In the history of railway development, Britain's front-row leader, after the first industrial revolution, the West officially entered the era of steam engines, on September 27, 1825, the world's first railway to run steam engines, Stockton-Darlington Railway was officially opened.
Under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, the Western powers looked around for colonies that could be expanded, because the Qing Dynasty missed the Industrial Revolution, it was considered to have suffered a lot, but Li Hongzhang and others were also aware of the power of science and technology, and set off a foreign affairs movement, one of which was the foreign affairs movement, among the modern international students, there were also many famous figures, and Zhan Tianyou, the father of the railway, was one of them.
Zhan Tianyou went to the United States at the age of 12 to study civil engineering, studied civil engineering at Yale University, in 1881 due to changes in the pattern of the Qing government, students studying in the United States ended their American study careers in advance, when only Zhan Tianyou and Ouyang Geng completed their studies, after returning to China, Zhan Tianyou was sent to work in the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau, and later entered the Tianjin Railway Company as a help engineer under the introduction of classmates.
At that time, China's first railway was built by the British, and the tariffs were in the hands of the British, but many merchants in the Qing Dynasty had eaten a lot of profits on the railway, so they asked the imperial court to invest in the construction of the Beijing-Zhang Railway, and the British and Russia also wanted to get involved.
But the two countries have been arguing, neither of them will let go, and finally had to agree to let the Qing court build it itself, when Beijing to Zhangjiakou, two hundred kilometers apart, the terrain is dangerous, the mountain shape is complex, even the British and Russians find it very difficult to build, the Qing government is also sent to Zhan Tianyou, who has the most experience in building railways at that time.
In order to show britain and Russia that its national strength is not weaker than theirs, the Qing court directly allocated 5 million silver to Zhan Tianyou, so that Zhan Tianyou would build the railway no matter what, and it was much more difficult to repair the railway than it said, and the Beijing-Zhang Railway was going to go north from the south entrance, and the slope was very large.
Every meter of the railway rises, it has to go through a 100-meter slope, the train can not climb up the steep hillside, in order to solve this problem, can only use the extension of the distance to slow down the slope of the line, but due to limited funds, in order to reduce the cost, Zhan Tianyou boldly adopted the "human" shaped railway.
At the same time, in order to be safe and stable, when the train drove to the south exit, it switched to two locomotives, one pulled in front and one pushed in the back, this bold design successfully built the Beijing-Zhang Railway, but the construction of the railway was far more expensive than Zhan Tianyou thought, and finally the Qing court allocated a total of 6.93 million silver.
Such a large amount of money was one-tenth of the Treasury of the Qing court at that time, and the huge amount of money allocated by the Qing court was also a sign of determination to build the railway, and as for this herringbone railway, after more than a hundred years of passage, it was also selected into the List of Industrial Heritage Protection of China.