Miracle on Parallel Lines: The Great Aus-Song Imperial Railway (Update: Imperial Year One Rail Infrastructure)
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Can you imagine life without railways?
âIf it werenât for the Capital Intercity Railway, I donât think anyone could comfortably lean back in their seat, sip a cup of coffee, read a magazine, play with the latest mobile phone from the Orange Company, and get from Songjiang Prefecture to Yangzhou Prefecture in two hours⌠We would have to drive ourselves, laboriously taking the express post road⌠I mean, if you can still call it an âexpress post roadââgiven the Empireâs car ownership rate, if everyone drove on the post road, it would inevitably become a traffic jam. It would be good enough to just crawl forward slowly. Even without traffic, it would take 6 hours. If there is traffic, who knows how long it would take? Maybe 10 hours, maybe 12 hours? I think I would definitely see a snail slowly overtaking my car⌠I think I would be furious and crush it mercilessly⌠Heheâ â Mr. He Shenlin, a citizen of Songjiang Prefecture.
âIf it werenât for the East Sea High-Speed Line, my interview trip from Yanping Prefecture to Songjiang Prefecture would have been a real ordeal. Yes, I could have taken a passenger plane from Imperial Northern Airlines or Southern Airlinesâin fact, I have before. But you know Xiaodongzhuang Airport. The plane was parked at the jet bridge for an extra hour, circled three times before entering the runway, and then queued for another hour. It finally took off, and the ride was as bumpy as peppercorns in a pot of stew. When the flight attendant poured me water, it spilled all over his shirtâhis muscles were indeed beautiful, but the stewards on the high-speed rail are also super cute, so itâs a tie⌠Ah, sorry, back to what I was saying. After finally arriving in Songjiang Prefecture, the weather turned bad, and the plane turned around and went back⌠I only took the plane because the ticket was super cheap, but I ended up eating three expensive boxed meals and drinking five cartons of drinks on the plane. In the end, it was more expensive than taking the high-speed railâŚâ â Ms. Shen Linhe, a masterâs student at Yanping University.
âWithout the Imperial Railwayâs Carefree Tour, it would be difficult for us old cadres to travel. You know, weâve served the Senate and the people of the Empire our whole lives, and we always want to see the magnificence of the Empireâs mountains and rivers, the beauty of its sea borders, right? But these old bones are not like young peopleâs; they canât stand the fatigue of travel. But fortunately, the Imperial Railway has opened the Carefree Tour special train. Look at this sleeper berth, it might not compare to a five-star inn, but itâs definitely better than a three-star inn. I just sleep through the night, no backache, no leg pain. I get off the train and can walk for half a day without getting tired. Itâs really great. The restaurant on this train is also authentic. The hand-pulled mutton, the big plate chicken, the mixed noodles, theyâre no worse than the guesthouses in the corps. Thereâs also an observation car. A cup of black tea, sitting in front of the observation window, the fields, mountains, and rivers are all in view. Itâs an incomparable enjoymentâŚâ â Mr. Bure Linshenlejiu Burelehe Bianxiti, a retired cadre from the Luntai Production and Construction Corps.
âIf it werenât for the Imperial Railwayâs coal transport for power generation, we would definitely be finished. What supports the Empireâs power system, besides the scattered power plants and the ultra-high voltage interconnected grid, is the railwayâs coal transport, which has made a great contribution. Although Iâm not from the railway system, I must say in all fairness that the railwayâs coal transport is even more important than the interconnected gridâtransporting coal is less lossy than long-distance cross-regional power transmission, and it plays a vital role in ensuring the robustness of the power grid. The Empireâs coal is mainly distributed in the areas north of the Yellow River, and is often far from the densely populated economic centers. It must be transported by rail to meet the demand. When I go on business trips, especially on super trunk lines like the Central Corridor (Beijing-Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong), the East Sea Corridor (Shenyang-Dalian + Tianjin-Shenyang + Beijing-Shanghai + Coastal + Pan-Asian Railway), the West Sea Corridor (US-Canada Pacific Railway), and the Central Land Corridor (Longhai + Lanxin + Central Asian Railway), I love to stand on a footbridge and watch the 100,000-ton unit trains rumbling past below⌠I want to pay tribute to my colleagues in the railway for the 3 billion tons of coal transported annually for power generation! We in the power industry stand on the shoulders of you railway giants to achieve our current success!â â Mr. He Linchen, Director of the Power Bureau, Imperial Ministry of Energy.
