Less expensive than shipping be air and faster than the slow boat from China, eighteen days for containers from the consumer goods mfg region Hunan to Germany.
http://www.ecns.cn/business/2014/10-17/138939.shtml
BTW news like that show up when on adds CN Rail to Google Alerts, in this case CN as in Chinese National. 
Gee, did they have to build a new railroad, or did they use the trans-Siberian railroad? Its almost like railroads are a new idea to them. Strange that they didn’t come up with this ideal years ago
David Maynard said:
Gee, did they have to build a new railroad, or did they use the trans-Siberian railroad? Its almost like railroads are a new idea to them. Strange that they didn’t come up with this ideal years ago
The Trans-Siberian is built to Russian 5’ 3" gauge, so it won’t take you to Europe.
I believe the Chinesse built a new rail link through to Tibet at our std gauge, and then the “-stans” added a couple of lines to link Tibet with eastern Europe. So you can send your HP laptop to Spain by train.
It’s all container freight, as far as I heard. No passengers - sounds like an opportunity to me. China-Orient-Express, anyone?
Note that it is not originally a Chinese idea…
This is a very nice example of cooperation between all the railway companies which are in the link. All of them a vital link to make it work.
Of course it’s only container traffic … until someone fits a full service B&B inside a 40 or 53 ft container. 
Pete Thornton said:
David Maynard said:
Gee, did they have to build a new railroad, or did they use the trans-Siberian railroad? Its almost like railroads are a new idea to them. Strange that they didn’t come up with this ideal years ago
The Trans-Siberian is built to Russian 5’ 3" gauge, so it won’t take you to Europe.
I believe the Chinesse built a new rail link through to Tibet at our std gauge, and then the “-stans” added a couple of lines to link Tibet with eastern Europe. So you can send your HP laptop to Spain by train.
It’s all container freight, as far as I heard. No passengers - sounds like an opportunity to me. China-Orient-Express, anyone?
I knew the Russian railroads were broad gauge, but the Chinese railroads were standard gauge. So “What gauge” was my next question.
Hans-Joerg Mueller said:
This is a very nice example of cooperation between all the railway companies which are in the link. All of them a vital link to make it work.
Of course it’s only container traffic … until someone fits a full service B&B inside a 40 or 53 ft container.
Surely you remember a few years back when the big immigration issue was Asian nationals getting shipped to the west coast in containers. Enter the container with food, water, seal it up and hope that 2-3 weeks later when the container arrived in the US you would still be alive.
The gauge difference will doom this idea. Same as it has for any sort of through service from Europe to Russia. Every train who’s final destination is inside Russia has to, for convenience sake, be containerized so it can be interchanged between gauges at the Rusky border, that means delays. Bulk items like liquids or coal that cannot be containerized will be very problematic as the only way to through-service them would be to retruck them, not an easy thing lifting a fully loaded coal car.
Vic Smith said:
The gauge difference will doom this idea. Same as it has for any sort of through service from Europe to Russia. Every train who’s final destination is inside Russia has to, for convenience sake, be containerized so it can be interchanged between gauges at the Rusky border, that means delays. Bulk items like liquids or coal that cannot be containerized will be very problematic as the only way to through-service them would be to retruck them, not an easy thing lifting a fully loaded coal car.
Vic,
they won’t be shipping coal or any of that other bulk stuff, it will be consumer goods, consumer goods and, yes , also consumer goods.
Vic, technology has advanced the gauge issue by Talgo and others using variable gauge technology by having rail trucks or bogies having variable wheels for both passenger and freight in Europe. It gets around the changing of trucks by lifting etc by having a unit that pushes the wheels out or in depending on the gauge. It is in operation in Spain, Poland/Ukraine and was proposed and may be in use for Germany and Russia…So the possibility of it being used to expand to all countries exists. It requires the train to go slowly through the gauge changer but is hours quicker than changing the trucks…
By the way, the Chinese are also suggesting the Bering Sea route to North America-an old idea from the 1890’s and even talked about in the 1990’s informally with Russia, Alaska/US and Canada…The Chinese have the technology and the money apparently…They are rather busy in building railways in Africa right now as well.
Myron
Russian gauge meeting Standard gauge[edit]- Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania (1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in)).
vs. Former Soviet Union countries: Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova (1,520 mm (4 ft 11 27⁄32 in)). Night trains are common, and they are often bogie-exchanged.
