GBP #498 - The infrastructure maniac is sweeping the world
#498 - The infrastructure maniac is sweeping the world
The Rhodesia overseas railway trunk line quickly finalized the route plan and the Dongda's latest internal combustion engine traction locomotive plan. According to the previous estimate, the line from Chawuma to Beira basically covers the ore transportation and the most densely populated areas of Rhodesia, with a not very large increase in overall length.
With Dongda's latest internal combustion engine heavy-duty train traction locomotive, each heavy-duty ore transportation train in the future can pull 10,000 tons, with a speed of 80 kilometers per hour, and the transportation time from Chawuma to Beira is basically shortened to within one day.
In terms of passenger transportation, the latest internal combustion engine passenger traction locomotive from Dongda can reach a maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour, basically achieving rapid railway transportation on flat and straight sections. Although it is still a distance away from high-speed rail, this is a groundbreaking event for Rhodesia.
A higher speed would not be cost-effective, because this railway needs to take into account both heavy-duty transportation and passenger and freight transportation, and the investment cost is limited, and the local infrastructure in Rhodesia is not very perfect.
The planning and construction of the railway, according to 120 kilometers per hour, is already quite advanced, which is a level that even the main world has not yet reached.
It is only under the condition that labor costs are not particularly expensive now that Ren Zhong and Ding Wei can come up with this plan. After all, in this era, the construction cost of 10,000-ton heavy-duty railway tracks that can reach 80 kilometers per hour is much higher than that of ordinary railway tracks.
However, for copper ore transportation, the efficiency cannot be improved without heavy-duty railways. One 10,000-ton heavy-duty train is equivalent to more than three ordinary trains. In the current environment of Rhodesia, the single-track railway built according to the one-day standard can only run a maximum of 5 trains a day. Without 10,000-ton heavy-duty railway tracks, the annual transportation capacity may be difficult to reach one million tons.
After all, more passenger and freight trains need to be interspersed in the middle to meet the needs of personnel transportation and cannot be completely used for ore transportation. According to the current plan, the heavy-duty train is basically designed according to one shift per day, and the annual limit can transport more than 3 million tons of ore, which can roughly match the future ore production capacity of the northern copper mines in Rhodesia for at least ten years.
Compared with Nigeria's 30 million-ton double-track iron ore heavy-duty railway, the transportation capacity of Rhodesia's overseas railway trunk line is much smaller.
However, relatively speaking, the mileage of the railway in Nigeria is also much shorter, and the planned production capacity of iron ore is also much larger. It is because Dongda successfully demonstrated this plan in Nigeria.
Sir Philip only had the idea of Ding Wei. After all, Dongda's work is really swift and decisive, and it has a good reputation in the financial circle of Misty Capital. Now that Nigeria's iron ore production capacity has completed the most important 10 million-ton level, this heavy-duty railway has begun to generate benefits. The overall investment is almost 200 million pounds for the Nigerian heavy-duty railway, and the freight revenue has now exceeded the level of 10 million pounds per year, with a profit of several million pounds. When the iron ore production capacity fully reaches the design level of 30 million tons, the Misty Capital financial circle estimates that the annual profit of this railway only from ore transportation will exceed 10 million pounds without any problem.
The interspersed passenger transportation is just the icing on the cake, but now Nigeria is so poor that no one comes to take the railway, such an efficient and comfortable means of transportation.
However, with the exploitation of iron ore, Nigeria's local fiscal revenue has greatly improved, and the local economy has begun to leap forward. The completion of the railway has made the export of local specialties too convenient. Nigeria's economy is completely achieving double-digit growth along the railway line.
Not to mention anything else, even the plantations, now with the railway, a large number of Nigeria's undeveloped land has not only become Dongda's plantations, but John Bull's insightful people have also begun to imitate Dongda's plantation model and start opening plantations here, using the same mechanized farming and hybridization technology as Dongda, and soon turned Nigeria into another important factory area for food exports.
