Chapter 1,393 The Unparalleled Scholar

Without further questioning, Chen Zhaoming immediately pointed out the shortcomings of the railway to several veterans, such as the fixed lines and the inability to climb mountains.

But even this made Guo Kui very angry: "Has the Duke lost his sight of money? He only saw the benefits of transferring gold and silver from Yinfeng Prison to Lanzhou, but he couldn't see how great this artifact was in the military.

What’s the role of?!”

Zhao Xu raised his hand to stop Guo Kui, "Do you know how important it is to the country to pour gold and silver? Without gold and silver, how can we have this magical weapon you mentioned? This road is too expensive, ten thousand miles per mile!"

Han Jiang's military ability is actually average. His biggest role in staying here is to contact various departments and obtain the information the Military Aircraft Department wants.

Seeing Zhao Xu's bad expression, Han Jiang hurriedly said: "Guo Shuai, please don't be anxious. We are not going to talk about how long and how to build this road. Let's talk about it first. What is its function?"

Guo Kui immediately said: "Speed!"

After speaking, he pointed his baton at the map: "From Luoyang to Jiaozhou, it is 1,600 miles and can be reached in two days! All the troops on this line can be mobilized together!"

"Why can you win by riding on foot? It's because you are fast and can use the difference in speed to concentrate your troops to break the surface and defeat the smaller with more."

"With this road, no matter which point the enemy attacks on this road, he will face the entire force on this line, an army of 500,000!"

"This road is the lifeblood of our Emperor Song Dynasty. Even if Hebei is defeated and the enemy is driven away, Bianjing will still be as safe as a rock, and there will no longer be an alliance under the city!"

Chen Zhaoming quickly reminded: "A train with ten carriages can only carry 80,000 kilograms..."

"Then a few more columns! Fifty columns, that's 20,000 people!"

"Twenty thousand new troops can be put into any battlefield on this line at any time. What will happen?!"

Guo Kui pointed at a node on the line with his baton: "With this road, I can send 20,000 new troops to Daming in one day, and then rush to Taiyuan, Zhending, and Hejian. Compared with the past, I can save money."

How long did it take?”

"Do it!" Zhao Xu suddenly made up his mind: "Sixteen million strings! It's worth it!"

After Guo Kui's explanation, everyone understood how important this invention was in the military.

Just pulling food or weapons can be of great use!

…

Su You was so happy these days that he could even ride a horse with ease. He was completely immersed in the dream of the budding industrial revolution and couldn't extricate himself.

It was not until he received a telegram from Bianjing requesting that railway personnel, locomotive interest groups, all documents and drawings, detailed experimental data, and Shen Kuo, the Ningxia Road Transfer Envoy, be recalled to the DPRK to serve as Minister of Industry that Su You realized what had happened.

It's big.

Guo Kui also sent a sixteen-character telegram through the Military Aircraft Department: "The great affairs of the country are between sacrifice and military affairs. A wise man will make a mistake after thinking a lot."

Deep ridicule.

Su You really didn't think that way. In the Huaihai Campaign in later years, we didn't see any success in using the railway.

Therefore, in his mind, railways have always been the economic lifeline, not the military lifeline.

Only after receiving Guo Kui's telegram and the court's secret order did Su You realize, damn, it really is possible to play like this!

There was also a hint of complaint in Guo Kui's telegram, which meant that the Duke of Guo was a civil servant after all, and when considering the direction of things, he was not on the same page as Qiu Ba.

But precisely because Su You was a civil servant, he had a clear understanding of the scale of this trunk line.

This is a major project equivalent to the canal opened by Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty. The culverts and bridges along the way are endless problems to overcome.

The cost of a Luanhe River Railway Bridge in the late Qing Dynasty was 300,000 taels of silver. Although the trains at that time were not the same thing as now, the price of steel and the project cost at that time were also different!

So he quickly reported to the court, asking for caution and a preliminary inspection of the line. This may be a major project that will take decades.

It turned out that he was completely over-worrying. There are many sensible people in the DPRK now.

Chen Zhaoming clearly pointed out that the steam locomotive was a new thing, and there were only two things to do in the early stage. One was to survey the line, and the other was to test and improve the reliability of the locomotive.

The first step is to start the sixty-mile stretch from Bianjing to Chenliu and the fifty-mile stretch from Yinfengjian to Bafan Town to accumulate and explore technology.

The second step is to build the first section of the railway in the area with the best railway conditions today, that is, the four hundred miles between Bianjing-Zhengzhou-Luoyang.

This section of the road is on the plain on the south bank of the Yellow River, with a vast expanse of flat water. It has the best road foundation, the most towns, the most important location, and the most abundant financial resources.

Zhengzhou is also a large industrial base and has all the conditions.

With these four hundred miles, the weapons from the Songyang Arsenal can continuously support the two places, and the troops between the three important towns can be freely deployed, and the Song Dynasty has a guaranteed trump card.

