Bringing the Railway to Daming

Chapter 154: Lao Zhu’s Support, Two Secret Recipes [Please Subscribe]

"Your Majesty, it is available." Liu Kuan first briefly answered Old Zhu's question, then changed the subject and said, "However, once the railway is operational, the annual maintenance and operating costs will add up to a considerable amount of money."

Railways certainly require maintenance and operating costs. Zhu Yuanzhang was not surprised by this and asked directly, "Is there an approximate amount?"

Liu Kuan had no intention of hiding anything and told Qiu Qichi and others the results of his many discussions on the way to Xuzhou.

"For the Pinghu Railway, which is over 3,000 miles long, the annual maintenance cost alone is at least 600,000 strings of cash. If entire sections of the railway need repairing, the cost will be even higher."

"In addition, to operate the railway, a large number of staff must be arranged, and the additional money and grain required to send troops to patrol the railway will probably cost hundreds of thousands of strings of cash."

Liu Kuan was worried about alarming Zhu Yuanzhang, so he actually underestimated the data.

Even so, Zhu Yuanzhang frowned slightly after hearing this.

"According to what you said, if the Pinghu Railway (i.e., the Beijing-Shanghai Railway) were to be fully operational, it would cost at least over one million guan per year?"

Liu Kuan nodded, "This is indeed the result of my preliminary discussion with my colleagues from the Science and Technology Department."

Zhu Yuanzhang walked back to the imperial throne, sat down on the dragon throne, and knocked on the imperial desk before asking, "Do you know how much grain the court is losing when transporting it from the capital to Peking via the canal?"

How could Liu Kuan know about this kind of thing if he had never understood it before?
He immediately shook his head, "I don't know."

"20 to 30 percent!"

Hearing this ratio, Liu Kuan couldn't help but look surprised.

He knew that in ancient times, the loss of grain was relatively high whether transported by water or land. Relatively speaking, the loss of grain transported by canal was lower than that by land or sea. This was also the main reason why all dynasties preferred to transport grain by rivers.

Liu Kuan thought that the administration during the Hongwu period should have been quite clean, with few officials engaging in corruption. Therefore, the false losses during grain transportation should also have been small, and should not have been as exaggerated as in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

Who would have thought it could be as high as 20% to 30%!

In this way, transporting one million dan of grain from the capital to Peking would cost two or three hundred thousand dan.

At that time, 200,000 to 300,000 dan of grain was approximately equivalent to 500,000 to 600,000 strings of cash.

Thinking of this, Liu Kuan understood what Lao Zhu was going to settle.

Zhu Yuanzhang then continued, "In previous campaigns against the Northern Yuan, the imperial court had to transport millions of dan of grain and fodder northwards. Add to that the weapons, armor, gunpowder, and other supplies, and the laborers, mules, and horses consumed even more on the road."

"If the Pinghu Railway is operational, as you said before, a single train could carry hundreds of thousands or even millions of kilograms of supplies."

"If you do the math, one million dan of grain and fodder can be transported by less than two hundred train trips."

"Moreover, trains burn coal, rather than consuming fodder like boatmen, laborers, mules, and horses. There's no worry of ships capsizing and losing food."

"If I'm not mistaken, a single train can transport a million kilograms of grain to Peking with little to no damage. Is that correct?"

Liu Kuan already understood what Lao Zhu was calculating, and immediately nodded and said, "In theory, it is true."

Zhu Yuanzhang smiled. "If that's the case, once the Pinghu Railway is operational, it only needs to be able to transport two million dan of grain to Peking in a year. Wouldn't the reduced transportation grain consumption for the court be almost enough to cover the maintenance and operating costs?"

"If we can transport more, our Ming Dynasty will be profitable. Am I right?"

Hearing this, Liu Kuan felt a little embarrassed and thought to himself: Old Zhu's arithmetic foundation is really poor, this impromptu calculation is not very good.

He organized his words and said, "Your Majesty is correct in theory. The problem is, with the speed and carrying capacity of Ming Dynasty's current trains, and the conditions at the terminal, it is simply impossible to transport two million dan of grain from the capital to Peking in a year."

Zhu Yuanzhang frowned and asked, "Why do you say that?"

Liu Kuan explained, "Although this train is quite fast, if it's carrying tens or even millions of kilograms of cargo, it can only travel 50 to 60 miles per hour (that's 15 to 16 kilometers per hour) at most."

"The railway from Peking to Nanjing is 2,600 to 2,700 miles long. Even if the entire line were connected, a round trip would still take seven or eight days."

"Adding in the time required to transfer to a ferry across the river in Xuzhou, a round trip would probably take ten days, or even longer."

"If special railways were built at the starting and ending stations that allowed trains to turn around, we could arrange for several or even dozens of trains to run on one railway, increasing the frequency of trains."

"But the Science and Technology Department hasn't even mastered the technology to build ordinary railways yet. It's estimated that it will take several years to build a special railway for return trains and modify the connecting railways."

"That is to say, only one train can run on a straight section of the Pinghu Railway."

"So, even if we assume a round trip of ten days, a train can only run about thirty times a year. Even though the Pinghu Railway is a double-track railway, it can only run about seventy or eighty times a year."

Liu Kuan stopped talking here.

Because at this time, Lao Zhu had an embarrassed look on his face, and he obviously realized that he had not calculated the accounts properly before and it was too early to be optimistic.

He had previously calculated that if trains ran to Peking 200 times a year, the imperial court would make a profit by operating the Pinghu Railway.

