Eastern Railroad Discussion > Intermodal in England

Surprised nobody has said anything about this. Yes England has intermodal. But it is where this particular intermodal train came from. All the way from China. Today marked the start of a new service from china to England. It means a lot for the US. Any containers going to Europe from china via the US ill not be coming this way anymore. Less shipping out of the east coast ports for through containers and less cross country trains. It also means a potential shift in imports on the East coast as containers bound or the eastern half of the US could now come through England. This gives shippers a competing route in the shipping price wars. Instead of just one route over the pacific, now you have an Atlantic option. The next 5 years will see how this plays out as the European countries set up container operations based on the new routes.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am not aware that many if any containers cross the US on their way from China to Europe.  With handling at each coast, and two ocean crossings, I can't help but believe a trip through the Suez canal would be just as fast, and cheaper.  Also, I doubt the capacity of the new rail link will be sufficient to make much of a dent in any business to or from the US.  My impression is that it is primarily designed to move high value containers between China and Europe faster than they can move by an all water route.

I think I saw the same news story. 

​It says it cuts two weeks off the average shipping from China to Europe. 
​It is cheaper then air and faster then ocean shipping .

​The route passes thru Russia, 5 ft. gage,.   Was unable to read the whole article.
​so, I do not know if the containers were transloaded at changes in gage or if the trucks could be
adjusted when needed.     

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/18/news/economy/china-uk-freight-train-yiwu-london/

I'll admit to never being in the 'Intermodal' business side of the rail industry; but i know several people that were. In the 1960's and 70's when intermodal business was evolving....not even called intermodal then...( every railroad seemed to have it's own term); there was movement of containers from Asia to US West Coast....across the country by rail to East Coast ports, then re-loaded on ships for Europe. it was called "Land Bridge" at least by Penn Central's intermodal folks at the time. (Like it or not, the much mis-aligned Penn Central and early Conrail where the highest volume intermodal carriers in the country). One of the major "Land Bridge" shippers was Sea-Land. even before Conrail there were 100 car trains of single stacked TTX cars, generally two 40ft cons per car. I saw and logged at least one around Harrisburg. They were big trains for their day; around 9000ft. This service worked at the time for several reasons. Most of the Asian origins were Japan, S Korea and maybe Taiwan; closer to US than China which was still mostly closed and not shipping much. The boxships were tiny compared to the giants of today. and the Suez canal was closed part of the time, and Russia still Communist,  so the Asia to Europe Landbridge via the USA worked for a fairly long time. But volumes were small. Maybe one or two trains per week. It was the only route for awhile and after the Suez Canal re-opened still the fastest.

Things are much different now. Manufacturing of all the stuff we buy has shifted west to South China, etc. China's RR's were built to connect to the former Soviet railroads at least in one location, the Soviet Union broke up freeing trade, the Suez opened up and is busy, Middle East conflicts settled down to the point where it did not restrict this trade, Boxships got larger and larger. This new service does require transfer of  containers from one gauge to the other but they have built facilities to do this quickly. Some passenger cars have been built to slowly re-gauge passing thru a device that does that. It is only 3.5 inches. Don't know if containers cars have been built for that or not. Most of the route cannot clear double stacks, and trains lengths are limited to half-mile to a kilometer. The train mentioned only had 34 boxes. (which could be carried by only three five-paks and two singes here). The average speed shown was under 24 mph. That is about the same speed averaged by big boxships on the open ocean and big USA container trains. It will be some time to see if this new Asia "Landbridge" can equal ocean via the Suez or in the opposite direction the enlarged Panama Canal.