The steam engine showed great competitiveness and attracted the attention of many people in the field of navy and shipping, while the train was relatively low-key.

Because the current railway is under construction, there are relatively few railways in operation, and they are basically short-distance railways, and some of the short-distance railways with a length of tens of kilometers in many places will naturally not take long to build them, basically one year is very sufficient, so that the construction can be completed in the nineteenth year of Xuanping, and then officially operated in the twenty years of Xuanping.

However, the impact of this short-distance railway is relatively limited, even if it is more than 70 kilometers of Jingzhen line, it only caused a huge sensation when it was opened to traffic, and it is when it enters commercial operation, although there are also a lot of people taking the train of Jingzhen line, but the social impact is not large.

If the railway wants to cause a sensation nationwide, it needs a long enough railway line, and the Jiangnan Railway has this effect, but at present, most sections of the Jiangnan Railway are still under construction, and it will take at least three years to open the whole line

Among them, the Shanghai to Suzhou section is progressing relatively quickly, because this section is a two-way construction, one side is from Shanghai to Suzhou, and the other is from Suzhou to Shanghai.

However, even then, operations will not be able until the fall of this year at the earliest.

This speed, in fact, is very fast for railway construction, and as soon as possible to lay the railway, the Zhili Railway Company adopted the mode of sectional construction, in some convenient transportation, can be used on a large scale to transport materials in the place, start the construction point, and then build at both ends at the same time with this point.

Only in this way can we ensure that the Jiangnan Railway will be opened to traffic within three years.

At the same time, in order to recover the cost as soon as possible, it also adopted the mode of construction, operation, repair and operation of a section.

For example, the Jingzhen line, which is also part of the Jiangnan Railway, will be operated first if it is repaired first, and will also be operated first after the railway from Shanghai to Suzhou is repaired.

It does not mean that it has to wait for the Jiangnan Railway to be completed before it can be opened to traffic.

According to the estimate of the Datang Railway Corporation, this year, that is, the end of the 20th year of Xuanping, the railway mileage will be officially operated by more than 500 kilometers.

And this number, by the 21st year of Xuanping, will reach 1,300 kilometers, and by the 22nd year of Xuanping, it will be 3,000 kilometers.

After all, at present, the current domestic railway construction, in addition to the Jiangnan Railway, in fact, there are dozens of railways of all sizes under construction, such as Tianjin, Tangshan Railway, which has now been completed and put into operation, and the railway from Guangzhou to Foshan has also begun to operate.

Subsequently, these railways in operation will be gradually extended to form a complete railway network.

When these railway networks are really completed, the role they can play is not comparable to that of river transportation.

After all, although the river transport volume is large and the cost is cheaper, because of the limitations of the river, it is not possible to use river transport everywhere, and only in some areas can it be transported by river.

According to the estimation of the Department of Transportation of the Ministry of Industry, the main railway arteries nationwide, that is, the east-west arteries and the north-south arteries, are expected to be completely completed within five years.

Of course, these railways are basically limited to places where the terrain is relatively flat and it is easy to build railways, so the construction can be so fast, and for some hilly and mountainous places, the railway construction will be much slower.

In the next five years, coastal and inland river transportation will still be the main force of long-distance material transportation in the empire, even if five years later, the construction of the cross road network of the railway network is completed, but the role of coastal and inland river transportation is difficult to completely replace by railway transportation.

Therefore, in the coming decades and beyond, the Empire's transportation strategy will continue to be three parallel roads.

Shipping, rail transport and horse-drawn carriage transport.

Among them, shipping and railway transportation are used as the main force of long-distance transportation, while horse-drawn carriage transportation is used as the main force of short-distance transportation.

After all, railways can't go everywhere, let alone rivers, so a lot of supplies arrive somewhere by boat or train, and then they are loaded onto various horse-drawn carriages and transported to their destinations.

At the same time, where there is no river and no railway, horse-drawn carriage transportation will be the only large-scale transportation force, so don't look at the current Tang Empire's shipping, the movement of the railway is a bit big, but the road construction represented by the official road of the empire has never stopped, but has increased investment year by year.

Especially in Xuanping 20 years today, large-scale water conservancy construction has come to an end, with the completion of the Hongze Lake embankment, a landmark water conservancy project, it also represents that the large-scale water conservancy facilities construction that has lasted for several years has also come to an end, although there will be water conservancy facilities construction projects every year, but it will not be the same as in previous years, every year is to spend more than 10 million yuan on water conservancy facilities construction.

