Container Trains via Siberia

@Dominic Mazoch posted:

I know there is a change to and from the Russian 5' wide track.  But has there any attemp to run container trains via Russia?

Why bother?

Even with 2 transfers, one at each end of the Russian rail system, that has to be faster to Europe than an all water route.

How do you know THAT?

In short, "yes"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...3London_railway_line

18 days vs 30-45 days on a ship.

---PCJ

Let's just say that there are quite a few grave political issues in sending container trains across Russia.

There at least one container train per day between China and Europe, and all of them go through Russia.  For more about the routes, look at 

https://www.dsv.com/en-us/insi...een-europe-and-china

There is a large container transfer terminal at China's far western border.  That takes care of the gauge change problem.  Poland is a big beneficiary of the system being the most convenient border for the transfer back to standard gauge container cars.

Given an efficient automated facility, the  gauge change is no big deal in the overall cost picture.

Looking at a few more items, I see that western China container transfer terminal is at the Kazakhstan border.

You can see the terminal at Khorgas in this Google satellite view. 

https://www.google.com/maps/@4.../data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

The Altynkol terminal is the big flat area in the desert west of the town on the Kazakhstan side of the border.  There are several parallel sets of tracks on which you can see the cranes used for container transfer.

You can see that rail traffic between China and the west is a serious business.

Russia is an annoyance, but they're happy to collect the transit fees between the KLazakh border and Polish border.  The distance between Kazakhstan and Belarus or Ukraine is much less than a thousand miles and the Russians don't get involved with the gauge transfers.  Poland doesn't have a border with Russia and neither does China (except in the far northeast.

@rattler21 posted:

The China-Poland route does not run through Siberia.  Your headline title is hardly supported by your narrative.  John

But see the linked article. People in the West tend to think that Siberia is a Northern region, roughly the North-Eastern area around Kamchatka and the Arctic Coast, but try looking at where Vladivostok and Khabarovsk are on the map

• “The northern route through Siberia is ideal for container transport for the northern regions around Beijing, Dalian, Suzhou and Shenyang. In Europe, the most important terminals are Duisburg and Hamburg in Germany, and Warsaw in Poland. ”

Rockershovel: Right you are!

China-Germany overland trains with containers aren't new.  Sure beats the Suez Canal route where the world's largest container ship made a major boo boo recently and as a result might possibly help increase the number of trains operated on the land line now as well.