Chapter 884 Luo Chong's Ambition

After listening to Luo Chong's words, everyone had already realized the cost of building a railway, but they didn't know the specific cost. Now they heard Lin Fei burst out a series of numbers, and they all said that they couldn't accept it. They were all shocked!

What kind of family made them think of building such a rich man's railway?

Isn't it good to have a carriage?

Why spend money to build such a railway?

To be honest, let's not talk about the length of the railway. It's just a one-kilometer track. Except for the Han tribe, other tribes in the entire continent can't make it in five years, right? Not to mention the quality of the rails.

Everyone looked at Luo Chong, wanting Luo Chong to confirm whether what Lin Fei said just now was true.

Luo Chong saw their reactions and then said.

"Lin Fei is right. If it is the laying of freight railways, it does require so much iron, but you don't have to be so surprised and think that this number is a lot. You only heard about the consumption, but you don't know our steel production capacity. Dali, you come and introduce to them what is the current steel production capacity of our Han tribe."

"Okay, our steel mill in Xingang County is currently renovating the original star-shaped blast furnace, but the progress of the renovation is a bit slow, so let's temporarily calculate it based on the original blast furnace.

Xingang County has 20 star-shaped blast furnaces, and usually only five of them are in operation. When five of them are in operation, the other blast furnaces are cleaning the furnace or being repaired, and the utilization rate is only one-fourth.

When each blast furnace is in operation, it is smelting iron non-stop for twelve hours a day, because the blast furnace cannot be stopped casually. It takes several days to burn it that hot again after stopping once, and it will also waste a lot of coke, which is very costly.

Such a blast furnace can produce molten iron sixteen times in twelve hours a day . The design size of the blast furnace is to produce ten cubic meters of iron at a time, but because of the slag and waste in actual use, as well as the different iron content of the ore, the average amount of iron produced each time is only eight cubic meters.

One cubic meter of pig iron weighs about 14,600 catties, or 7,300 kilograms. Eight cubic meters is 58,400 kilograms, or 116,800 catties of iron, and this is just the molten iron produced once.

Producing iron sixteen times a day is about 1.8 million catties, or about 930 tons. This is just the output of one furnace. More If it were, we would not have enough manpower to mine now, and the grinding speed would not be able to keep up. However, when the ore-carrying trains become popular and our steel mill equipment is improved, we can run more furnaces at the same time.

If we follow the number Lin Fei just reported, it takes 120,000 kilograms of iron to build one kilometer of freight railway, then the daily production capacity of one of our furnaces is enough to lay 15 kilometers of heavy-duty railway, and the remaining fraction can meet the parts consumption of this 15 kilometers of railway.

If there are five furnaces in total, the daily production capacity can build 75 kilometers of railway.

If the trains get If it is popularized, then I can at least quadruple this production capacity. Even if 20 blast furnaces are opened at the same time, we can meet the supply of iron ore.

If we need to increase production capacity, we can build larger and more blast furnaces. "

Da Li directly revealed his family assets this time, which made everyone present smack their lips. This is only the current semi-closed state. It maintains a quarter of the production capacity so that the workers will not have holidays. In this way, the output of steel is already so abnormal. Five blast furnaces produce 4,650 tons of iron per day. Before this data was not revealed, they dared not imagine it.

Of course, if such a blast furnace is placed in the eyes of modern steel companies, they will probably laugh their teeth off. You dare to call it a blast furnace with less than 500 cubic meters? Go home and drink milk quickly. Ten cubic meters of slag is not even an egg cell!

These blast furnaces that have been modified by magic in the Han tribe can actually only be regarded as the level of earthen blast furnaces.

Luo Chong took in everyone's surprised expressions. He smiled and said, "Now you don't think the cost of railway construction is expensive anymore, do you?"

Everyone shook their heads. The production capacity in one day can lay 75 kilometers of rails. If the small trains for transporting ore become popular, the output of steel will be increased. Let alone doubling it, as long as the production capacity of steel can be increased by half, not doubled, hundreds of kilometers of railways can be laid in one day. At this speed, as long as the steel can keep up, they can directly pull the rails to Takumi County next year.

Of course, the speed of building railways is not calculated in this way. After all, building railways is not as simple as laying rails. It also requires geological exploration, planning the most suitable route, reducing the number of tunnels and bridges, so as to reduce the difficulty and cost of railway construction, and increase the construction speed.

Otherwise, with the existing tools and equipment, it will take a lot of time to dig a tunnel, right? It will also take a long time to build a railway bridge that can pass heavy-load trains, right?

Sometimes, it takes several years to tackle just a small project in a large project.

Building a railway is not something you can build as long as you want if you have enough iron.

"Chief, is this railway necessary?" Just when everyone was immersed in the surprise brought by the steel production, She Xin, the current governor of Liuyang County, suddenly asked a question.

Luo Chong glanced at him, but did not answer directly. Instead, he stood up and erased the words on the blackboard behind him, and rewrote two words, "network" and "transportation network".

Luo Chong sat down again, pointed to the last two words and said.

"At present, our Han tribe has opened up water transportation in the north-south direction, controlling places from the inland mountains to the grasslands and the overseas Qiongzhou Island. It can be said that we have developed to the limit and control all places that can be reached at present.

But will our Han tribe stop moving forward? Of course not."

Luo Chong stood up again and drew a well-shaped character on the blackboard behind him, and then continued to explain.

"The size of our Han tribe's territory actually depends on how far we can reach. You can't refute this, right?"

Everyone nodded in unison. The Han tribe now has the confidence and strength to say this. As long as the Han tribe can reach a place, no one will be a match for the Han tribe, and everyone must submit to the king.

Not convinced? Xin tribe wants to know?

Then Luo Chong continued, "Now, all the waterfront areas, as long as they can be reached by boat, have basically become our territory. Although there is still a lot of land between Hanyang Eight Counties and Takuhai County that we have not yet set foot on, these are not a problem. As long as our population is large enough, we can slowly migrate to this area, from both ends to the middle. As long as the Liuyang River is controlled by our Han tribe, no one can take these places in the middle away.

And what we have to do now is to turn our attention to those inland areas without rivers, that is, the east and west directions of our current territory. How can we quickly reach these places without rivers, develop these areas, and then transport the resources on them back to our tribe continuously? This requires railways.

I plan to use the north-south rivers as the backbone of the Han tribe, and use railways to extend them in the east and west directions, weaving them into a huge transportation network to expand and rule more territory."

Finally finished writing, please reward

(end of this chapter)