In the past five years, the empire has invested about 50 million yuan in water conservancy, and this 50 million yuan is still the expenditure of the central government, while the expenditure of the local government on water conservancy facilities has not yet been counted.

This kind of large-scale construction of water conservancy facilities, even if it has been repeated several times in the past thousands of years, has never appeared.

And the huge investment has also brought rich results!

Through huge investment, the Tang Empire has carried out preliminary management of the Yellow River, Huai River, and Yangtze River, the three major water systems that are more prone to flooding, and built more solid flood control levees in places prone to flooding.

In particular, the Hongze Lake embankment can defend against floods that occur once in 30 or even 50 years.

In addition, by setting up water storage areas in the upstream area, blasting specific sections of the river will be carried out if necessary, so that the flood water can be injected into the flood control zone prepared in advance, so as to regulate the flow from the middle and upper reaches to the downstream, which can more effectively resist large-scale flooding.

In addition to these large projects, in fact, there are more seemingly inconspicuous small projects, because the construction of water conservancy facilities in the Tang Empire is all over the country, whether it is Qiongzhou Mansion in Guangdong, or Liaodong in the north, or the northwest region in the west, there are related water conservancy construction.

For example, in Gansu Province and Shaanxi Province in the northwest of the country, water conservancy construction is naturally not about flood control, but about fighting drought and solving the problem of water shortage and lack of water in some places by building canals to divert water and digging wells to draw water.

Even in areas where the wind and rain are favorable, water conservancy construction has been carried out, and irrigation of farmland through excavation channels has turned inferior fields into medium fields and medium fields into superior fields.

This series of water conservancy construction, the investment is huge, but the harvest is also huge, the weather in the empire in recent years, in fact, is not very smooth, but there have been no large-scale floods, droughts and other situations, this is because the newly built water conservancy facilities have played a huge role.

The water conservancy facilities of the Tang Empire can be regarded as a typical project that concentrates on doing big things, and now, the Tang Empire has used this construction experience in railway construction and road construction.

For this reason, in the first cabinet meeting after the autumn of the twentieth year of Xuanping, Li Xuan, the son of heaven, officially put forward the slogan of "transportation construction" for the first time, and the emperor instructed all aspects of the cabinet to take transportation construction as the key work in the next five years, and said that if you want to get rich, you must first build roads!

Li Xuan, the Son of Heaven, personally shouted the slogan of transportation construction, and the ministers below naturally responded positively, first of all, the minister on duty in the imperial study and the scholar of Jianji Palace, Liu Bagou, officially requested that a number of new railway trunk lines be planned and built.

At present, the main railway lines planned and started by the Tang Empire are mainly three, the first is the Jiangnan Railway, which is mainly composed of two parts, the first part is Jiujiang to Ningbo, and the main cities are Jiujiang, Dangtu, Jinling, Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Ningbo. The second part is from Jinling City to Hangzhou, passing through Guangdezhou and Huzhou.

The second is the Northern Railway, from Jinling City to Youzhou, the main cities passing through are Jinling, Fengyang, Xuzhou, Kaifeng, Zhangde, Hejian, Tianjin, Youzhou.

The third is the Northwest Railway, from Kaifeng to Jiayuguan, passing through the main cities of Henan, Xi'an, Xining, Liangzhou, Suzhou, and finally arriving at Jiayuguan.

The above are the three main railway lines currently under construction in the empire, the first two are basically for national defense and economic considerations, and the third is purely for national defense considerations.

The railway lines that are also purely considered for national defense are actually the Northeast Railway and the Grassland Railway.

The Northeast Railway, which is from Tianjin to the Northeast, passes through Tangshan (at present, this section has been completed and operated ahead of schedule. It passed through Jinzhou in western Liaoning, Shenyang in eastern Liaoning, and then continued north to enter Northeast Province, and finally reached Heilongjiang.

This is expected to be built in order to ensure the development of the empire's immigration and military deployment in the northeast region, but at present, except for the section from Tianjin to Tangshan, the other railways are basically still in the planning and will not enter the construction stage in the short term.

The Hetao branch line starts from Youzhou, passes through Xuanfu and enters Fengzhou, and then continues westward to the northern section of the Hetao region of the Tang Empire, which is located on the north bank of the Yellow River.

This Black Mountain City, located about 150 kilometers west of Dongsheng City, on the north bank of the Yellow River, is the latest new city built by the Tang Empire in the Hetao area, and it is also a strategic city used by the Imperial Army to control the security of the Hetao area.