After all, the climate here is stronger for planting than in Rhodesia, and the local population density is also much larger, and the consumption capacity and the sufficiency of human resources are several times stronger than in Rhodesia.
Sir Philip is an old John Bull aristocrat and also a pragmatist. After he saw the construction speed and yield per mu of Dongda's plantation with Ding Wei in Rhodesia, he completely dispelled his doubts about Dongda.
After comparing and inspecting the railway construction and mine construction in Nigeria, the old jazz believed that the economic take-off miracle in Nigeria can be completely replicated in Rhodesia.
Because northern Rhodesia has more valuable copper mineral resources, it only needs a railway to transport these resources out.
With the common economic interests involved, the progress of the entire work was very fast. The railway planning line from Lusaka to Beira had actually been designed before. After the railway planning experts from Dongda took a plane to conduct aerial surveys, they believed that there was no major problem with the planning of this railway. Most of the area is a plain area, and the geological structure is stable, which is very beneficial for the construction of heavy-duty railways. Except for the higher challenges in the mountainous area near Harare, and the softer geological structure near Beira after leaving the mountain from Harare, the geological conditions in most of the remaining areas are good, and the cost is not high.
So the southern line from Lusaka to Beira basically remains unchanged.
On the northern line, the route from Chawuma to Lusaka, the two sides argued for a while.
According to Sir Philip's idea, the southern line from Mongu to Selanga, Kadima Loya, and Livingstone to Lusaka covers more than twice the population of the northern line from Mongu, Kamao, and Mumbwa to Lusaka, which may be more beneficial for future passenger transportation, and it is also convenient to connect these densely populated areas in northern Rhodesia.
However, doing so will not only increase the railway mileage a lot, but also make the terrain more complicated, and the technical difficulty of building heavy-duty railway tracks will also be greater, which is very unfavorable for ore export.
Therefore, after comparing the designs of the two routes, the railway planning experts from Dongda suggested that a light-duty passenger line should be built on the southern line in the future. If it is built according to the standard of 80 kilometers per hour, the construction cost will be at least half less than the current 10,000-ton heavy-duty line, but in terms of use, it can also well connect the population of these areas with Lusaka, the regional administrative center.
This can be rebuilt in the future.
The northern line is the best option for a heavy-duty line that is as straight as possible.
After some bargaining, the southern line plan was shelved and is expected to be built within ten years after the completion of the overseas trunk line.
In this way, the planning work was completed in 3 months for surveying and planning, and the 1680-kilometer railway line is now divided into fifteen sections and has started bidding at the same time!
According to the agreement reached between Ding Wei and Sir Philip, this time it may be necessary to mobilize hundreds of thousands of laborers locally, absorbing all of Rhodesia's idle labor force at once.
Although these black fellows are illiterate, the initial management will be difficult. However, Dongda's builders are not daunted. They quickly divided the people into project engineering teams according to different types of work. The team leader is appointed by Dongda, while the deputy team leader is selected from among the local workers with prestige.
They also conduct weekly literacy education to enable these black workers to master basic listening and speaking skills (in both Chinese and English). For those who perform well and are quick-witted, Dongda even absorbs them and starts technical training in vehicle driving and engineering machinery operation.
For the Dongda engineering teams, who have no great ambitions, they are not at all worried that they will have nothing to do after teaching these black apprentices. They simply regard improving the skills of these work partners as a responsibility.
Due to the close cooperation between Sir Philip and the Dongda Engineering Construction Department, Sir Philip fully agreed to Dongda's quasi-military management and training measures for the originally undisciplined tribal employees. Therefore, Dongda resolutely eliminates those who completely disobey management and are lazy and loaf around. After all, the opportunity to work on this construction project is also very rare for these black fellows. Although the wages are not high, there is definitely no job in the local area that can earn more money than this.
Working hard on the construction site for a year is at least equivalent to more than two years of income from farming the land!
Because Dongda is now planting grain in Rhodesia, the local grain prices are very stable. The money earned on the construction site can at least buy them the yield they would not get from farming for two years!