âIf it werenât for the Imperial Railwayâs refrigerated express transport, I estimate that half of the delicacies on our dining tables would be gone. Hot pot with fatty beef, golden and crispy roasted lamb legâyou like it, I like it, food is the first necessity of the people. Our Imperial Cooperative, our main task now is to meet the peopleâs growing need for food. However, the Empireâs best cattle and sheep are on the vast grasslands of the north. Getting them to the tables of the broad masses of people in the south is no easy task. Now, our Imperial Cooperative purchases large quantities of cattle and sheep in the northern pastoral areas, then slaughters and cuts them uniformly, freezes them, and lets them ageâyes, this is our best-selling chilled fresh meat. Then, the Imperial Railwayâs refrigerated mechanical reefer cars drive directly into the cold storage for loading, and can reach any major city in the Empire within 3 days, and are unloaded directly into cold storageâthis is our proud seamless cold chain, 100% fresh, locking in the nutrients. During the Golden Week before last yearâs New Year, just in the Guangzhou area, our sales volume reached nearly 10,000 tons per day. Similarly, we let the areas west of Xiâan and even Luntai eat fresh tuna and oysters⌠On the other hand, we also transport fresh vegetables from the south to the north in refrigerated mechanical reefer cars in winter. In Yanping Prefecture and Shenyang Prefecture, tens of thousands of tons of vegetables are transferred in every day, greatly ensuring market supply⌠I think, on the one hand, this is the effort of our cooperative from top to bottom. On the other hand, we must also sincerely thank the Imperial Railway for filling our stomachs.â â Ms. Shen Helin, Logistics Director of the Imperial Cooperative.
âIf it werenât for the Imperial Railwayâs Yanping Metro, how many people could live a normal life? I have elderly people at home, so when I bought a house, I bought it in Qinglongqiao, where the environment is betterâof course, the houses there are also cheaper. But later I changed jobs and went to the Jidian Society (the worldâs largest microprocessor manufacturer) Yanping R&D Center. Many people know the work location, itâs in the Sanlitun Advanced Science and Technology Park, a good place. But if there were no metro, commuting would be troublesome. I would have to drive on the official road, and just thinking about that terrible Third Ring official road⌠But I take the Yanwu Line (Yanqing-Wuqing) of the metro, then transfer to the Neizang Line (along the Third Ring), and I get there in less than an hour. The train is not too crowded, and there is free wireless LAN access, which is most convenient for playing with my Orange mobile phone. Itâs also very easy to go shopping. Places like Wangfujing Great World or Guomao Great World are all on the Changâan Underground Line. I have also been to London in Britain and have taken their metro. Those pitifully narrow cars, small trainsets, and transfers that make you walk to death⌠Our Aus-Song is countless times better than them. I want to praise the pioneers of the Imperial Railway and the generations of builders. The metro network you have built is benefiting future generations, and we will not forget you.â â Mr. Lin Heshen, Senior Engineer at the Jidian Society.
As stated above, the production of all walks of life, the people from all corners of the country, and even the Empire itself, are inseparable from the railway. And the Imperial Railway, with a passenger volume of more than 50 billion person-times and a freight turnover of 10 trillion ton-kilometers, has handed in a satisfactory answer sheet. This means that the Imperial Railway undertakes 50% of the passenger transport and 76% of the freight transport within the Empire. And on a global scale, the Imperial Railwayâs passenger and freight volume both account for more than 80% of the total railway transport volume. The Imperial Railway is the pride of the Empire, and is worthy of being called great.
