Chapter 362: The First Railway Overall Concept
K is the first letter of Constantine's name. 001 has no special meaning, it just means the first. The first train was named "Constantine". Subsequent steam locomotives imported from East Africa will not be named unless there are special circumstances. They will all use numbers starting with K, such as the K-002 locomotive that is being transported to Dar es Salaam at sea.
Looking at the simple environment of the Dar es Salaam Railway Station, Constantine instructed the Dar es Salaam Municipal Government: "Dar es Salaam is an excellent port, responsible for about 35% of East Africa's import and export trade. With the development of the times, railway construction is the general trend. The expansion of the First Railway in the future is also imperative. At least build warehouses and other necessary buildings to solve the problem of cargo storage. A road from the city to the railway station can also be built. The existence of the new port cannot cut off the connection between the old port and the railway. We can add an extra security check when leaving the city to check for suspicious people or goods."
The First Railway, which has just opened to traffic, cannot dredge the East African interior to the coast, but this is only because the First Railway has only completed the preliminary plan. As early as when designing the First Railway, Ernst had considered the future development of the First Railway.
That is to learn from the previous Tanzania-Zambia Railway plan, and on this basis build the first railway from Dar es Salaam to Zimbabwe.
The most difficult project was crossing the Zambezi River, which required the construction of a sturdy bridge across the river. However, the Zambezi River was not the only river that the First Railway would encounter.
In the past, the Tanzania-Zambia Railway built 320 bridges and dug 26 tunnels, spanning two countries, costing more than 900 million yuan and taking nearly eight years to build. In the end, nearly 70 people from the Far East paid for their lives. It is conceivable how much manpower and material resources were consumed at the time to build such a railway.
If East Africa were to build this railway, the difficulty would only be great, because it would include the Zimbabwe section, and the total length of the railway would be more than 2,000 kilometers, hundreds of kilometers longer than the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, and it would have to cross the Zambezi River, which would make the difficulty even higher.
However, the East African Kingdom had huge advantages over Tanzania and Zambia in the previous life in building the first railway. One was land. The East African Kingdom did not have difficulties in expropriating land. Although Africa was very backward in the past, it had learned private land ownership in an orderly manner. Coupled with the large and small tribes, the construction period of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway was greatly delayed.
Secondly, the East African Kingdom did not have to consider casualties when building the first railway. Casualties were just a number to the East African government. Single digits or five digits did not matter to East Africa. Countless projects in history have proved that as long as you are willing to invest human lives, nothing is impossible.
The last and most important point is that the East African Kingdom is a major agricultural country and a major grain exporter. This advantage is unmatched by most African countries in the past.
As we all know, the region with the best agricultural conditions in Africa is East Africa, but in the past, countries such as Tanzania could only barely achieve food self-sufficiency. Railway construction requires a large amount of labor, which will cause a reduction in the original agricultural production population. However, when Tanzania builds railways, its agricultural production efficiency will not increase out of thin air, and the pressure on food supply will be even greater.
When Tsarist Russia was building the Siberian Railway, the number of workers during the peak period was only close to 90,000. At the same time, the construction of the Siberian Railway was much more difficult than that of the First Railway. The long winter in Russia alone destined the Siberian Railway to become one of the most difficult railways to build in the world. East Africa can guarantee year-round construction, and the number of workers depends entirely on the mood of the East African government. As long as there is food in hand, there is no need to panic.
At the same time, the First Railway is not very long. Even if the Transvaal Republic is resolved later and the First Railway is extended to Transvaal, its length will only be about one-third of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The construction environment of the First Railway is also stronger than that of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Trans-Siberian Railway has to pass through a permafrost section, which corresponds to a swampy area in East Africa. Dealing with a swamp is much easier than dealing with permafrost.
In fact, the comparison between the First Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway is a bit exaggerated. The First Railway is not even worthy of carrying the shoes of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It should be compared with the Canadian Pacific Railway of the same period.
Canada began as an independent country in 1867, and in 1871 the province of British Columbia on the west coast was lured into joining the Confederation on the condition that a transcontinental railway be built within 10 years to connect it with eastern Canada.
Canada built railways in the same way as the Americans did, that is, more, faster, better and cheaper. Therefore, Chinese workers became the first choice, accounting for about 4-6% of the total labor force (historically 5-9%).
This is the same routine as in northern Myanmar. Although East Africa secretly did bad things in the Far East and publicized the plight of Chinese workers in the United States (America), the Canadians were shameless. They hired some Far Eastern businessmen to set up a labor agency in British Columbia to recruit Far Eastern compatriots to be road builders (true history). They made it sound very convincing and specifically looked for acquaintances. We are all relatives and it is impossible for them to deceive you! So the success rate is quite high.
However, these are all later stories. Currently, Canada's Pacific Railway and East Africa's first railway are still only on paper. East Africa is a little ahead, after all, the section from the first town to Dar es Salaam has been completed.
Initially, the idea for the First Railway was to replicate the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, but after the occupation of Zimbabwe, the plan was expanded. If the subsequent war against the Boers goes well, the South African section will also be added. In the end, it should be around 3,000 kilometers long, which is more than 1,000 kilometers shorter than the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The Canadian Pacific Railway has to cross the Rocky Mountains, but the terrain in the east is mainly plains, so the difficulty is comparable to that of the First Railway. The main problems it faces are similar to those in Russia, which is also long winters.
East Africa and Canada are similar in that they are both vast and sparsely populated, but there are a large number of black people in East Africa, which saves East Africa a lot of effort and it doesn't have to go to the Far East, India and Italy to recruit people like Canada did.
Moreover, if we don't count black people, East Africa's population is larger than Canada's, but Canada's population is more concentrated, mainly distributed in southern Canada in the past (northern Canada was still unowned land at that time).
At the same time, the total domestic economic output of the East African Kingdom is higher than that of Canada. This is an achievement achieved by the East African Kingdom itself without taking into account the wealth of the Hexingen Group.
The agricultural conditions of the East African Kingdom are originally stronger than those of Canada, and the export of tropical cash crops is particularly developed. It almost monopolizes more than 40% of the entire German region and more than 20% of Eastern Europe, and its advantages are still expanding. In addition, its grain exports far exceed those of Canada, and the export of mineral resources between the two is not much different, mainly because a large part of it is consumed internally in East Africa.
In other words, East Africa's overall economic level is far superior to that of Canada. Without relying on the support of the Hechingen Group, East Africa itself has long had the economic capability to build railways. It just needs to use East Africa's resources and industries as collateral to borrow money from financial institutions. This is the basic procedure for railway construction in all contemporary countries.
As the rulers of the East African Kingdom, the Hechingen royal family would certainly not want to allow foreign capital (except Austria) to enter for national security reasons. They could completely absorb the money themselves, so the funds for the construction of the first railway were first lent to the East African government by the Hechingen Bank, and then repaid the debt with the economic benefits brought by the First Railway in the future, thus achieving the goal of transferring the money from one hand to the other.
(End of this chapter)
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