As we all know, most of China’s railways during the late Qing Dynasty were built by foreigners. If the Qing government wanted to build railways, it had to borrow money from companies established by foreign powers. The interest rates were appallingly high. The first independently constructed railway in my country is the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway. ?According to the "Manuscript of Qing History": ?The Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway was built with the remaining profits from Beijing. Zhan Tianyou worked on it personally, not pretending to be an outsider at all, and allowing China to build its own way. ?

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In the 31st year of Guangxu (AD 1905), Yuan Shikai reported to the court and requested the construction of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway. The Qing government immediately approved it and allocated one million taels. To finance the construction of railways. Soon after, Yuan Shikai once again requested the Qing government to add an additional 300,000 taels per year on the original basis, citing insufficient funds. The court agreed, and the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway officially started construction.

So, why did the Qing Dynasty agree to build the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway so readily? In fact, the Qing court had already had this intention.

▲Old photos of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway

In the 26th year of Guangxu (AD 1900), the Gengzi Incident broke out. In the same year, the Eight-Power Allied Forces proposed the "Xinchou Treaty", which was forced by the great powers. With artillery fire, the Qing Dynasty could only be forced to sign. In the twenty-seventh year of Guangxu (AD 1901), the Qing government felt that the end was approaching and urgently sought reform. The Qing court began to usher in the most thorough reform in feudal history, known in history as the Gengzi Reform. . ?The content of the reform involves a series of systematic changes and adjustments in military, education, medical care, law, business, society and other aspects.

The construction of railways naturally became one of the reforms.

▲The Eight-Power Allied Forces captured the Imperial City (Japanese painting)

02

In the 31st year of Guangxu (1905 AD), Yuan Shikai appointed Zhan Tianyou as the governor of Beijing and Zhangjiakou The chief railway designer began the formal construction of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway. The Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway starts from Fengtai, Beijing, connects Juyongguan and Badaling, ends at Shacheng and Xuanhua, Hebei, and ends at Zhangjiakou, with a total length of more than 200 kilometers. With the technical means at the time, it was very difficult to build this railway. Many difficulties were encountered during the process, which made the railway construction work last for a long time.

In the construction process of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, the most difficult level was the Qinglongqiao Station Herringbone Railway built to overcome the height difference between Nankou and Badaling.

▲Old photos of Qinglongqiao Station

At that time, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway had to pass through countless mountains in order to go north from the south entrance. According to the international construction calculation method, for every one meter of railway elevation, it has to pass through a hundred meters of slope.

However, if you wanted to pass through this area at that time, you had to build a ten-kilometer long road. The slope makes it impossible for trains to make turns through the roundabout without repairs. In addition, there is another important reason.

Even if the train turns around, it will not be able to rush up the slope due to insufficient distance. This suddenly stumped all the construction workers. Due to the construction schedule and funding problems, there was no time to choose another route.

In order to shorten the distance and save the limited funds, after thinking about it, Zhan Tianyou designed the herringbone railway. ?

▲Old photos of Zhan Tianyou

If we turn the "人" character 90 degrees to the right, we can get the appearance of the railway that built this section of the road at that time.

If you want to pass here, you have to build a big curve, and Zhan Tianyou decided to extend a short circuit at the curve, forming a herringbone. This extra short circuit is our The well-known "Qinglong Bridge Station". In this way, when the train going north to Badaling reaches the south entrance, it uses two locomotives, one pulling in the front and one pushing in the back. When we arrived at Qinglongqiao Station, we reversed course. The front of the car that was originally pulling began to push, and the front of the car that was originally pushing began to pull. In this way, the train does not have to turn, which saves distance and time.

The two locomotives naturally make the train more powerful, making it easy to climb hills.

▲Recent photos of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway herringbone railway

A hundred years ago, the Qing Dynasty spent millions of taels of silver to build the Qinglongqiao Station Herringbone Railway, which shocked countless engineers at home and abroad at the time , people have praised Zhan Tianyou for being bold, careful, excellent and smart, which also makes the saying that "China cannot build a railway" become less and less popular. In the first year of Xuantong in the Qing Dynasty (1909), the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway was officially completed and opened to traffic. So far, the first railway independently built by the Chinese was officially written into the history books. Those great powers that had been mocking China for not being able to build a railway also closed their eyes. mouth.

One hundred years have passed by in a blink of an eye. What is the situation of the herringbone railway now?

▲Recent photos of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway

In 2008, the Capital Museum announced that Qinglongqiao Station would be designated as an industrial heritage of Beijing. In the same year, Qinglongqiao Station ceased operations. In 2013, Qinglongqiao Station was established as a national key cultural relic protection unit. In 2009, it was exactly 100 years since the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway was opened. To commemorate this historic day, many tourist themes were developed along the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, and the relics preserved along the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway were even declared as cultural relics protection units. In 2019, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway, the sister railway of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, was officially completed and opened to traffic.