China's railways began in the late Qing Dynasty. However, the Qing government was corrupt, conservative and autocratic, only obeying the rules of ancestors and refusing to accept new things. They regard the construction of railways and the application of steam locomotives as "strange skills and cunning" and think that the construction of railways will "damage me, harm my land and hinder my feng shui", so they stubbornly refuse to build railways.
1On July 3, 876, the first commercial railway in China, Shanghai Wusong Railway, was built without authorization on the land of China. Jardine Matheson, the British agent in China, pretended to build an "ordinary road" from Wusong to Shanghai and opened to traffic.
Subsequently, the Qing government paid 285,000 yuan to redeem the railway in three phases and demolished it. 1879, Li Hongzhang, the leader of the Westernization School, invited to build a railway from Tangshan to Beitang in order to transport the coal from Tangshan Kaiping Coal Mine to Tianjin.
The Qing government decided to shorten the railway on the grounds that the locomotive "injured crops and shook the grave", and only built a section from Tangshan to Xugezhuang, and dug a canal between Xugezhuang and Lutai to connect the thistle canal to Beitangkou. In order to prevent the locomotive from shaking the grave, it was decided to pull the cart with mules and horses.
However, using mules and horses to pull carts can not give full play to the due utility of railways. 188 1 when Tang Xu railway was opened to traffic, China workers successfully trial-produced 0-3-0 steam locomotive by using some design drawings of British Jinda, who was still an engineer at that time, and using old materials such as mine crane boiler and vertical shaft frame trough iron.
Note: 1937, Qiantang River Bridge, the first double-deck railway and highway bridge designed and built by China, was completed. The bridge was designed and built by Dr. Mao Yisheng, a contemporary bridge expert. However, less than two months after its completion, Hangzhou was captured by the Japanese army. In order to cut off the transportation hub, Mao Yisheng had to blow up the bridge which took three years to build. Due to frequent wars and the influence of external forces during the Republic of China, the development of China railway was slow during this period.
In the early 1950s, the new China government decided to fill the gap in the western railway and began to build the chengdu-chongqing railway from Chengdu to Chongqing. /kloc-0 started construction in June, 1950, and/kloc-0 was opened to traffic in June, 1952, becoming the first railway built after liberation.
Baoji-chengdu railway is the first electrified railway in China. July 1952 started in Chengdu, July 1958 was completed and opened to traffic, and July 1975 completed the railway electrification project.
Chengdu-kunming railway, with a total length of1100km, was originally a key project in the construction of the third defense line. This arduous and magnificent project won the "special award for scientific and technological progress" issued by the state.