However, as the first generation of the Empireâs leadership said: greatness comes from the ordinary plus unremitting efforts. In the Holy Land Museum in Lingao, the earliest starting point of the Aus-Song Railway is still preserved. Perhaps ordinary people would never have thought that todayâs 400 km/h wide-body double-aisle EMU that is the envy of countries around the world and the super-towing locomotive that pulls 100,000-ton unit trains would have a common ancestorâa small locomotive converted from a steam dray, struggling to pull 30 tons of cargo, swaying at a speed of less than 5 kilometers per hour on a track laid with wrought iron and logsâŚ
Now please allow me to briefly review the great course of the development of the Imperial RailwayâŚ
Imperial Year One Railway Vehicles
âThe railway comes from industry and serves industry.â When one mentions the railway, one naturally thinks of the Bopu Industrial Zone and the Bairencheng Industrial Zone in the Holy Land Museum. In fact, not long after the first generation of Elders descended on the holy ship, they formulated the âFirst Five-Year Planâ and decided to lay a simple industrial and mining railway system in the industrial zone to meet the needs of material entry and exit and equipment installation. Some Elders even proposed to build a comprehensive urban rail transit system for both passengers and freight, covering the entire Bairencheng, major farms, water transport terminals, and even the various workshops, office buildings, and warehouses in the Wenlan River area, based on the factory and mine railways. However, it was discovered during the later construction that this was an impossible goal under the constraints of limited resourcesâin fact, the ambitious first-generation Elders often had grand ideas, but were forced to be down-to-earth due to the national conditions. This has become a common point of complaint in the memoirs of the first-generation Elders.
The first batch of locomotives of the Imperial Railwayâalthough some railway enthusiasts today are unwilling to include it in the sequence of locomotives, preferring to call it a simple self-propelled railcar, the mainstream view recognizes its status as a locomotiveâwas named âPopular No. 1.â This batch of locomotives was scrapped after only two years of operation and was dismantled for other power sources. The exhibit we see today is a replica based on the memories of the Elders who participated in the project.
In the early days of the Empire, the various industrial sectors had not yet been fully differentiated. The body of the Popular No. 1 locomotive was actually manufactured on the production line for assembling horse-drawn carriages in the vehicle workshop of the machinery factory. It was simply a Mozi No. 1 steam dray mounted on a general 2-axle flatcar. The so-called Mozi No. 1 steam dray was also the first batch of steam engines manufactured by the Imperial Machinery Factory. Its lower part was a Lancashire-type boiler, which belongs to the flue-type boiler. The main components were made of wrought iron, and the pipes were connected by riveting. It could only produce atmospheric pressure steam, and its thermal efficiency was very low. The steam engine structure was installed on top of the boiler. The cylinder was fixed on the cast iron base on the upper part of the boiler. The steam pushed the piston to move in the cylinder, and the reciprocating motion of the piston was converted into the rotation of the main shaft through a connecting rod and crankshaft structure. The main shaft was fixed on the bearing of the baseâat that time, there were no rolling bearings, and even the white alloy friction surface on the sliding bearings was not available. It could only rely on liquid lubricating grease, so the wear was quite serious. Two eccentric wheels were set on the main shaft to drive the main slide valve and the expansion valve. The former controlled the entry and exit of steam, while the latter, under the control of the regulator, adjusted the intake volume to adapt to different load conditions. And how to transmit the power of the steam dray to the axle of the flatcar was a very difficult problem. In order not to change the body structure of the flatcar, it was finally decided to add a pulley to the front axle of the flatcar, dig a hole in the bottom plate of the flatcar, and the transmission belt passed through it to directly connect the main shaft of the steam dray with the pulley on the axle. This structure is very similar to the way power is introduced from the main shaft of a steam engine to the drive shaft of a machine tool through a belt in the Bairencheng factory. Todayâs railway locomotive science would absolutely not give such an incredible transmission method, but under the simple conditions at that time, to be able to think of this, one has to admire the wisdom of the Elders of that year.
