I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 811 - 709: Passenger Train

In the train manufacturing plant of Jianning, Chen Xin was having a meeting with the people from the factory.

The discussion topic was still about the manufacturing and design of nuclear-powered locomotives. Apart from the gradual restoration of domestic railway passenger transport by the state, the key issue Chen Xin’s team focused on was the train formation after the Eurasian railway is completed.

"Currently, the Eurasian railway’s primary demand is still in the freight logistics sector, so the most demanded are general container freight cars, open wagons for bulk goods, refrigerated cars for transporting frozen food, hopper cars for coal and grain, and tank cars for liquids like gasoline." A staff member was holding a report, explaining to the attendees, "Among these, the demand for container freight cars is the highest, and hopper cars are also in great need, while others..."

The staff member’s explanation was quite long-winded and involved a lot of technical details. While the other participants might have been listening very attentively and earnestly, for Chen Xin, he only paid partial attention since most of it was not directly related to him.

This inevitably led to his mind wandering as he contemplated the situation in Europe.

Regarding the situation in Europe, Chen Xin was undoubtedly quite familiar. After all, most of the goods Europe could supply to the domestic market were produced under his management.

Currently, Europe’s main exports to the domestic market are still various ores and industrial raw materials like crude oil, while the domestic exports to Europe mainly consist of foreign trade munitions, some food, and living supplies.

Previously, when the freight "Land Ship" traveled from the domestic market to Europe, containers were mainly used for loading, but on the return journey from Europe, it was not suitable to load goods in containers.

After all, most of them are bulk ores, and using containers would easily cause damage to them.

So the solution at that time was to preliminarily refine the ores, extract them into ingots, and then load them into containers.

But even so, it was still very inconvenient, and Chen Xin had to design a versatile cargo box to solve the issue.

As for the later restoration of the oil field in the North Sea, the oil products also faced the same problem. Fortunately, the production was low at that time, and most of it was supplied for the European Defense Line’s logistics needs, with only a portion being barreled and transported back domestically.

However, transporting barrels undoubtedly greatly increased transportation costs and reduced the volume. If it hadn’t been for the low volume at that time, Chen Xin would have considered building two oil transport "Land Ships" to specifically transport oil back to the country.

But now, listening to the staff member’s introduction, it seems they plan to use tank cars for transportation.

In this regard, Chen Xin was indifferent.

In terms of transportation, tank cars can certainly be used for transporting oil products, but they are best used for transporting refined oil because the transportation volume of tank cars is too low when used for transporting crude oil.

Generally, common tank cars have a load capacity of about 50-70 tons, and the volume is about 50-70 cubic meters. Even if we calculate using a train with one hundred tanks, a train can only carry a few thousand tons of refined oil.

Although it sounds like a lot, it is not much. Even using the largest 120 cubic meter long tank car would only carry ten thousand tons.

And obviously, it is impossible for a train with more than a hundred carriages to be all tank cars.

So in comparison, ships, being large-volume transport tools, are more powerful and cost-effective. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

This is why, in the past, for transporting crude oil and refined oil, besides using tankers, pipelines were more commonly used, and trains were used less frequently.

Thinking of this, Chen Xin suddenly felt he might reuse those tankers. After all, like other ships, most of them are now frozen in the port. If left unattended, they could remain untouched for hundreds of years or be dismantled into scrap steel.

However, while Chen Xin was pondering these issues, the staff suddenly mentioned a topic that piqued his interest.

"According to Europe’s requirements, they hope to open passenger trains between them and our country. Although the state has not agreed to this matter, the Ministry of Railways requires us to come up with a feasible design proposal." The staff member explained to the meeting participants.

Upon hearing this, Chen Xin asked, "Does Europe want to open passenger trains? Are they planning to flee?"

"We don’t know that. The Ministry of Railways just asked us to come up with a passenger train design proposal." The staff member, who was also curious about this question, obviously had no answer.

Chen Xin could answer the question himself. He just asked casually, and since no one answered, he didn’t mind and raised another question: "Passenger trains are indeed a very important issue. Not only is there interest in opening European routes, but the state is also inclined to restore domestic passenger transportation routes. Do you now have a mature passenger train design?"

After asking this question, Chen Xin looked at the staff from the train manufacturing plant with a hint of anticipation.

Chen Xin had previously toured the nuclear-powered train still in testing, which included passenger carriages, but that was years ago, and what the train manufacturing plant had was just a conceptual design proposal.

Moreover, due to the limited number of nuclear-powered locomotives at that time, these were prioritized for transporting essential materials, such as during the disaster relief in the Southwest Region and the relocation of people around Dongting Lake, where nuclear-powered locomotives served as mobile shelters.

Now, several years later, Chen Xin was very curious if they had produced a new, more practical design.

The staff did not disappoint Chen Xin’s expectations. They quickly presented a design proposal for the passenger train.

"Currently, the passenger carriages we have that can be grouped with nuclear-powered locomotives mainly fall into two categories: hard-seat carriages for short-distance use and hard-sleeper carriages for long-distance use, along with supporting functional carriages. With the current level of technology, producing a feasible proposal is not an issue." The staff member explained to Chen Xin and displayed various functional carriages one by one: "These functional carriages result from our researchers and designers’ hard work over the years. Considering the requirement is for long-distance passenger journeys to Europe, the train formations should focus more on logistical support content. After all, without supplies for thousands of kilometers, the train might hold up, but the people won’t.

Furthermore, we need to consider the snow removal issue. Thousands of kilometers of rail, if we encounter snow-covered sections, it will be a very troublesome matter..."