turn around, so this dispatch station with huge arcs is set to the west of the capital.

This railway was a new thing in the Ming Dynasty and even the whole world. Zhu Cijing knew that he had to lay stones first, then put on the sleepers, and then lay tracks on it. It seemed that the turning places should be high on the outside and low on the inside, so that the train could generate centripetal force when turning, so that it would not fly out of the track directly. Of course, these are all a general understanding. He did not have specific data on how thick the stones should be laid, how thick the sleepers should be used, and how much inclination the turning places should be. These must be obtained through experiments.

In other words, we must first use this dispatching station to do the experiment. He set the experiment time for about one month. In the future, the railway was only two months. In two months, he was a little too presumptuous to build a two-lane railway of 250 miles? This is not a matter of course, because he was preparing to invest huge manpower. If he didn't have 10,000, he would have 20,000, he would have 50,000, and if he didn't have 50,000, he would have 100,000. Anyway, the early leveling of the ground, laying stones and even laying sleepers did not require any technology, and ordinary migrant workers could complete it. The reason why he did this was because he remembered a way to develop the economy.

In fact, most people in later generations have heard of this method, which is to take the lead in launching large-scale infrastructure construction to expand domestic demand and lay a solid foundation for economic growth. This is a bit theoretical. If we put it intuitively, it means that stones require money to buy, wood requires money to buy, and labor requires money to. This money will eventually fall into the hands of civilians around the line. With money, they have the ability to consume, and they will buy things, which can drive the development of other industries. This is the expansion of domestic demand during the construction of railways. After the railway is completed, the transportation of goods in various places along the line will be convenient, and merchants will be convenient, and commercial activities will become more and more frequent, so that the economy will grow slowly.

Zhu Cijing was actually thinking about how to make the Ming Dynasty's economy grow rapidly. To make economic growth, it is necessary to revitalize the market. To revitalize the market, there must be a consumer group. Where does this consumer group come from? The biggest consumer group is ordinary people. The problem is that they have no money! So, we must first make ordinary people rich before we can talk about economic growth. How to make them rich? First, we must build infrastructure construction to make some money; then increase the price of grain, so that they can make some money; then we can also promote characteristic breeding, build labor-intensive factories, etc. The market will become active when the people are rich, and the economy will naturally grow slowly when the market is active.

This railway construction is just the first step to make the people rich, so he is preparing to recruit workers crazily and recruit as much as he can. Anyway, he has money now. He invests a little first to make the people richer, and gradually the Ming Dynasty's economy will be revitalized so that he can earn more money.

These are all later stories. Let’s talk about building a railway first. The first step is to experiment. Song Yingxing is naturally responsible for this experiment. First, he led people to dig a hole in the city wall on the west side of the inner city. There was no way. It was too troublesome to go to other city gates. He directly moved the city wall on the west side of Wang Gong Factory and lay the small tracks of the track flatbed truck first. It would be much more convenient to transport things out. Zhu Cijiong naturally agreed.

After the hole is opened, the tracks are about to be laid. Now it does not have that much iron ore, so the tracks can only be laid with a small circular track several miles long, which is similar to the circular tracks in ordinary stadiums.

This track is not paved, because the standard shape of the track has not been determined yet. Zhu Cijing just drew him an I-shaped track section, which is very wide and thick, the horizontal under the I-shaped one, the vertical in the middle is as high as thick, and the horizontal above is as wide as thick as the inside is as short as possible. These are all things to be tried.

The track cannot be made into a solid square pillar. In that case, the track will be more than one hundred kilograms per meter. It is not easy to fix the material. It is unquestionable to make it into an I-shaped shape. The width, height and thickness may not necessarily be exactly the same as the tracks in later generations. Because the materials are different, it is impossible to create high-quality track steel in the Ming Dynasty. Moreover, the tracks are not pulled out or pressed out. In the Ming Dynasty, they can only be cast, and this strength is much lower than those pulled out or pressed out. Therefore, the tracks made at this moment must be heavier than those in later generations. As for the specific thickness, it will be experimented.

There are also how thick the stones should be, how thick the sleepers should be used, and how much inclined the bends should be. These all require experiments one by one. Song Yingxing was busy with a group of students and a large group of migrant workers, paved and dug the railway several miles long, and used the latest fixed steam locomotive to crush it back and forth. The rails were crushed, the stones were crushed, and the sleepers were crushed. I don’t know how many times it almost overturned, and I don’t know how many times it took, so I almost broke Song Yingxing to death.

You should know how much effort it will take to repair and pry back if a locomotive with more than 100 tons of cheating. There was no big crane at that time. Song Yingxing specially made ten huge hoists and ten huge iron racks for this purpose. Every time he lifted the iron rack and hoist, he could lift people to vomit blood, let alone slowly lift the locomotive and pry it back on the track.