The manufacture of the 2-axle flatcar was also not as simple as replacing the body of a horse-drawn carriage with railway wheels. After calculation, directly using the chassis of the Red Flag horse-drawn carriage produced by the Empire at that time as the railway vehicle chassis, its tensile strength was found to be too low. Therefore, the thickness of the material of the longitudinal structure was doubled to increase the strength of the vehicle body. The vehicle also used a simple sliding bearing structure, and a guide frame structure was used to position the axle box. Since it was a 2-axle vehicle, no bogie was needed, so the guide frame was directly fixed to the underframe of the vehicle body. Originally, in the design, leaf springs should have been installed between the guide frame and the axle box as a suspension mechanism, but the tragic reality at that time was that leaf springs that could bear the load of railway vehicles could not be produced temporarily, so a pure rigid cast iron structure had to be used as a temporary substitute, to be replaced after the springs were produced. Many friends who are familiar with the history of the early years of the Empire may know that there was a school of thought at that time called âMulti-turret, Riveted, Steam-powered, Rigidââmulti-turret means installing multiple turrets on a combat unit, riveted means using riveting, steam means steam power, and rigid refers to this rigid suspensionâsome Elders were believers in this ideology, but even the most loyal supporters of âMulti-turret, Riveted, Steam-powered, Rigidâ were unwilling to ride the railway vehicles of that time. Imagine the bone-numbing experience of a vehicle with a pure rigid suspension running on a track of average smoothness. It was also because the impact of the rigid suspension on the track was too great that the line, which was originally designed to carry an axle load of 10 tons, had to be temporarily limited to an axle load of 5 tons to ensure that rail break accidents did not occur frequently.
Manufacturing the axles and wheels of railway vehicles was also not an easy task at that time. Since the wheelset is a relatively critical structure, steel was used for its manufacture. The axle was manufactured using the process of making cannon barrelsâthe steel billet was heated, forged, then turned to the designed geometric dimensions, and a hollow axle structure was also bored to reduce its own weight. The wheel is composed of two parts, the wheel disc and the hub. The wheel disc uses a spoke structureâthis is also to reduce its own weightâand is produced by the cast steel method. Since this part does not have high requirements for structural strength, some defects produced by casting are tolerable. The hub is manufactured by forging and then cutting. During assembly, the wheel disc is heated to expand, and the wheel disc is fitted onto the designated position of the axle; then the hub is heated, and the hub is fitted onto the wheel disc. Today, the wheels and axles of our EMUs are all machined; the wheels of freight cars are also produced by the integral rolled steel process, all of which are machined by special machinery under computer control. The fact that the Imperial Machinery Factory, in its early days, processed and assembled these workpieces that required fine geometric dimensions with rough general-purpose equipment, their painstaking effort and labor are worthy of admiration.
Among the various simple features, one of the few structures similar to our contemporary railway vehicles is the automatic coupler. The automatic coupler is composed of three parts: the coupler head, the coupler body, and the coupler tail. The thick front part of the coupler is called the coupler head. Inside the coupler head are the knuckle, the knuckle pin, the lock lift pin, the knuckle thrower, and the lock block. The rear part of the coupler is called the coupler tail. A vertical flat keyhole is opened on the coupler tail to connect with the draft gear. In order to achieve coupling or uncoupling, so that the vehicles can be connected or separated, the coupler has the following three positions, that is, the three states of the coupler: locked positionâthe position where the knuckle of the coupler is blocked by the lock block and cannot be turned outward. When two vehicles are coupled together, the coupler is in this position. Unlocked positionâthat is, the position where the lock block has been lifted, and the knuckle can be turned outward as long as it is subjected to a pulling force. When uncoupling, as long as one of the couplers is in the unlocked position, the two coupled vehicles can be separated. Fully open positionâthat is, the position where the knuckle has been fully turned outward. When two vehicles need to be coupled, as long as one of the couplers is in the fully open position, it can be coupled after colliding with the other vehicleâs coupler. Among them, except for the pin components which are steel, the rest are made of cast iron. The coupler is installed at the end of the vehicle underframe by bolts.
In fact, perhaps the most surprising thing is that the vehicle itself has no braking mechanism. Only the locomotive is equipped with a braking mechanismâits structure is also very simple. Two handles are installed on the side of the locomotiveâs steam dray. The lower part is directly connected to the brake shoes through a linkage, corresponding to the front and rear axles of the locomotive. When braking is required, the driver and the stoker pull the two handles backward, and the brake shoes press against the tread of the wheels, generating braking force. The magnitude of the braking force depends on the pulling force on the handles, especially during emergency braking, the driver and the stoker have to pull with all their might. To release the brake, you just need to push the handle forward. This was also a method that had to be used in the absence of steel ring springs. After calculation, under the limited gradient and traction tonnage of the railway at that time, relying solely on the braking force of the locomotive could still ensure safety. However, after stopping, it was necessary to insert wheel chocks under the wheels, otherwise it was very easy for a runaway accident to occur.
