Another train of new immigrants arrived at the railway construction site, more than 20 kilometers east of Yuexi Township.

Under the urging of the cadet cadres, the newly arrived immigrants got off the bus one after another, carrying tools and bags, and then lined up in four crooked lines and headed for the construction site. Together with the immigrants from Ninghai County, Taizhou Prefecture, who walked from the direction of Yuexi Township, they will contribute to the completion of the fourth phase of the Northwest Railway on schedule.

Of course, these immigrants are now reserve employees of the State Administration of Railways, and after only learning the standard language of the East Coast and spending a short period of probation, they can obtain East Coast nationality and be promoted to regular employees of the General Administration of Railways at the same time. As can be seen, they are much more convenient for naturalization than European men (white men already make up 10% of the East Coast population), which in itself is already a huge advantage, enough to make it easier for them to move up the social ladder than those white men.

By the way, the address of Yuexi Township is located near the small village of Vera in later generations, and most of the immigrants from Ninghai County are named here. At present, there are only a few brick buildings in this settlement, most of which are still temporary straw huts for the settlers, and only a few of the settlers are leveling the land and preparing to plant some vegetables in the autumn, so that there will not be no harvest by the beginning of spring next year; Most of the settlers, except for them, were temporarily requisitioned by the Wujiang District Administrative Office to the railway construction site in the east, planning to build the railway to Yuexi Township first, so that it would be much easier to do anything.

After sending off the new arrivals and unloading the supplies, at two o'clock in the afternoon, a steam locomotive drove from the direction of Tieling County, and then pulled the empty train back. After the train returned, on the morning of the next day (March 20), another group of people came by horse-drawn carriage from the direction of Yuexi Township. The leader is Peng Zhicheng, a retired executive committee member and national railway supervisor.

Peng Zhicheng, who was already in his fifties, rode a war horse and rushed to the side of the construction site first, followed by four or five followers. Looking at the way they bared their teeth, these white-shirted people who usually sit in the office talk about riding and physique. Even Peng Zhicheng is inferior.

"Mr. Doria, this is the railroad we're building." Peng Zhicheng held the horse's head with one hand, and pointed to the Northwest Railway extending to the skyline with a horsewhip with the other, and said with a smile. As his voice fell, the secretary immediately translated it into Spanish.

"I see it." Mario. Doria got out of the carriage and said with a pale face. They disembarked at Daxing Port and then took a horse-drawn carriage to the construction site of the Northwest Railway, which is deep inland. Obviously, the journey didn't seem very comfortable. The bumpy journey left Mario tormented and disgusted.

"It's an amazing road, I've never seen it in the Old World." Mario endured some discomfort, walked to the railroad tracks that had been laid, bent down and touched them with his hands, then took a closer look at the structure of the railway, and finally exclaimed: "What a luxury it is to have a road made of high-quality steel!" It seems that I can build the Yì St. George's Comptoir and order more steel bars from the East Coast in the future, because it seems that your ability to produce steel is extremely strong. ”

All the rails required for the fourth phase of the Northwest Railway are produced by backbone enterprises such as Tieling Special Steel and Western Forging, and then transported to the nearest construction site by guò train. The ultimate goal of laying the railway section by section is to open up the entire inland area and extend it to the shore of the Wujiang River to obtain an outlet to the sea.

"But I don't think the Old Continent needs much of the steel bars we produce. The future of this kind of business is very limited. Peng Zhicheng turned over and dismounted, walked in front of Mario, and said: "Mr. Doria, I think what you need is a large-scale project with more investment prospects, please note the word 'large' when I say it, only projects with an investment amount of more than 30 million lira are worthy of your country's excess capital inflow." ”

"Thirty million lira is not a small number, especially when I haven't seen the legendary train yet." Mario shook his head and said, "A few numbers and descriptions alone can't convince me. ”

"You'll have a chance to get on the train. Just this afternoon. Peng Zhicheng said with a solemn face. Tell the truth, according to his original intention. It was not agreed to let the Genoese ride the train, because such a strategic level of stuff was too sensitive. It is a very dangerous thing to let foreigners ride rashly. It's just that the civilian clique with the Government Council as its base camp is very keen on this, and they are very concerned about persuading the Genoese to invest, so the lower limit is also relatively low, and they agree to the matter of whether to allow the Genoese to take the train after only a brief discussion, which makes Peng Zhicheng, the old military leader, very annoyed.

However, the reasons of the civil officials are also very sufficient, that is, the railway has actually been circulated in a small range of European circles for a long time, and there are many foreigners who have seen this new type of transportation intentionally or unconsciously - of course, most of them have seen it from a distance, after all, it is relatively simple to observe the train entering the Luoqia railway station from the sea - plus some information from hidden spies, I am afraid that the train has long been known to some "well-intentioned people".

