The high volume of freight being transported from China to Europe by sea has prompted railways to try to grab a share of the action by offering a shortcut.
As part of a new rail initiative, freight from car maker BMW, and electronics makers LG and Samsung was transported on an inaugural intermodal freight service from China to Poland, via Russia.
The first Land Bridge train left from Suzhou, one of the richest cities in China, 75 miles from Shanghai. Suzhou is the world's biggest inland river port, based on annual cargo tonnage and the volume of containers.
The train took 13 days to travel the nearly 5,000 miles to Warsaw in Poland but was only delayed for two hours at the Russia-China border, thanks to the use of electronic documentation. Container ships take about 48 days to travel from the Far East to Europe.
The October inauguration of the service will be followed by a three trains a week operation in each direction to start with, expanding to five trains a week when custom builds up.
The service, called the Europe-Far East Land Bridge, is jointly run by Polish and Russian Railways in cooperation with an Austrian company.
Russia is also involved in another project to encourage containers from the Far East to travel overland though its territory.
A 2,000 mike long route is being developed from Urumqi in north west China to the south Urals area of Russia at Yuznouralsk where the Russian company Logic Land is planning to establish a logistics park.
The route goes through Kazakhstan and involves a gauge change at the Kazakh-Chinese border (at Dostyk/Alashankou). China’s rail network is largely standard gauge while the track gauge in Russia and Kazakhstan is approximately three inches wider – at five ft.
The Russian Railways subsidiary Transcontainer will be responsible for transferring the containers at Dostyk/Alashankou.
Land Bridge
Transcontainer