The length of this batch of vehicles of the Imperial Railway is 5 metersâthis length is called a âunit length.â That is to say, for a train composed of 10 vehicles, the total length of the train can be simply calculated as 50 meters by using the unit length. With the enrichment of the types of vehicles of the Imperial Railway, the lengths of different vehicles are obviously different. For example, the large-parts flatcar produced in the second year has a length of 12.5m, which is equivalent to 2.5 unit lengths. If 3 such large-parts flatcars are formed into a train, the âcalculated lengthâ of the whole train is 7.5, and the actual length can also be easily calculated as 37.5 meters. You may think this is superfluous, but in fact, the unit length plays the role of a âstandard carââthrough this, one can estimate how many standard cars the arrival and departure tracks of the railway and the train can accommodate, thereby estimating the transport capacity or weight of the train, etc. In fact, from then on, the general-purpose vehicles of the Imperial Railway are basically of equal length and equal weight. And with the advancement of railway technology, the length of general-purpose vehicles has also undergone several major adjustments, and correspondingly, the length represented by the unit of âunit lengthâ has also been adjusted. Corresponding to the length of the vehicle, the wheelbase, that is, the distance between the two axles, is determined to be 2.6mâif the wheelbase is too short, the stability of the vehicle will be affected; when the vehicle passes through a curve, the flange of the wheel will form an angle with the track, called the âangle of attack.â If the wheelbase is too large, the angle of attack will be large, which can easily lead to the flange climbing onto the track and causing a derailment accident. This wheelbase is a balance after considering these two factors.
The wheels and axles of the railway locomotives and vehicles were manufactured in the arsenal, the main accessories of the vehicle body were manufactured in the parts workshop of the machinery factory, the steam engine was manufactured in the workshop directly under the Industrial and Energy Committee, and the final assembly of the vehicles was carried out in the vehicle workshop of the machinery factory. Compared with the glorious and great 854 shipbuilding project in the early days of the Empire, the locomotives and vehicles of the railway did not have such an obvious driving force on the productive forces such as processing and manufacturing, materials, and design capabilities. However, if compared with other projects besides the 854 project, the manufacture of locomotives and vehicles for the Imperial Railway was still one of the largest projects, directly testing the cross-departmental collaboration and organizational capabilities. Thanks to the great planned economic system of the Empire, the various departments involved basically achieved the expected goals. But with the continuous development of the railway, driven by some Elders, the related industries of the Imperial Railway gradually separated from the general manufacturing departments and formed a relatively independent department.
While the Elders in charge of the machinery industry led engineers and workers to work painstakingly on the locomotives and vehicles, the Imperial Construction Corporation, which was responsible for the construction of the railway lines, encountered even greater trouble. Mr. Ma Qianzhu, the Chairman of the Imperial Executive Committee, personally determined the plan to embed the rails in the concrete of the ground floor. Obviously, this could prevent the tracks from becoming an obstacle for other official road vehiclesâat that time, mainly handcarts, ox-carts, etc. However, it was not feasible to simply arrange the tracks to the gauge and then pour concrete, as this could not effectively fix them. The concrete would soon crack and break under stress, and a special structural design had to be adopted.
The earliest slab track of the Imperial Railway was born under such circumstances. Now some high-speed rail enthusiasts who are not very familiar with history believe that the slab track widely used on high-speed railways is âsuperiorâ and a representative of advancement, not comparable to the ballasted track laid on many freight lines. This view is wrong. In fact, as many Elders dedicated to science and technology pointed out at the time: there is no absolute superiority or inferiority between different technical routes. Which one to adopt should be determined by comprehensively considering environmental conditions, performance requirements, costs, and other factors. It was based on this consideration that after consultation between the Elders of the Construction Corporation and the railway, industrial, and other departments, it was decided to adopt a long-sleeper embedded slab track structure. The sleepers were made of hollow square cast wrought iron. At the position where the track was installed, there were two protruding bases. The rails were directly fixed to the long sleepers with steel fasteners and bolts.
