International Railroad Discussion > Rail route: China to Madrid

Yesterday's New York Times presented a picture of a train arriving in Madrid from China after a 20 day trip. Does anyone have a map
of the rail route this train took? Is there a same gauge route from China across to Spain? I thought not.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/10/silk-railway-freight-train-from-china-pulls-into-madrid

"However, the cargo had to be transferred three times during the journey as a result of incompatible rail gauges. The locomotive also had to be changed every 500 miles."

Why every 500 miles? Did they do that instead of refuelling to save time?

The rail gauge thing is a tough one due to the sheer amount of trackage, no one's going to volunteer to re-gauge their track.

Mike Massee
Tehachapi, CA
Photography, Railroading and more..

Harlock Wrote:
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> "However, the cargo had to be transferred three
> times during the journey as a result of
> incompatible rail gauges. The locomotive also had
> to be changed every 500 miles."
>
> Why every 500 miles? Did they do that instead of
> refuelling to save time?

National boundaries for one thing, locomotives staying within the service district of their assigned terminal, for another. It's not like the US/Canada.

Ray

OK, 3 changes of gauge. Do I have this right?

China (standard) to Russian/former USSR (5 foot)

then

Russian back to standard (presumably at the Polish/German border?)

then

Standard to Spanish (presumably at the French/Spanish border??)

Is that how it goes?

march_hare Wrote:
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> OK, 3 changes of gauge. Do I have this right?
>
> China (standard) to Russian/former USSR (5 foot)
>
> then
>
> Russian back to standard (presumably at the
> Polish/German border?)
>
> then
>
> Standard to Spanish (presumably at the
> French/Spanish border??)


>
> Is that how it goes?

From the route described in the article the gauge changes were at the Chinese Kazakhstan border, Russia Polish border, and I guess at the French Spanish border. The exSoviet Republics of Central Asia are all Russian gauge. Poland is 1435mm like Western Europe.

Almost 3 weeks to travel 8111 miles. If the entire line were equipped to operate like BNSF or UP operate their "Z" trains between Chicago and the west coast, the trip would have been between seven and ten days, and the train would be about three or four times larger.

This is only the beginning. As time goes on it seems likely that transit times will improve. How long did the first intermodals take from the west coast to Chicago? It's not just the gauge changes that slow things down, it's the border crossings. The train can only be as long as the shortest passing loop or signal block length on the whole journey unless they split the train for a while. Suppose the BNSF priority intermodals had to stop at each state border for as little as an hour, what would that do to transit times? Some of the border crossings that our Silk Road train had to endure were almost certainly significantly longer than an hour.

How long would it have taken by ship?

hawkeye Wrote:
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> How long would it have taken by ship?


The article linked above states by ship would be up to 6 weeks.

Also was a fairly light train by US standards at 1400 tons.

ActionMike Wrote:
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> Also was a fairly light train by US standards at
> 1400 tons.

But about the limit for most routes in Western Europe. Heavier trains are allowed on certain routes where coal and Iron Ore trains are common.

> This is only the beginning. As time goes on it
> seems likely that transit times will improve.
> How long did the first intermodals take from the
> west coast to Chicago?

They would have to dramatically improve to come anywhere near what the early U.S. intermodal services offered. The first (1970s-era) Chicago-LA premium-rate intermodal trains operated at 40 hours, other services at 50-58 hours. Similar offerings to the San Francisco / Oakland market, 48-50 hours. I've listed those services below along with the China-Europe test train for comparison:

CNW 245 / UP VAN to LA in 56.5 hours, av. 35.4 mph
CNW 243 / UP SUPRV to LA in 50 hours, av. 40.0 mph
CNW 243 / UP BASV to SF/O in 48 hours, av. 43.8 mph
ATSF Super C to LA in 40 hours (premium rate only), av 50.0 mph
China-Europe test, 8111 miles in (about) 20 days, av. 16.9 mph

While that C-E test train was very slow by international intermodal standards, its competitive market is very different so it may not matter much. While the train took three weeks, ships take 6 (according to the press release), so it still provides a "premium service", relatively speaking. In the U.S. where long-haul trucking is the fastest, the trains are slower and it's the trucks that collect the premium rates from customers.