In North America you’ll be just fine.
tac
Myron Claridge said:
Vic, technology has advanced the gauge issue by Talgo and others using variable gauge technology by having rail trucks or bogies having variable wheels for both passenger and freight in Europe. It gets around the changing of trucks by lifting etc by having a unit that pushes the wheels out or in depending on the gauge. It is in operation in Spain, Poland/Ukraine and was proposed and may be in use for Germany and Russia…So the possibility of it being used to expand to all countries exists. It requires the train to go slowly through the gauge changer but is hours quicker than changing the trucks…
By the way, the Chinese are also suggesting the Bering Sea route to North America-an old idea from the 1890’s and even talked about in the 1990’s informally with Russia, Alaska/US and Canada…The Chinese have the technology and the money apparently…They are rather busy in building railways in Africa right now as well.
Myron
Gee, that idea is still around? It was outlawed in the us after a really nasty accident.
Vic Smith said:
The gauge difference will doom this idea. Same as it has for any sort of through service from Europe to Russia. Every train who’s final destination is inside Russia has to, for convenience sake, be containerized so it can be interchanged between gauges at the Rusky border, that means delays. Bulk items like liquids or coal that cannot be containerized will be very problematic as the only way to through-service them would be to retruck them, not an easy thing lifting a fully loaded coal car.
I don’t know how we got off on this tangent, but, as I initially commented, the China-Europe RR line is all stad gauge. No re-trucking or dual gauges.
Which is not to say there aren’t parts of the far east with dual gauge. HJ’s original post has a link to a diagram showing a red line through Russia to St Pete [broad gauge] and a blue line to Europe [std gauge].
And liquids and/or coal can be containerized. Lots of tanks with steel boxes around them get stacked - maybe not on trains - yet. Didn’t you hear that the Aussies send wine in plastic bags inside a container to the US, where it is bottled.
David Maynard said:
Myron Claridge said:
. . . .
By the way, the Chinese are also suggesting the Bering Sea route to North America-an old idea from the 1890’s and even talked about in the 1990’s informally with Russia, Alaska/US and Canada…The Chinese have the technology and the money apparently…They are rather busy in building railways in Africa right now as well.
Myron
Gee, that idea is still around? It was outlawed in the us after a really nasty accident.
Not sure what accident you are referring to, but yes, I’ve seen outline proposals for a bridge between Alaska and Russia over the Bering sea, plus a RR line through Central America so you can ship by train to North and South American destinations.
Of course, all this assumes we’ll still be buying lotsa stuff from the Chineses by the time they build all this infrastructure. Maybe we won’t?
Pete Thornton said:
…
Didn’t you hear that the Aussies send wine in plastic bags inside a container to the US, where it is bottled.
Makes good sense as long as the wine doesn’t suffer.
DB Schenker announced China to Europe freight service back in 2013.
They ran a train from China to Hamburg in Feb 2013
http://www.dbschenkerusa.com/ho-en/news_media/press/news/4261694/2013-08-02-chinatrain.html
I recall the problem with the service was the lack of contracts for any east bound freight. China does not import a whole lot of consumer products.
The other problem was the change of gauge in Russia and Belarus. It seems the Russian insist on swapping bogies, since they are set up for that.
The map within the link that HJ provided shows the different freight routes, not the change in gauges. And Pete is right, there are plans to build a standard gauge railway across Kazakhstan.
Paul
Paul, yea and the container ships from here back to China, aren’t they mostly empty too? I know folks have bought empty containers to make buildings out of, because the company that owns them, would rather sell them then ship them back to China empty.
Bulk wine?
I remember years ago ( 1952- Gulp!)… steaming down the Med on a carrier passing a large ship with two huge stainless steel tanks on deck.
Each was marked MARTINI…
The RN must have been slipping then , arrest and confiscation of a dangerous load would have been in order .
Mike
PS Early start?
David Maynard said:
Paul, yea and the container ships from here back to China, aren’t they mostly empty too? I know folks have bought empty containers to make buildings out of, because the company that owns them, would rather sell them then ship them back to China empty.
There was an article in Trains about containers filled with grain going back to the Far East.
Surprisingly, US exports to China are substantial.
http://uschina.org/reports/us-exports/national-2013
I have also bought containers for on-site storage and conversion to chemical flares in another life. Sea Box is a company local to me that makes container conversions.
Paul