Thanks to Dongda's literacy activities and institutionalized management, not only has the speed of engineering construction been greatly promoted, allowing the black fellows participating in the construction to have the ability to listen and speak Chinese and English, but they have also been exposed to some of Dongda's planting skills, promoting hybrid technology, and even organizing them to visit Dongda's plantations. In this way, these black fellows, who were originally confined to their tribes and knew nothing, discovered that there are such wonderful planting methods outside that can produce more grain with less land.
This can also be regarded as driving the agricultural planting technology level in this area in addition to railway construction, opening up a new possibility for the future life of these local tribal black fellows, so that they will not fall back into their original poverty after the railway is completed.
Sir Philip and his people were initially very wary of Dongda's literacy classes, but after sending people to listen in depth many times, they were finally relieved. Dongda is doing what they have always wanted to do but simply cannot do.
Moreover, after being able to understand basic Dongda language and English, the management of these workers became more orderly. There was no need for clumsy translations with the management, and the arrangement of work and on-site command became smoother.
This has further accelerated the construction of the railway. The railway line, which was originally planned to be completed in two years, now looks like it will be completed ahead of schedule.
This has made the construction of the mine, which is Sir Philip's responsibility, somewhat unable to keep up with the speed, and he had to find Ding Wei to request assistance.
Because Dongda also has very mature experience and complete sets of mining and excavation machinery and equipment in Nigeria, Ding Wei took this opportunity to promote tens of millions worth of mining machinery and equipment for Dongda.
Although Rhodesia and Sir Philip really do not have the ability to pay this money immediately, there is no hurry. Ding Wei and his people directly agreed to use the ore to offset the future copper mine mining according to the current market price of copper, and they did not even charge them interest.
How could Sir Philip refuse such a win-win situation? The entire development of Rhodesia was carried out in full swing under the joint efforts of Dongda and John Bull.
Thanks to the participation of Dongda's infrastructure maniacs and the existing demonstration case in Nigeria, the financing of the Rhodesian railway in the financial market was very smooth. Only two rounds of convertible bonds were issued, and 100 million pounds of East African Railway shares were sold, turning into a continuous stream of construction materials sent to Rhodesia.
According to the agreement reached privately between Sir Philip and Ding Wei, most of the steel for this railway came from Dongda, because in terms of price, Dongda's rails were about 15% cheaper than those of John Bull.
However, in terms of cement and railway signal systems, these orders were given to the consortium behind Sir Philip, giving these John Bull consortiums a chance to share the pie.
However, Ding Wei quickly discovered that a large part of the signal system orders fell into the hands of Goldenstar, and the source semiconductors still came from Dongda!
It is equivalent to the fact that most of the materials purchased for the construction of this railway, the big cake, were eaten by Dongda this time.
In this way, looking at the overall situation, Dongda's concessions in terms of factory costs for building this railway not only did not result in a loss, but also earned back more from the material costs.
For the enterprises on Dongda's domestic railway industry chain, the engineering machinery and railway construction materials have received many large orders this time. From Nigeria to Rhodesia, they have directly eaten a lot of big cakes from these overseas projects. After all, this is a construction scale of nearly 3,000 kilometers.
Even in China, this is a very large number. After all, China is now building at a rate of about 10,000 kilometers per year.
It is precisely because of these exceptional benefits that Ren Zhong actively advocates that infrastructure should begin to move towards overseas markets. Due to Dongda's good image of not competing or grabbing in the current overseas market, coupled with the fact that the things they do are public welfare and basic, Western powers have no advantage in competing with Dongda.
However, for Dongda, these are not only to solve a part of the overflowing infrastructure capacity, but also to create conditions for Dongda's infrastructure industry chain to go abroad.
If the Rhodesian railway project continues to be successful, for infrastructure construction in Black Africa, Dongda is equivalent to establishing two shining infrastructure business cards!
(End of this chapter)