I won’t talk about the hard work. In short, Song Yingxing has sacked all the power of the railway and finally tested all the parameters of the railway. At this time, the first batch of iron ore from Schvira was also delivered, and the railway can finally start construction.

Schvira actually started collecting iron ore as soon as he defeated Aurangzeb's first attack. He had collected 2 million kilograms of iron ore during the Chinese New Year. In other words, the iron ore on this expeditionary legion had already been released before it set off. It was not surprising that it could arrive at this time.

It is easy to deal with iron ore. The small blast furnace is burned hard, the tracks are cast, the milling machine is milling two pieces, and the drilling machine is drilling two rows of holes, and then it can be laid out. In order to facilitate transportation of tracks, Song Yingxing specially replaced all the tracks of all the tracks of Wanggong Factory with standard rails, and the spacing is adjusted as wide as the rails. The track flatbeds have been redone, and dozens of more are made, so that the tracks are not required to be lifted. Wherever the railway is laid, the track flatbeds will be pushed to, just lift the tracks off the flatbeds.

There are two parallel tracks, one is to pass the track, and the other is to pull the empty truck back. After the rails on the track flatbed truck are used up, just lift the empty truck to another track, and then push it up with a full load behind it. As for the empty truck, if you ride a horse, you can easily pull it back and take it back for a long walk.

The laying progress of this railway is amazing. Anyway, Zhu Cijing didn't care about money, so he recruited 100,000 migrant workers in one go. Some of them were taken by officials from the Ministry of Works to build bridges, some were transported, some were prepared for sleepers, some were leveling the roadbed, some were laying stones, and some were laying sleepers. Song Yingxing and his students just took people to check and then lay the railway tracks on it. The speed was amazingly fast, and they could be laid for five or six miles a day!

It is definitely not possible to pave the railway without a train, so Song Yingxing slowly handed over the laying of railway tracks to several students, and he took most of the students to build locomotives and freight cars.

According to Zhu Cijiu's meaning, the trial run will be conducted for a few months first. During the trial run, it will be enough to send a train on each side every day. In this way, two locomotives are required. As for the freight car, a locomotive can at least thirty or forty knots, but that is a bit dangerous. Braking and deceleration require a long distance. If the movement is too strong, it will easily cause derailment. Therefore, Zhu Cijiu and Song Yingxing agreed to try hanging ten freight carriages behind the front of the car.

In fact, there are already a lot of ten freight cars. You should know that a freight carriage is at least 50 tons, or 100,000 kilograms, and you can get one million kilograms in one trip. Now that commercial activities have not yet flourished, just pulling military supplies, the cargo volume is enough.

The power is great if there are many people. The speed of the railway laying is completely beyond Zhu Cijiu's imagination. By the end of March, the JD Railway was fully completed!

Just so happened that the second batch of iron ore from Schvira was also transported, and news also came that the Expeditionary Legion finally arrived in Goa, and Aurangzeb's army had not yet arrived. In other words, the city of Mysore should be considered to be preserved unless the Mughal Empire sent an army of 300,000 to 400,000 troops to suppress it, but this possibility is basically no. Mysore is only the capital of the Mysore Turkish Kingdom, not the capital of the Mughal Empire. There is no need for the Mughal Empire to be so crazy, nor can it be so crazy.

Mysore City has guaranteed the supply of iron ore, and Zhu Cijiu can finally concentrate on domestic development. The first thing is naturally to test the JD Railway.

There are weapons, ammunition, grain and supplies from the four Liaodong legions in the capital, and important weapons are transported to the port of Dongdaying; there are more than 2 million kilograms of iron ore in the Dongdaying area to be transported to the capital. Zhu Cijiong issued a direct order that from March 26 to March 28, the Jingdong Railway will be officially put into trial operation for three days. As for why this date is chosen, modern people know that six and eight are both auspicious numbers.

Early in the morning of March 26, Zhu Cijiu visited the dispatch station in the west of the city and presided over the departure ceremony of the first train. The city of Beijing was empty again. The flags were waving and colorful flags were flying in the west of the city. Hundreds of thousands of residents in the capital surrounded the entire dispatch station. Zhu Cijiu had to dispatch almost all the Jinyiwei in Beijing to maintain order.

The first train was first loaded with weapons and ammunition and slowly running around the dispatching station. All the residents present were amazed. It was unprecedented and unprecedented that such a huge iron guy could move himself!

Zhu Cijing was naturally not surprised at all. He used a telescope to observe carefully for a while. The train was running smoothly, and the brake system and steering system worked normally. There was basically no problem. As soon as the auspicious time arrived, he immediately stood up, waved his hand majesticly, and said aloud: "Depart."

"Woo" the train rang out of the dispatching station slowly, heading far away, slowly disappearing from people's sight. Zhu Cijiong stood there to accept the cheers of the civilians, and couldn't calm down for a long time.

Even trains can be built, but who can stop the rise of the Ming Dynasty!
Chapter completed!