Chapter 948: Terrifying Transportation Capacity of the Whole Country
Due to the thorough preparation, the concrete pouring operation was relatively smooth. However, since the Han tribe currently does not have professional engineering equipment, such as concrete mixers and pump trucks, they can only use a large number of manual labor instead, so the progress and efficiency are relatively slow.
Fortunately, pouring concrete is not a particularly advanced technology, and this time the pouring is still the foundation, so there are no difficulties.
Bags of cement were put into the mixer along with river sand and gravel. After becoming mud, they were poured into the pre-set wells. While pouring, they put up the steel cage. It only took one day to fill the two bridge pier pre-set wells. Several circles of steel bars arranged in a circle appeared on the horizontal concrete. They were the joints left when they were ready to continue pouring the bridge piers upwards.
Looking at the two bridge pier pre-set wells that had been poured, Zhuping asked excitedly.
"Master Jiao, how long will it take before we can continue to pour the bridge piers?"
"This, this, it may take a month, otherwise it may be difficult to make it solidify from the inside out, after all, it is such a big thing!" Jiao Ce thought about what the leader told him before he left, and then said.
"Ah? A month to dry completely? This, this is too slow. If we can't continue pouring, then we have nothing to do during this period of time?" Zhuping said in surprise.
"No need, since we can't pour the bridge piers above, then we can now concentrate on pouring the pre-set wells. Aren't there more than a dozen pre-set wells that have been dug? We can pour the foundations of these dozen bridge piers first.
"After they are all dry, you can move all the sandbags around and use them directly to build the flood dam behind.
"We can directly cast the bridge piers on the exposed part of the water surface. This way, the slaves on the shore can dig less mountains and fill fewer sandbags, and put more people on other work, which may improve the progress of our project!" Hearing Zhuping's nervous question, Jiao Ce immediately gave his opinion.
"Yes, yes, Master Jiao is right. Since it takes a month for the pre-set wells of the bridge piers to completely solidify, we might as well cast all the pre-set wells that can be cast at one time. This can save some time, and then cast the bridge piers at the same time.
"And this can indeed save a lot of sandbags and manpower. We build this flood dam to dig pre-set wells and cast the foundation of the bridge piers. If these two are all completed, there will be no need for the dam, which can save us a lot of time and manpower."
"That's right, then let's continue to do it this way. Tie up the steel cage today and continue pouring tomorrow. "
After hearing Jiao Ce's suggestion, several craftsmen in the command center immediately made a decision, because it was just as Jiao Ce said, the only thing that slowed down the progress of the project was the three tasks of blasting mountains, digging soil and filling sandbags every day, as well as building waterproof dams and digging pre-set wells.
If they could solve a batch of foundations for the bridge piers first, they would not have to continue blasting mountains, digging soil and filling sandbags. They could just move the already poured waterproof dam to the new bridge pier position, which would only waste a little time for transportation.
In addition, with the air hammer brought by Jiao Ce, the efficiency and speed of excavating the reef rock and digging pre-set wells have also become faster. In other words, as long as their steel bars and cement can be continuously supplied, the progress of the project can be immediately improved, and everyone immediately saw the hope of the completion of the bridge.
As long as the bridge piers can be erected one by one, are they still afraid of not seeing the bridge deck above?
As the proposer of the cross-sea bridge project, Luo Chong, although he did not know the construction Although he was not sure about the speed of the project, he also knew that the supply of materials on the construction site must not be cut off, so he had ordered all the transport ships that the Han tribe could currently use to transport steel bars and cement to the bridge construction site.
Fortunately, after more than a month, the southern line of the Xinwei Line Railway has been completed, but there is still only one train. The train production base in Gongye County is also working overtime to rush to produce the second train, and they have to train new workers while working.
Fortunately, the newly transferred workers also understand the importance of this train to the Han tribe. They know that learning this skill is equivalent to getting a stable job that will never be unemployed, and it is also a very high-paying job, so they all learn very seriously.
At present, the only train in the Han tribe has also fully utilized its transportation capacity. It runs two round trips along the entire Xinwei Line every day, which is four trips one way. It keeps transporting things like steel bars and cement to the dock of Weishan County, and then comes back. In time, they will load up the coal and coke from Dongxin County and the coking plant on Huxin Island to keep Xingang County able to exert its greater production capacity.
As for the prisoners of the Xin tribe who had laid the new defense line, they have now been freed from slavery. Luo Chong gave them the identity of citizens of the Han tribe in accordance with his previous promise, and allocated houses and fields to them. As for the place of naturalization, they were allowed to choose by themselves, either in their hometown, which is now Qiongzhou Island, or they must obey the arrangement of the tribe. The tribe will select counties for their naturalization separately.
If there are those who agree to the tribe's allocation of household registration, the tribe is willing to give them a chance to contact their families by letter. If they can still contact their wives and children, the tribe will pay to bring their wives and children over.
If they do not obey the tribe's allocation and plan to return to their hometown to find their relatives in the future, the tribe will not take care of picking them up, and it depends on their fate when they can go back.
Although they are now registered as Han tribe residents, their work There is still no change. They are still building railways for the Han tribe. Now that the railway of the Xinwei Line has just been completed, they have all been transferred to the iron mine in Xingang County to build a mining railway specifically used in the iron mine.
The only difference is that their treatment has been greatly improved. When they were working before, they were really like slaves. They ate the worst, worked the most, and their clothes were even more tattered.
But now that they have become citizens of the Han tribe, although they still have to build railways, the tribe pays them wages, and the salary is slightly higher than the average level. The monthly salary can reach 40 silver dollars.
Forty silver dollars is not much for heavy physical work such as building railways, but the various in-kind subsidies given by the Han tribe are not small.
