This is a rail vehicle road from Qiongzhou Shilu Iron Mine to Shiluhe Wharf. As early as Nanjing was preparing to build a trial-operated track carriage road, Qiongzhou Shilu Iron Mine had already started to build a rail vehicle roadbed from the seaside pier. Now the trial operation of Nanjing rail vehicle has been successful, so this special iron ore line in Qiongzhou can be opened to traffic as long as it is tracked.

Wang Quan and Chen Xinyuan came to Qiongzhou to bring the track design drawings and vehicle design drawings, supervise the track laying project, and supervise the construction of these track ore vehicles locally.

If the original iron ore transportation plan is followed, a reservoir should be built in the upper reaches of the Shilu River and widened and deepened the upper reaches of the river. After the reservoir is stored, water will be released into the river so that the upper reaches of the Shilu River can also be navigated. However, since Zhao Peng thought of the plan for the rail mine truck, the plan for excavating the river has been abandoned.

It is still necessary to build a reservoir. The hydraulic machinery of Shilu River is used to drive local factory machines. However, the project of digging rivers is much larger than building a mine truck road. Therefore, building a rail mine truck line to the dock is the fastest way.

The local Jinyiwei Baihu took Wang Quan and Chen Xinyuan to the mining area of ​​Shilu Iron Mine located in the upper reaches of Shilu River.

When you walk into the gate of the mining area, the first thing you see is the dormitory area of ​​the mining area at the foot of the mountain. You can see that several rows of two-story buildings are all two-story buildings. The lower floor is a warehouse, not only a warehouse, but also prevent snakes and insects from climbing up. The upper floor is a house for people. The houses are hollow pavilions. In places like Qiongzhou, it is very hot in summer. Living in such a ventilated house can also make people feel much more refreshing and it is not so difficult to bear in summer.

Although those who work as coolies in the mining area are prisoners of war and prisoners, these people are all strong laborers. If they are exhausted, it is not cost-effective for Zhao Peng. Therefore, in the living area of ​​the mining area, it is better to make the coolies live their daily lives better as much as possible.

Originally, Zhao Peng first built a bamboo building for the Qiongzhou dormitory area, but later considered that if the bamboo building was used, if it accidentally caught fire, it would burn a large area. I don’t know how many people would be burned to death, so the houses built later were all brick and stone buildings.

The senior management personnel in the mining area were all Junyiwei Junjun, and the grassroots managers were all prisoners of war. A group of good-performing prisoners of war were selected by the Jinyiwei and became grassroots managers of the mining area.

Once those coolies who were turned from prisoners of war were separated from the coolies and became grassroots managers under the command of the Jinyiwei, they were more cruel to other coolies than the Jinyiwei because they needed to treat those coolies cruelties cruelly to show their loyalty.

The Jinyiwei under Zhao Peng's army was pretty good at these coolies in life. Not only did they not abuse the coolies, but they also ensured that they could feed themselves and not go hungry. However, in terms of work, they tried their best to squeeze the labor value of these coolies.

"The mine is on the mountain behind the dormitory area. This is a large open-pit iron ore. Now we have dug up the mountain above, and there are iron ore below, and all of them are of excellent quality iron ore." Liu Feng, a Jinyiwei Baihu, who is in charge of Shilu Iron Mine, said.

Wang Quan and Chen Xinyuan walked through the dormitory area and walked along a stone road to the mining area in the back mountain.

When I walked to the back mountain, I saw that the surface of the mountain had been dug up. The original trees and vegetation on the mountain had been dug up, revealing the iron ore below.

The coolies were busy on the open-pit iron ore. They knocked on the iron ore with hammers and chisels, rolled the pieces of iron ore directly along the hillside and sent them to the bottom of the mountain.

"We have strict regulations here. The stones that push down the mountain cannot be pushed down from the small road up the mountain. They can only push down from the hillside to avoid hitting the person who goes up the mountain. If this rule is violated and no one is killed, they will be locked in a small black room; if someone is killed, they will be severely punished." Liu Feng said.

"This method of pushing ore directly down the mountain is still too rough. If the ore is transported out in the future, rolling down the stones directly from the mountain will not only smash the roads, destroy vehicles, but also easily hurt people. We have to find a way to build a pulley road along the hillside, load the iron ore on the pulley, and slide down from the mountain." Chen Xinyuan said.

Although Chen Xinyuan was only seventeen years old, he followed Zhao Peng for five years and learned a lot of "strange and clever skills" from Zhao Peng. So he designed a pulley lane, which was to build a cement pulley lane on the side of the stone road up the mountain. Ropes made of iron wire were pulled on both sides and fixed the pulley to the wire rope. When going up the mountain, he pulled the winch and sent the empty pulley up the mountain.

When the pulley reaches the mountain, the coolies can put the excavated iron ore into the pulley, then pull the rope to let the pulley enter the cement slide. The pulley will slide down the hillside at a not very fast speed under the pulling of the rope.

On the edge of the ore pile below the hillside, the coolies began to lay minecart tracks.

The width of the mine carriage track is much narrower than that of the horse-driving carriage track in Nanjing. The gauge track in Nanjing is 1.5 meters, while the gauge track in Shilu Iron Mine is only one meter. Moreover, the bogie of the mine carriage is not the two four-wheel bogies of the carriage, but two two-wheel bogies. The size of the mine carriage is much smaller, with a length of only five meters and a width of two meters.

But the mine truck railway is a real railway, with real railway tracks directly laid on the sleepers, rather than wooden tracks covered with iron sheets.

This is because although the mine cart is small in size, its weight is much heavier than that of a carriage. If a wooden rail covering the iron sheet is used, it will not take long and the rail will be crushed.

Although the price of railway tracks is much more expensive than wooden tracks, the most in the Qiongzhou Shilu Iron Mine is iron.

Similarly, the wheels of the mine cart are also the entire iron wheel, rather than the iron sheet covered with the wooden wheels. However, the wheels of the mine cart are much smaller than those of the wooden rail cart, so they will not consume too much iron.

Although this mining railway is like the horse-car railway in Nanjing and is also a single-line railway, it can already meet the transportation needs of iron ore.

This is a real single-line railway, with no double-line or even no turnouts, just a single-line from the mining area to the dock. If there is a car passing through in both directions, there will be no route to avoid. Therefore, this line can only be transported in one direction within a fixed time, one mine car after another, one head and tail, and the drive from the mining area to the dock, and after arriving at the dock, unload the iron ore, and then one after another, and then one after another, return to the mine area to the mine area.

In the future, after we have a steam engine and a real train, we will build forks in the docks and mining areas to ensure that the locomotives can be hung in front of the carriage and can also be shunted and marshalled operations. However, that is the future. At present, a single line is enough.

The wooden rail carriage road completed in Nanjing is also a line with no switches. After all, it is just a test line, so the requirements for the route are not high. However, in the future, switches and stations will be built to meet the needs of two-way passage.
Chapter completed!