When Xu Haoyang, Ziegel and several major technical workers came out of the production workshop, the students who were waiting aside gave them flowers and set off the banner of "successful opening of the furnace".

Xu Haoyang and Ziggy returned to the rostrum amid the warm applause of everyone and officially announced the successful launch of the No. 1 blast furnace. Xia Bohai, Qin Zheng and others shook hands with them one by one and congratulated them. Xia Bohai also delivered a speech on behalf of the East China government, highly praised all the employees of Qingdao Steel Plant and German experts, so that the East China government can finally produce steel by itself and no longer rely on imports. They also encouraged them to continue to work hard and produce more and better steel, making greater contributions to the East China government's five-year plan and industrial construction.

Then Xia Bohai and others visited the blast furnace production workshop and visited the workers on the front line. They also listened to Xu Haoyang and Ziegel's introduction to the production situation of the steel plant. The first time the iron was released was about 30 tons, of which 20 tons would be made in the open furnace together with a part of the scrap steel. In this way, the steelmaking effect of the open furnace was also tested. The other 10 tons were cast into iron ingots. On the one hand, the components were analyzed, and on the other hand, some iron products were cast to test the quality of the refining.

At this time, most of the molten iron had flowed into the open furnace workshop, and some were injected into the molds of the iron ingots in the casting workshop, waiting to cool down and condense into the iron ingots. Of course, at this time, the hot waves of molten iron were still in full swing.

After the iron in the blast furnace is released, the work is not over yet, because after the blast furnace iron is smelted, two by-products can be obtained. One is blast furnace gas, which contains about 30% carbon monoxide, which can be used for self-use gas in the metallurgical industry or for civil use, which can reduce energy consumption and increase resource utilization, so it has great recycling value. However, at the end of iron smelting, the blast furnace gas contains a large amount of dust, which must be purified before it can be transported and used. However, in this era, there is no better purification method, and it can only rely on the natural settlement of dust. It takes a while before the blast furnace gas can be extracted from the blast furnace and used in storage equipment.

Another by-product is waste slag, which is the best material for the production of high-quality cement and concrete. Of course, it cannot be given up. Therefore, after the blast furnace iron is smelted, it takes 4 or 5 days to clean and recycle the by-products before it can be put into production again.

After the celebration, everyone had lunch in the canteen of the steel factory. Xia Bohai, Qin Zheng and others returned to the administrative district to work. In the afternoon, Zhan Tianyou was accompanied by Lu Hong, the Industrial and Mining Energy Commission, and visited the Sifang Factory.

It turned out that Sifang Factory was a railway factory established by Germany for Jiaoji Railway. It was also the contractor of Jiaoji Railway. It was responsible for manufacturing, repairing locomotives, building railway projects and supporting facilities, as well as the research and development and testing of railways, locomotives, train steam engines, etc. At this time, the Sifang Factory was initially completed, covering an area of ​​about 25 acres. It now has an office building, production workshop warehouse, power room, locomotive garage, water tower, assembly spiral boiler, forging factory and other facilities, and it was directly connected to Sifang Station. There were more than 60 various mechanical equipment, 26 German experts and 327 Chinese employees.

Since this is a factory closely related to railway construction, Zhan Tianyou is still interested. He visited it very seriously. Now the Sifang factory is mainly divided into four production departments, namely locomotive assembly, maintenance department, steam engine department, track accessories department, and railway engineering department. Among them, locomotive assembly, maintenance department is the largest, and all trains are assembled here.

According to the agreement reached between the Crossover and Germany, Germany will provide all the components of the 6 locomotives to the Crossover and complete the assembly in Qingdao. This is a low redemption fee. In addition, the Crossover also purchased 12 train steam engines and boilers and prepared to build other parts of the locomotives by themselves. German engineers provide guidance. After all, the construction of the Locomotive is a steam engine and boiler, and other parts are not difficult.

Lu Hong introduced that the locomotives, steam engines, boilers, etc. provided by Germany to crossers are the most popular products in Germany at present, with mature and practical technology. The total weight of the locomotive is about 1.5 tons and the total power is 1,000 watts. Theoretically, it can drive a locomotive of about 120 tons to drive at a speed of 40-50 kilometers per hour, but generally the locomotives are not more than 100 tons, the speed does not exceed 30 kilometers per hour, and the actual cargo volume is about 50-60 tons. But for now, it is completely sufficient.

At this time, Sifang Factory had assembled 4 steam locomotives, 32 passenger carriages and 40 truck carriages, all of which were used for railway operations that the Jiaoji Railway has now been opened. At this time, two locomotives were assembled in the factory, and one locomotive was undergoing daily maintenance in the factory.

The current work of the Steam Engine Department is mainly to disassemble the steam engine and boiler provided by Germany, understand the composition and operating principles of the steam engine, and conduct surveying, mapping, drawing, and preparing for the next step of imitation.

Here, Zhan Tianyou also looked at the students who came with him, as well as more than 100 younger students, surrounded by a steam car in a half-disassembled state, and listened carefully to a German engineer's explanation. Almost everyone was recording with a small notebook. Lu Hong introduced to Zhan Tianyou that these were students of the Hope School run by the East China government. They had been studying for a year and were here to take practical classes today. Zhan Tianyou was also quite shocked. Although the Qing court also opened some new schools, there were very few teaching like this. It seems that overseas Chinese have begun to cultivate the next generation of talents.

