China's railways began in the late Qing Dynasty. The Qing government was corrupt and conservative, 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. This is the first locomotive made in the history of China.
Another way of saying it is that the first train in China was made by the wife of Bonet, an Englishman who was then the chief engineer of Tang Xu Railway, imitating the steam locomotive rocket made by the famous British George Stevenson, and named it China Rocket. But China workers carved a dragon on each side of the locomotive, so they called it "Dragon" locomotive.
Because the words "China Rocket" and the symbol of the dragon can be clearly seen in the photo, later generations always think that this is the first locomotive made in China. However, as can be seen from the remaining pictures, this locomotive is well designed and well made. How can it be compared with the "monster" made of waste materials?
The chimney of the locomotive is thin and tall, and the chimney is thick and short; In front of the water tanks on both sides of the locomotive, one has shoe-shaped blocks and the other does not; On the cab, one is marked № 1, and the other is marked with a circle ... because of its age.