At the same time, the civil officials pointed out that there is no possibility of trains in Europe in the short term, because of the lack of the necessary industrial and technological base. First of all, they lacked a lot of high-quality steel, secondly, they lacked the technology to process and manufacture them, and then they lacked the technology to design and build railroads, and of course, most importantly, they could not produce even the most primitive steam locomotives, which were the core technology that the East Coast government kept secret. Based on this judgment, the civil service group did not seem to have anything wrong with inviting Genoese dignitaries on a train to strengthen their investment resolve.

In this way, this afternoon, Mario and his entourage will take a train to pull construction materials to the construction site through Tieling County to Xiayihe County, and thoroughly feel the advent of the railway era. Although Peng Zhicheng and others were very dissatisfied with the decision of the Government Council, after thinking about it in many ways, they finally pinched their noses and recognized it. Of course, they didn't give in completely, and these guys took great pains to cover most of the locomotive's stuff so that outsiders wouldn't see through it at a glance - which seemed to have a limited effect, but it was better than nothing.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, with a long whistle, the train that had just finished unloading the materials began to start slowly, ready to return to Tieling Railway Station to add coal and water, and in the passenger compartment of this train, Mario, Peng Zhicheng and others sat upright, accompanied by the rhythmic shaking of the car body, and went forward at a speed of 36 kilometers per hour.

The expressions of Mario and the others could be said to be as surprised as they were at this time, they seemed to be unable to believe that the rumors were true, and the train of the East Coast people was really an epoch-making means of transportation as people coaxed - I believe that if it wasn't for the wrong time, they would definitely break into the front locomotive to see what was going on.

It was already evening when the train arrived at the train station in the town of Lower Yihe, but Mario. Doria and the others were still excited, as if they were completely conquered by the train. Even Mario has been unreserved, and his words have repeatedly revealed his willingness to invest in the East Coast Railway, provided that the planned transportation tasks of the Southwest Railway are as busy as the Northwest Railway, after all, only in this way will the expensive railway have the possibility of recovering the cost. So he's now anxious to take a look along the Southwest Railroad and see how it's going.

The situation along the Southwestern Railroad was naturally a great disappointment for Genoa, and the small number of settlements, endless farms, and sparse populations were enough to describe the current situation here, which made Mario, who had been wandering around the neighborhood for several days, hesitate, and feared that if the development of the people on the east coast did not keep up, the profitability of the Southwestern Railway would also be overshadowed. Out of such concerns, Mario said that if Genoese capital wants to invest heavily in the southwest railway of the East Coast Republic, then there must be an additional clause in the agreement, that is, within three years after the official opening of the railway, the Genoese have the right to sell the entire railway to the East Coast for 60 million bank lira with interest, otherwise they will not invest because the uncertainty is too great.

The Council understood the concerns of the Genoese, and they sent a commissioner to explain to Mario the plans of the East Coasters, that they would arrange dense settlements along the railway line to take full advantage of the dividends brought by the railway to develop the inland areas, and the profit prospects of the South West Railway would be very promising. However, Mario obviously will not be fooled by the East Coasters, and he insists on adding the terms of the East Coast buyback of the Southwest Railroad to the agreement, otherwise they will definitely not invest in the Southwest Railroad.

After a few days of back and forth, on March 28, the Executive Committee finally agreed to the terms put forward by the Genoese, and then the two sides sent representatives to sit together and officially start joint venture negotiations for more than a dozen projects, including the Southwestern Railway. There can be no doubt, however, that the light of other projects has been completely overshadowed by the South-West Railway, a mega-project with a total investment of between 3,000 and 40,000,000 bank lires -- in which the Genoese would be responsible for recruiting laborers in the Old Continent and then going to the east coast to build the railway, and they would also be responsible for the wages and food and clothing of the laborers, which would be equivalent to building the railroad "with their own dry rations" -- which was not at all comparable to the "small projects" of hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lire.

The negotiations lasted about a month, and on April 30, the day before the opening of the Qingdao Autumn Commodity Fair, a preliminary agreement was finally reached, and the Genoese were also very sincere in transferring one million lire to the account of the East Coaster through the Qingdao branch of the Banco de la Plata, as a preliminary investment in some projects. As for the much-talked-about Southwest Rail project, Mario said he still needs to return to Europe to negotiate with various families, and that raising such a large amount of money will not be completed in a short time, so he estimates that the most optimistic scenario is a second round of negotiations with the East Coasters before the end of this year. (To be continued)