The track accessories department is used to produce accessories required for railway construction, mainly rails, sleepers, train seats and other equipment outsourced to other factories, and is not produced in Sifang Factory. Now the rails required by the East China government are purchased from Hanyang Iron Factory, which also makes Hanyang Iron Factory a big profit.

In the old time and space, for a long time, the rails produced by the Hanyang Iron Factory were usually considered to be of low quality. Ye Jingkui, a famous industrialist in the Republic of China, said in "Stories about the History of the Origin of Han Yeping" that "foreign railways everywhere tested the railways, saying that the Hanyang Iron Factory's rails were absolutely unavailable." Also, when the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway was built, the [Inspection Report] issued by the Hanyang Iron Factory in the UK, the [Inspection Report] of the rails produced by the Hanyang Iron Factory was believed that the rails produced by the Hanyang Iron Factory were too low in carbon content, which was difficult to last for long, and the phosphorus content was too much, causing the risk of fracture. Therefore, the rail samples sent by the Hanyang Iron Factory were unqualified. These two cases were also widely cited by later historical books as proof of the low quality of the rails produced by the Hanyang Iron Factory.

Some people also believe that this is because the iron ore of the Daye mine used by the Hanyang Iron Plant contains too much phosphorus. However, Japan has been signing a purchase contract with China since 1899 and purchasing iron ore in large quantities. Is it true that the Japanese are smart enough to know that the iron ore contains too high phosphorus? It turns out that the Japanese imports iron ore are very harsh. They stipulate the ratio of phosphorus in the purchase contract. They also sent special personnel to conduct strict testing. Three copies of each batch of ore must be extracted, and China and Japan jointly tested it. If there are controversies, they even asked a third party to test it. However, this also shows that Daye iron ore can still produce high-quality iron ore.

Moreover, the smelting technology and dephosphorization technology of this era are not high-end technology. Whether it is a flat furnace or a converter, there are relatively mature and reliable dephosphorization technology. Therefore, the quality of iron ore phosphorus content that leads to the rails is not high, and it may not be correct.

Zheng Guanying mentioned in the "Sixty Articles on the Iron Factory": "If you want to purchase from the Hubei Factory, the employees must be picky and nitpicking, and borrow words to buy and profit for personal gain." This shows that foreign countries are tampering with quality inspections in order to control China's various rights to build railways, which has caused the Hanyang Iron Factory rails to be excluded. This can be introduced, and the inspection results cannot prove the true quality of the Hanyang rails.

Moreover, in the era of the time travelers, the rails produced by the Hanyang Iron Factory, which were discovered in Lueyang, Shaanxi, Hengyang, Hunan, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, and Dazhou, Sichuan, were still available after more than a hundred years. This also shows that the quality of the rails produced by the Hanyang Iron Factory is not bad, and at least some of the rails have good quality. Therefore, the crossers dared to purchase rails from the Hanyang Iron Factory, and of course they also had to strictly inspect the purchased rails. For this reason, two sets of inspection equipment were specially purchased from Germany.

In addition to rails, another important accessory for building railways is the sleepers, because sleepers must not only fix the position of the rails, but also transmit the huge pressure transmitted by the rails to the track bed. Therefore, they cannot help but have sufficient firmness, and must have a certain degree of flexibility and elasticity. In this era, sleepers generally use wood and are made of a small amount of reinforced concrete.

The advantages of wooden sleepers are that they are elastic, easy to process and easy to use. Therefore, since the railway was established, wooden sleepers have been the main type of sleepers. However, the disadvantages of wooden sleepers are also very clear and wet. Not only do they need to use a large amount of high-quality wood, but their service life is also very short. Even if the anti-corrosion treatment of wooden sleepers does not last more than 15 years.

The advantages of reinforced concrete sleepers are extremely obvious: they have long service life, high stability, small maintenance workload, and much lower damage rate and scrap rate than wooden sleepers. The disadvantage is that they have a large self-weight, so they have a high settlement rate, which requires hardening process processing on the roadbed, long construction cycles in the early stage, high investment costs, and a large amount of steel is required.

Overall, reinforced concrete sleepers are of course the development trend of railway construction. Since it accounted for more than 90% of the sleepers used after World War II, but in this era, since the output of cement and steel is not high, countries around the world still mainly use wooden sleepers.

The choice of crossers is to use reinforced concrete sleepers in the train station, and wooden sleepers on general roads. Because the vehicles in the train station are frequently dispatched and the traffic density is high, loading and cargo are also completed inside the station. Moreover, because the railway distance in the train station is short and there are a large number of buildings, the foundation must be hardened, so it is more suitable for reinforced concrete sleepers. However, the use of reinforced concrete sleepers on general roads is large, but the traffic is not large, so wooden sleepers are used to reduce costs.

At this time, a large number of steel rails, wooden sleepers, and reinforced concrete sleepers were stored in the warehouse of the track accessories department. In the production workshop, various sleepers and other spare parts were also being produced.
Chapter completed!