Because in the past 20 years of the rise of the railway, Daheng was in a period of internal turmoil, although many local feudal towns would also develop railways, but some feudal towns because of various things, especially their own relatively weak, in order to prevent the armies of other feudal towns from directly along the railway, often adopt a different gauge standard from neighboring states and counties, and at the same time, they will not build the railway line all the way to the border and connect with the railways of other states.

For example, the railway networks of Dongdingzhou and Quyang Prefecture are 1.45 meters of gauge standard, but Zishengzhou and Jingzhou are 1.3 meters of gauge standard.

In addition, there are some other states and counties where the gauge standard is 1.25 meters.

In the thirteen states of the Great Heng Empire, there are at least three gauge standards, which still specifically refer to the standards for the formation of a large-scale railway network, and there are many short-distance railways built in small places, which are even more messy and have all standards.

At the same time, the railway network between the feudal towns is generally not connected, and the railway line between Dongdingzhou and Zishengzhou is a clear example, there is a section of nearly 20 kilometers in the middle that is not connected to the railway, and the railway gauge at both ends, one is 1.3 meters, and the other is 1.45 meters.

This situation had already caused great problems for the Imperial Army in terms of marching and material transportation, forcing the Army's engineering units to build a large number of temporary connecting railway lines and transfer stations.

In the past, the army also planned to change the railway standard of the entire Zisheng Prefecture to 1.45 meters, but because of the relatively large amount of work, and the railway transportation itself was busy during the war, and the task was heavy, so it has not been able to change the track until now.

Nowadays, the railway standards in Daheng are different, which is equivalent to cutting the railway network in various places, and this situation cannot be sustained.

This time, Lin Ziran, who was touched again, once again asked about the unified standard of the railway on the special train.

Jiang Yi, Minister of Communications, said: "Your Majesty, the unification of railway standards is costly, and now is at the critical moment of the reunification war, there is no way to carry out large-scale construction and track change on various railway lines, and I am afraid that it will not be possible in a short time." ”

Lin Ziran said: "The difficulty of unifying railway standards must be a little, and it is also true that large-scale railway transformation cannot be carried out in the short term due to objective reasons, but your Ministry of Communications still has to plan in advance, and when the situation is stable, you must start to carry out railway transformation!" ”

Jiang Yi said: "Your Majesty, rest assured, we have already made a perfect plan, and we are waiting for the transformation after the end of the war!" ”

Then Jiang Yi introduced the proposed railway reconstruction plan!

"At present, we have made preliminary statistics on the railway situation of each state in the thirteen states of the empire, and the total mileage of the existing railway lines in various places is about 9,000 kilometers, of which except for a small number of railways in mining areas and short-distance passenger railways, most of the railway networks are railways built with official investment, among which the railway lines in Jingzhou, Zishengzhou, Dongdingzhou, Pingnanzhou, Gaoqingzhou, Ningwu Prefecture, and Northwest Prefecture are relatively long."

"Among the existing 9,000 kilometers of railways, most of them use 1.3 meters and 1.45 meters gauge, of which more than 60 percent of the railway lines use the 1.45 meter gauge standard, mainly concentrated in Dongdingzhou, Pingnan Prefecture, Ningwu Prefecture, Gaoqing Prefecture, Quyang Prefecture, and Northwest Prefecture."

"In addition, Zishengzhou and Jingzhou and other parts of the country use a 1.3-meter gauge, accounting for about 30% of the total mileage!"

"Bei'anzhou, Nanhu and some other areas use 1.2 meters of gauge, accounting for about 10 percent of the total mileage!"

"According to the current situation, the preliminary renovation plan we have drawn up is to transform the railway network of the four prefectures of Jingzhou, Zishengzhou, Bei'an and Nanhuzhou, and change the 1.2-meter and 1.3-meter rails to 1.45 meters."

"After the transformation of the railway network in the above four states is completed, then all the government-run public railway lines will be turned into a standard gauge of 1.45 meters!"

"In addition, we have drawn up a follow-up railway construction plan!"

At this time, Lin Ziran spoke: "Oh, the follow-up railway construction plan? ”

Seeing that Lin Ziran was very interested in the nature of railway development, Jiang Yi was even more excited, so he took out a small notebook on the spot, and then simply drew a map of perseverance on it, and said while marking a line on it: "Your Majesty, please see, this is the existing railway network in the empire, and most of the current railway networks are concentrated in the eastern and central states and counties!" ”

Lin Ziran looked at the simple railway network lines, and it could be seen from the scattered railway lines above, because of the lack of unified railway planning, the current railway network of the Daheng Empire was chaotic.

At this time, Jiang Yi continued to draw the line on the notebook: "We plan to build the north-south line of Jingzhou, the north-south line of Dongdingzhou, and the north-south line of Ningwuzhou through the new connecting line, and carry out regular transformation of some of the existing railways, so that these railway lines can be connected into a line, and we also plan to continue to build the east line, west line, and Ningyu north-south line in Nanhai Prefecture, thus forming the main artery of the eastern railway." ”

As he spoke, he directly linked all these railway lines in his notebook, and added several new lines, so that he could see at a glance that once this railway network was formed, it could become the main railway artery in the eastern part of the empire, and the total length of this eastern artery, which had many irregular curves, was probably more than 5,000 kilometers.

Jiang Yi did not stop, but continued to paint while saying: "At the same time, we rely on the existing Dongdingzhou Railway Line East-West Line, Zishengzhou East-West Line, and Quyang Prefecture East-West Line to connect and transform, cross the Luo River and continue to build the railway to the west, enter Zhongluozhou, and arrive at Xihe City, the coastal port city of Zhongluozhou, thus forming the east-west railway artery that spans the empire and connects the eastern port and the western port!" ”

"Subsequently, we also planned to build a new Jingzhou East-West Line from Jingzhou to connect a section of the railway network in Pingnan Prefecture, and then bifurcate to the north to connect the Bei'an Prefecture Railway Line, to the west to connect the Nanhuzhou Railway Line, and continue to connect to the Northwest Prefecture Railway Network to the west, thus constructing a second east-west railway artery."

"Relying on these three railway arteries, we will build a number of state railway lines such as the railway line connecting Quyang Prefecture to Northwest Prefecture, and finally connect all the states with railway lines."

Looking at Jiang Yi's simple map on the notebook, drawing line after line, Lin Ziran felt that he was underestimating this Jiang Yi, but he didn't expect this person to dare to think more than himself.

I just wanted to renovate the existing railway line and open it up, but I never thought about building tens of thousands of kilometers of railway lines on a large scale in a short period of time.

But this person is talking about demarcating the railway lines of various states, talking about the 50,000-kilometer plan in the early stage, the 150,000-kilometer plan in the medium-term, and the 300,000-kilometer plan in the later stage......

Although it is said that the plains of the Great Heng Empire are mostly flat, the terrain is flat. And it can be regarded as a vast and sparsely populated land, the land is relatively cheap, and the cost of building a railway is relatively low, but it is also a railway repair, the cost of this kilometer of railway, no matter how the cost of a kilometer of railway is tens of thousands of Hengyuan.

If this guy draws this line, it will be an investment of hundreds of millions, and if he draws a few more lines, it will be an investment of hundreds of millions!

If you really want to build the railway network according to the one he drawn, it will not be something that can be solved by a few hundred million or a few hundred million, but it will cost billions or even tens of billions at every turn.