The entire plan was completed in three years, after which Chenliu went to Xuzhou and Luoyang to Jingzhao.

When Su You read the plan, he couldn't help but sigh inwardly.

Wonderful and beautiful!

The intellectuals of the Song Dynasty today are not the intellectuals of the late Qing Dynasty who were entangled for thousands of years. Their thoughts are beginning to be pioneering, divergent, and positive.

They have been trying hard to save the country, and they dare to try.

Even Wang Anshi's method of drinking poison to quench thirst, they have been doing it for ten years.

Now that there is a better method, they will not be like the Manchu government bureaucrats who opposed and feared new technologies and new industries, and even dared to put forward many ridiculous reasons.

People in the Song Dynasty today are still novel.

When Su You went to Daxiangguo Temple for the first time, he found that the price of antiques was not as good as the fragrant honey doll that he smelted from recycled beeswax powder.

The four door panels hand-painted by Wu Daozi were worth only one hundred guan back then, but they are now hanging in the Su family temple.

At that time, a pair of the ripest melons and eggplants cost tens of guan in Bianjing City!

Therefore, they spare no effort in exploring and pursuing new technologies.

It’s just that I didn’t have access to the law before.

Even with such barbaric growth, China's shipping, terraced fields, polders, drilling, printing, textiles, porcelain, bridges, commerce... also experienced tremendous development during this period.

What the people of the Song Dynasty lacked was never the courage to try, accept and study. Their problem was that they tried too little and overturned their policies.

Of course, there is also the influence of the cavalry tactics that have reached their peak. The subversive reversal in military strength from "one Han enemy to five barbarians" to "all ten thousand people are invincible" has caused Kailash to suffer repeated setbacks.

Therefore, Su You's sneaky behavior in Yinfeng Prison was actually a bit underestimating the ancients.

At this point, Su Youfan repented and sent all the interest groups to Zhengzhou without reservation. There will rely on the technical strength of Songyang Arsenal, Ordnance Supervision and Zhengzhou Institute of Technology, with Chen Zhaoming as the chief designer and Shen Kuo as the deputy chief designer.

Shi Fu was appointed as the chief engineer and the Song Dynasty Railway Bureau was established.

At the same time, Zhengzhou Machinery Factory, Xuzhou Machinery Factory, and Lanzhou Machinery Factory began to design and produce fifth-generation high-pressure boilers and pot boilers.

In September, Su Yuanzhen, the deputy transport envoy of Jingdong East Road, was changed to the transfer envoy of Ningxia Road, taking over Shen Kuo's position.

Su Yuanzhen's resume is definitely sufficient, and he can be said to be the second person in the Song Dynasty who has experience in governing the Fanyi area.

Moreover, this appointment also reflected Zhao Xu's absolute trust in Su You and suppressed some court discussions that were unfavorable to Su You after Su Song and Chao Buzhi were demoted.

But when Su Yuanzhen met Chaogu in Jingzhou, who was also coming to Xingzhou to report on his work, the handsome young master Wu Jiu was so frightened that he almost fell off his horse.

Su Yuanzhen and Chaogu were very familiar with each other. Chaogu had been Su You's guard since he was a boy in the Erlin Department.

Later, when he was studying at Meishan Academy, Chaogu defected to the army and went south to suppress the rebellion as Han Cunbao's subordinate. After renovating in Meizhou for a period of time, everyone also went to Xianjing prison to hunt bears and tigers.

Hearing that Chaogu died in Xixia and was sent back to Meishan for burial, Su Yuanzhen asked her sister to send a hundred taels of silver to Meishan and leave it to Chaogu's tribe.

Now this person who had been dead for twenty years suddenly appeared in front of him, which frightened Su Yuanzhen half to death.

But Su Yuanzhen was also a talented person now, and he understood in a blink of an eye that Brother Chao had gone deep into the enemy camp for twenty years and became the enemy's deputy privy envoy, director of weapons, and a warlord!

Many things that were unbelievable before were suddenly figured out.

Why was the Qing and Tang Dynasties not unified at the critical moment? The Mu Zheng forces were dragged to Xixia, and they did not play a role when Wang Shao captured Xihe;

Why did the Xia Kingdom, which had tried hard to win over the Qing and Tang Dynasties when the Xihe River revolted, failed to arrive with its army?

Why did the Xia Iron Kites suddenly sweep across Mobei before the Song Dynasty invaded Xixia, causing the Liang family to lose the support of the northern tribes?

Why did Liang Yimi reverse his decision-making, causing an important elite combat force of the Xia Kingdom to never be deployed on the Song-Xia battlefield...

I had always thought that the Liang family was destined to win over others, and that the Song Dynasty was so lucky that it always operated at key nodes.

Now it seems that everything is man-made.
Chapter completed!