In my opinion, it won't be the transit time that makes or breaks the China - Europe service, it will be the cost. Unit costs for trains that small covering so many rail miles with so much handling en-route (gauge changes, locomotive changes, etc) will be very expensive. The real killer will be the access fees charged by the host RRs. They add up to big numbers for a journey that long and when allocated to the relatively few boxes that the train will handle and will result in very high unit costs. This may well put them in a no-win situation with pricing, unless subsidized (a very real possibility).

Trains operating along the C-E train's route are also constrained in terms of height, weight and length so it will not (in our lifetimes) be able to enjoy the significant unit cost advantages that long, heavy, double-stack trains provide customers in the North American market. The C-E service at 3 weeks transit time will always attract some "premium" customers but high costs (if unsubsidized) will keep it from growing into anything significant like you see in N. America.

Take care,

Mark

P.S., Later, I decided to check on the claim by the railroad promoters of "6 weeks by ship"; most shipping websites place the China to Europe average shipping time at 48 days, almost 7 weeks! However, due to recent icemelt in the Arctic, many now say they'll start regular operations along a northern route where they can offer transit times of 35 days, about 5 weeks.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/15 07:47 by mamfahr.

Those U.S. transit times are probably for premium service (as you noted) or advertised times, I'm not sure I'd go with them as being typical. Maybe they were/are for a certain sector of freight, and I'm not sure what is routine these days.

But I dealt with intermodal shipping for many years, 1985-1999, and never seen anything that fast with actual shipments. The railroads involved were mostly SP and BN, so no original route UP or ATSF, which I'm sure were faster. It was pretty much routine to have a pathetic 7-10 days for intermodal transit time between Los Angeles and Kansas City, via the Southern Pacific. And Portland/Seattle was pretty much 5-6 days to Chicago via the BN. These times are for marine containers on double stack trains, and I'm talking about real actual transit times through the 1990's on those routes (even after the names changed), not what the railroads advertised. I pretty much had containers moving on those routes every week during the time period noted.

Bunny218 Wrote:
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> Those U.S. transit times are probably for premium
> service (as you noted) or advertised times, I'm
> not sure I'd go with them as being typical. Maybe
> they were/are for a certain sector of freight, and
> I'm not sure what is routine these days.

Hello,

My reply was in response to a question about transit times in the early days of intermodal in the U.S., so the info is from the 1970s. The times I quoted were "as advertised" for TOFC but in that era actual performance wasn't too different from actual, with most trains arriving in a range something like 3 hours early to 7 hours late. Schedules for early container (COFC) "landbridge" services (SeaTrain, SeaLand, APL, etc) were perhaps 5 hours slower than those priority TOFC trains. Actual performance really depended upon the RR, the lane & the season of the year. But the performance of any of those early U.S. services was still roughly 2 - 2 1/2 times as fast as the China-Europe test train, which was the point of my reply.

Compared to the "early days" in the '70s, today's market is much more segmented and specialized, with a full range of services and prices for everything from low-rate intermodal boxes on low-priority stack trains up to premium C/TOFC trains (the "Z" trains on the western RRs). It sounds like many of the shipments you're familiar with were toward the low/middle end of that range.

Take care,

Mark



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/15 06:54 by mamfahr.

Mark,

Thanks for your further reply and info. I had understood the context of your information and reply, was merely trying to add that we had plenty of slow service too.

Agree with your point on the China-Spain service being very slow, but I'm assuming it's just scheduled that way for whatever (unknown) reason. The rail lines themselves shouldn't be that slow, but one would have some kind of unknown time involved for whatever they do at the gauge interchange points. There was some previous discussion on this elsewhere, it was never conclusively found out if they trans load the containers or change out the trucks on the freight cars, either is possible.

The China-Spain service is actually the second of Chinese-European services now operating. There is a China-Germany service that was previously started, also on a relatively relaxed schedule, maybe about a year or so back. The trains to Spain do go through Germany, so I'm wondering if they are actually a combined freight to/from Germany, or there are two separate trains running the route. I really don't know but would be interesting to find out.

Hupac offers regular weekly service to Barcelona, though not a full trainload. It operates with gauge change to Russian (1520mm) at Sestokai in Lithuania.

http://www.hupac.ch/index.php?MasterId=g1_184&id_item=184&lng=2&node=344&rif=8169503bec

And then download the file in the right margin.