African Entrepreneurship Records

  Chapter 362 General Conception of the First Railway

K is the initial of Constantine's name, 001 has no special meaning, it means number one, and the name of the first train is "Konstantin". Subsequent steam locomotives imported from East Africa will not be named again unless there are special circumstances, and they will be used uniformly. Numbers beginning with K—for example, the K—002 locomotive being transported to Dar es Salaam by sea.

Looking at the poor environment of the railway station in Dar es Salaam, Constantine instructed the Dar es Salaam government: "As an excellent port, Dar es Salaam bears 3% of the East African Import and export trade around fifteen, and with the development of the times, railway construction is the general trend, and the future expansion of the first railway is also imperative. At least the necessary buildings such as warehouses should be built first to solve the problem of cargo storage. A road from the urban area to the railway station can also be built, and the old port cannot be isolated from the railway because of the existence of the new port, and an additional security check can be added when leaving the city to check for suspicious persons or goods."

The first railway that has just been opened to traffic cannot realize the dredging from the inland of East Africa 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 considered the future of the first railway develop.

   That is to learn from the previous Tazara Railway’s plan, and build the first railway from Dar es Salaam to Zimbabwe on this basis.

  The most difficult project is to cross the Zambezi River, which requires the construction of a solid bridge across the river, and the rivers encountered in the area where the first railway passes are not only the Zambezi River.

  In the previous life, Tanzania-Zambia Railway built 320 bridges and dug 26 tunnels across two countries. It cost more than 900 million yuan and took nearly 8 years. In the end, nearly 70 people from the Far East paid their lives for it. It is conceivable how much manpower and material resources such a railway cost at that time.

If East Africa wants to build this railway, the difficulty is not small, because including the Zimbabwe section, the total length of the railway will exceed more than 2,000 kilometers, hundreds of kilometers longer than the Tanzania Railway, and it will be difficult to cross the Zambezi River. It is straight up.

However, the Kingdom of East Africa has a huge advantage over Tanzania and Zambia in its previous life in building the first railway. One is land. The Kingdom of East Africa does not have any difficulties in expropriating land. Tribes, large and small, have greatly delayed the construction period of the Tazara Railway.

Secondly, the East African Kingdom does not need to consider casualties in the construction of the first railway. Casualties are just a number for the East African government. Single digits and five digits do not matter to East Africa. Numerous projects in history have proved that as long as they are willing to fill it with human lives , nothing is impossible.

  The last and most important one is that the Kingdom of East Africa is a large agricultural country and a large grain exporter. This advantage is unmatched by most African countries in previous lives.

As we all know, the region with the best agricultural conditions in Africa is East Africa, but Tanzania and other countries in the previous life were barely self-sufficient in food, and railway construction required a lot of labor, which would reduce the original agricultural production population, but when Tanzania built the railway, Its agricultural production efficiency will not increase out of thin air, but the pressure on food supply will be even greater.

When Tsarist Russia built the Siberian Railway in the previous life, the most workers were only close to 90,000 people. At the same time, the difficulty of building the Siberian Railway was much higher than that of the First Railway. The long winter in Russia alone destined the Siberian Railway to become the world's largest railway. One of the most difficult railways to build, and East Africa can guarantee construction throughout the year, and the number of workers depends entirely on the mood of the East African government, so don't panic if you have food in your hands.

  At the same time, the First Railway is not too long. Even if the Republic of Transvaal is resolved and the First Railway is extended to the territory of Transvaal, its length will only reach about one-third of the Siberian Railway.

  The construction environment of the first railway is also stronger than that of the Siberian Railway. The Siberian Railway has to pass through the frozen soil section, which corresponds to the swampy area in East Africa. It is much easier to deal with the swamp than the frozen soil.

  In fact, the comparison between the First Railway and the Siberian Railway is a bit overstated. The First Railway is not worthy of the Siberian Railway. It should be compared with the Canadian Pacific Railway in the same period.

  Canada began as an independent country in 1867. In 1871, British Columbia, located on the west coast, was tempted to join the Federation. The condition was that the transcontinental railway would be built within 10 years to integrate it with eastern Canada.

   Canada, like the Americans, adopts a routine in building railways, which is to save as much money as possible. Therefore, Chinese laborers have become the first choice, accounting for about 4-6% of the total number of laborers (5-9% in history).

This is the same routine as in northern Myanmar. Although East Africa secretly played tricks in the Far East and publicized the experience of Chinese workers in America (America), but Canadians have thick skins. They hired some Far East businessmen to set up a labor agency in Columbia. Recruiting compatriots from the Far East to work as road builders (real history), it is said that they have a nose and eyes, and they are looking for acquaintances. Everyone is relatives, so it is impossible to lie to you! So the success rate is quite high.

   But these are things for later. At present, the Pacific Railway in Canada and the First Railway in East Africa are still only on paper, and East Africa is a little ahead. After all, the first town of Dar es Salaam has been completed.

At the beginning, the idea of ​​the First Railway was to reproduce the Tazara Railway, but after the occupation of Zimbabwe, this plan was expanded. If the war against the Boers goes well, the South African section will also be added, and it should reach about 3,000 kilometers in the end. It is more than a thousand 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. Its main problems are similar to those in Russia, and the winter is long.

  The similarity between East Africa and Canada is that the land is sparsely populated, but there are a large number of blacks in East Africa, which saves a lot of effort in East Africa, and does not have to go to the Far East, India and Italy to pull people like Canada.

  And East Africa does not count blacks, and its population is larger than Canada, but Canada's population is relatively concentrated, mainly distributed in southern Canada in the previous life (at this time, northern Canada was still unowned).

  At the same time, the total economic volume of the East African Kingdom is also higher than that of Canada. This is the achievement of the East African Kingdom itself without counting the wealth of the Hexingen Consortium.

The East African Kingdom has better agricultural conditions than 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 is still expanding its advantages. In addition, its food exports far exceed Canada, and its mineral resources exports are both There is not much difference, mainly because a large part of East Africa has been digested internally.

In other words, the overall economic level of East Africa far exceeds that of Canada. Without the support of the Hexingen Consortium, East Africa itself has the economic ability to build railways. Borrowing, this is the basic procedure of all contemporary national railway construction.

As the rulers of the East African Kingdom, the royal family of Hexingen is definitely unwilling to allow foreign capital (except Austria) to enter from the perspective of national security, and can completely digest it by itself. Therefore, the funds for the construction of the first railway were first lent to East Africa by the Hexingen Bank. The government will repay the debt through the economic benefits brought by the first railway in the future, and realize that the left hand will be handed over to the right hand, and the soup will not spill out.

  (end of this chapter)