But according to Liu Kuan's calculations, the train could only run 70 or 80 times a year, which was clearly far from 200 times. Coming to his senses, Zhu Yuanzhang said calmly, "Even if it can only run 70 or 80 times a year, the loss of grain transported by train is far less than that by river."

This is true.

In terms of single-trip transportation, trains, a primary product of the industrial age, do indeed have much less losses than today's river transportation.

River transportation is mainly carried out by boatmen, supplemented by mules, horses and laborers. No matter how much food and fodder is transported from the capital to Beijing, the loss is currently about 20% to 30%.

If we don't count the maintenance and operating costs of train transportation, a loss of several thousand kilograms of food and fodder for a trip of millions of kilograms would be considered a lot.

At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang said, "In addition, the 20% to 30% loss of grain transported from the capital to Beiping that I told you about mainly refers to food consumed by people and horses, as well as the loss of ships that capsized and sank."

"But besides that, do the grain ships need maintenance? If the boatmen, mules, horses, and laborers fall ill, or even die on the way, do they need compensation?"

"Furthermore, canals and other waterways also require annual dredging and other maintenance. Doesn't that cost money?"

"If all these are taken into account, wouldn't the court's annual expenditure on maintaining canal transportation be more than maintaining a railway?"

What Old Zhu said was indeed reasonable. Liu Kuan had really overlooked it before, so he nodded and said, "Your Majesty, you are right. It is my humble servant who has not thought it through."

Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't help but smile, regaining the face he had lost due to the calculation problem. Then he asked doubtfully, "When you analyzed the maintenance and operation costs of the Pinghu Railway, you weren't suggesting that we not use rail transportation, were you?"

"Of course not." Liu Kuan quickly explained, "Firstly, the cost of maintaining and operating the Pinghu Railway alone is indeed quite high. However, as the Ming Dynasty has more railways in the future, these costs will naturally decrease."

"Secondly, if the railway was used solely to transport grain and fodder for the imperial court, the annual revenue would not be enough to maintain and operate it."

"But if we open it up to civilian use, perhaps profits from the private sector could cover the cost of railway maintenance and operation, and even lead to profitability."

"Third, even if the Pinghu Railway really needs imperial subsidies to operate, it must continue to operate for the sake of Ming Dynasty's development."

"Therefore, I have come to Your Majesty to explain this matter and offer two strategies for generating income, hoping to implore Your Majesty to support the railway transportation project."

Zhu Yuanzhang nodded slightly after hearing the first two points Liu Kuan said, and his eyes lit up when he heard the last one.

"Two ways to make money? Tell me quickly!"

Liu Kuan was thinking about this on the way back to Beijing, so he had already written the memorial. When he returned home to take a bath, he asked Zhu Huilan to copy it. So at this time he took out two copies of the memorial.

Li Gui, who had no sense of existence before, received a signal from Zhu Yuanzhang and stepped forward to take the memorial and presented it to the imperial desk.

There was not much content in the two memorials, and Zhu Yuanzhang quickly glanced at the titles of the memorials.

Only one memorial was titled "Method of Making Salt from Salt Fields" and the other was titled "Method of Making White Sugar from Yellow Mud."

To him, the names seemed a bit strange.

After carefully reading the contents, Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't help but be delighted. He looked up and couldn't help asking, "Is this secret recipe for making salt and sugar really as effective as you said in your memorial?"

Liu Kuan said, "Your Majesty, in fact, the salt field drying method and the yellow mud sugar making method have appeared in the middle and late Ming Dynasty in history, but the technology is not as mature as what I have presented."

"If the imperial court could produce salt and sugar according to these two methods, the annual production of salt and sugar in the Ming Dynasty would surely increase significantly."

"This will not only lower the price of salt and sugar in the Ming Dynasty, improving people's lives, but also allow us to sell them overseas and make huge profits."

"When the Ming Dynasty acquires overseas territories in the future, it can produce salt and sugar locally, saving labor and transportation costs, and making even greater profits."

Zhu Yuanzhang laughed heartily upon hearing this. "It seems that your two strategies for making money complement your plan for expanding overseas."

There was no one else in the hall, so Liu Kuan spoke with less restraint.

He said, "In the early days of the Western Barbarian colonization of Southeast Asia, in addition to obtaining local gems, gold, silver, and spices, one of their main businesses was to enslave the natives and Han Chinese, planting sugarcane for them and making huge profits from the sugar production."

"I believe that if the Ming Dynasty were to manage Southeast Asia, we could follow suit, forcing the natives to plant sugarcane and build sugar factories there."

"Once we can bring back rubber tree species from South America, we can also develop rubber plantations in Southeast Asia, which will be another great way to make money."

Zhu Yuanzhang nodded, but did not comment on Liu Kuan's subsequent words, and no one knew what he was thinking.

After putting down the memorial, he smiled and asked, "Your two secret recipes are worth just as much as the previous recipes for the silver mirror and telescope. Their value in terms of generating wealth is even higher."

"We can't just take it for nothing. Tell me, what reward do you want this time? Is it gold, silver, land, or shops?"

　Second update.

　　Good night~
　　[Furthermore, the author is a complete novice in the train operation arrangement, and even after several revisions, there are still some loopholes. Fortunately, the protagonist is designed to be a person who only knows a little bit, not omniscient, almighty, or even a demonic being. Therefore, any flaws in the protagonist's words are acceptable. The author will try to address these loopholes and shortcomings in the later plot based on everyone's reasonable opinions.]

　　【Forgive】

　　
　
(End of this chapter)