When pouring the ground floor, a space was reserved where the track needed to be laid. Reinforcing iron bars or bamboo bars were laid, and the 10-meter-long short-rail track panels with long sleepers installed were placed in sequence. The rail joints were connected with fishplates and bolts, and the plane shape of the track was adjusted to make it smooth, and the rail surface height was consistent with the ground floor surface. Wooden wedges were inserted to fix the line position, and the pouring was carried out section by section. During pouring, a groove was left on the inner side of the track to accommodate the passage of the wheel flange. This construction method well realized the previously proposed plan of embedding the rails in concrete. Its disadvantage was that adjusting the position of the track was more cumbersome. In addition, the labor quality of the initially recruited workers, or, according to a specialized term proposed later, the âmigrant workers,â was poor. In the initial stage of construction, the Elders in charge of railways and construction personally provided hands-on guidance at the construction site, which finally enabled these workers to carry out qualified construction. Another problem was that the use of iron long sleepers consumed a large amount of wrought iron, but it was still within the tolerable range of the Planning Council. This plan also had another problem, that is, the concrete covered the fixed fasteners and bolts. Once the track needed to be replaced, the concrete near the track had to be chiseled out, and after replacing the track, the concrete had to be restored. However, under the technical conditions at that time, this problem could only be tolerated.
After leaving the workshop, the track was changed to a ballasted form. The ground was compacted as a roadbed, and ballastâthat is, crushed stone with a certain particle size range produced by the quarryâwas laid on the roadbed to form a trapezoidal ballast bed. Sleepers and rails were laid on the ballast bed. The sleepers were made of logs. The selected logs had a diameter between 25cm and 40cm. Logs that were too thin were not strong enough to bear the load as sleepers. Logs that were too thick had other uses and would be a waste of material to be used as sleepers, and would also cause a large change in the stiffness of the lower part, causing stress concentration inside the rails and easily leading to rail breaks. The logs were cut into 2.4-meter-long sections in the length direction, and then two cuts were made on the top and bottom to form two upper and lower surfaces, with a height of 15cm between them. The sleepers were lifted onto the ballast bed and laid out with a spacing of 0.67m, that is, 3 sleepers were laid every two meters. Then the rails were lifted onto the line, the gauge was set, tie plates were placed on the sleepers, and the rails and tie plates were fixed with spikes. The sections of rail were connected with fishplates. Then, tools such as crowbars were used to adjust the geometric position and shape of the line, and at the same time, the ballast bed was tamped. Tamping is when workers repeatedly insert and shake steel rods into the ballast bed, causing the loose ballast to settle and form a relatively stable and dense pile to effectively bear the load.
At that time, the Empireâs steel industry was not yet complete, and it did not even have the ability to independently smelt pig iron. It could only import pig iron from the Guangdong region of the former Ming country and independently further smelt the pig iron into wrought iron and steel. At this time, steel production was very limited, and steel was needed everywhere. Compared with steel, wrought iron was much more abundant. Therefore, after weighing the pros and cons, wrought iron was adopted as the material for manufacturing rails. So in the above, I call them iron rails, not the now common term âsteel rails.â The iron rails were produced by a casting process. Their cross-section was similar to todayâs steel rails, both being a modified I-beam with rounded corners. Each meter weighed 30 kilograms, and each section of track was 5m long. Holes were drilled at both ends of the track to connect with the fishplates; holes were also drilled in the middle to facilitate workers to pass ropes through for fixing when lifting the track. Because the joints of the iron rails would be impacted by the wheels, a quenching process was used locally to strengthen the hardness of the rail head. The iron rails were connected with fishplates and bolts. Compared with todayâs steel rails, the load-bearing capacity of iron rails was very poor, and the Elders at that time had a feeling of being angry at its failure to meet expectations. After field experiments, it was determined that this kind of track could withstand vehicles with an axle load of 10 tons traveling at a speed of 20 kilometers per hour; however, as mentioned before, considering that the vehicles had a fully rigid suspension, the speed was still limited to an axle load of 5 tons.