As soon as these people completed the naturalization procedures, the tribe gave each of these railway workers two sleeveless white vests, a bamboo hat for sun protection, shorts and cloth shoes, which can be regarded as summer work clothes.
I heard that when the weather gets colder, they will be given autumn clothes and winter cotton-padded clothes, as well as fur-lined boots. When they were just caught last year, how could they have imagined such treatment? !
Moreover, the food quality has been greatly improved compared to before. In the past, they always ate more corn cakes and cornmeal buns. Now they can eat rice at least once a day, and it is real dry rice. There are more vegetables and meat in the dishes. Although there are more meats such as salted fish, it is at least meat, right? !
Perhaps because it is the midsummer season, they now have endless green bean soup every day. The beans are indeed less, but there is some brown sugar in it. How could they dare to hope for this before, and eat sugar? It’s good enough to be able to fill you up.
The most important thing is that all these foods are free working meals provided by the engineering team.
In other words, they came here to work, laying railways for the Han tribe, and received a salary of 40 silver dollars a month, but they did not have to spend a penny on food. Even their clothes and shoes were uniformly distributed by the engineering team. In addition, their families were not here now, and they had no other expenses. They could basically save as much salary as they earned each month.
Therefore, although they only had 40 silver dollars a month, even some old people in the Han tribe envied them. Some of their jobs did pay a lot, but they had to bear the consumption expenses of a family by themselves, and in the end there was not much money left. With such a comparison, naturally some people would envy them.
This phenomenon was also the effect deliberately created by Luo Chong. The work of building railways was very hard, but it was also a project that the Han tribe needed to vigorously develop for hundreds of years. He had to create a better welfare system for railway workers in order to attract a large number of labor forces in the tribe to join this cause, instead of blindly using force to force the people to do corvée to build the main artery for the tribe. That was a bit unrealistic and would only lead to the end of the officials forcing the people to rebel.
Now these prisoners of war who have just been upgraded to citizens of the Han tribe have also come to their senses. They have now become the only group of skilled railway workers in the Han tribe, and the Han leader will never let them go easily.
Moreover, it is said that the Han tribe will build many more railways in the future, and it may not be completed even if all of their generation dies. Therefore, instead of trying to return to their hometown, it is better to obey the tribe's allocation and bring their wives and children to live together.
Although it is impossible to meet every day, at least they know that they still have a home here, and they can go home every month during the rest period. The money they earn on the construction site can also be spent by a woman. Otherwise, these old men really have no use for such a large salary, and there is no chance to spend it.
The engineering team also attaches great importance to this matter and immediately reported it. After seeing it, Luo Chong just approved it and said to proceed according to the original plan.
The original plan was to have the cargo ships that were delivering cement and steel bars to the south take their letters and their families' transfer orders along the way. When their families were found, the local government of Qiongzhou Island would cooperate to put their families on the return ship and bring them back.
Now the Han tribe has sailboats that ship goods to the south every day. They are all ships that transport steel bars and cement. There are also some ships that transport civilian steel. They are dispatched every day and have never stopped.
The Han tribe is currently implementing Luo Chong's life storage plan. The entire Han tribe is desperately growing food and accumulating various materials. In addition, all places have gone through several years of development and there are not many things that need to be allocated. Therefore, the hundreds of thousands of sailboats built by the Han tribe before have become idle. Except for a few of these sailboats that are still transporting various scarce materials for the tribe, all other sailboats are put into the team of transporting steel bars and cement.
Ship after ship was sent to the construction site of the cross-sea bridge. Although the number of ships arriving at one time was small, the supply to the construction site had never been interrupted. Sometimes, although there was only one sailing ship transporting cement every day, there was such a sailing ship every day for a month.
Every time when they arrived at the construction site and thought that cement
and steel bars were about to be out of stock, there would be a ship of building materials transported the next day. Such a horrible and perverted way of transportation also doubled the pressure on the construction team of the cross-sea bridge. Jiao Ce and Zhu Ping also saw the attitude of the leader from
this. The leader was risking his life. He actually mobilized all the mobile transportation forces of the entire Han tribe to use them for this project. The hundreds of sailing ships of the Han tribe traveled back and forth on the Liuyang River day and night just to provide them with a steady supply of building materials, so that they dared not even stop to rest.
When a country puts all its resources into one thing, anyone can feel the terrifying strength of this country.
In July of the first year of Da Ming, the second Endeavour steam locomotive of the Han tribe rolled off the production line and was officially put into operation on the Xinwei Line. The addition of Endeavour II locomotive immediately doubled the transportation capacity of the Xinwei Line, and more materials began to be transported to the dock of Weishan County.
In August, three small flying fish speedboats that were started at the same time at the Liuyang County Shipyard were also launched one after another, quickly transporting the mountains of building materials at the Weishan County dock to the construction site of the cross-sea bridge, which relieved a lot of pressure on the warehouses and yards
at the Weishan County dock. With sufficient material supply and the investment of many automated machines, the progress of the cross-sea bridge has also been accelerated.
By October of that year, the entire project had poured the pre-placed wells of 451 bridge piers, that is, the underground part of the bridge piers, and the upper bridge piers had not yet started to be poured.
At both ends of the bridge, twelve piers have now been erected, that is, six groups of piers on each side, and double-layer reinforced concrete arches and bridge decks have been erected on these six groups of piers according to the design requirements.
According to the distance of 50 meters between each group of piers, the bridge has extended 300 meters from both ends to the middle. Such progress of the project is exciting, especially for those who build the bridge, they finally see the bridge standing up.
The fleet that comes to transport steel and cement occasionally brings back some photos of the latest progress of the project for Luo Chong, so that even though he has not come in person, he can always understand the progress of the project.
(End of this chapter)
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