Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 134 posts

Re: First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

#41

Post by ptaipale »

Round-trip 4 weeks is OK; it will be interesting to see the packet loss rate in this service.

The roads around here (Helsinki, Finland) used to be congested by trailer trucks transporting new Japanese cars from the harbour in Hanko across border to St. Petersburg.

Bothered by the flow of trucks, I asked why didn't they send the cars across from Japan over Trans-Siberian railway? I was told that too many cars disappeared on the way. In fact, sometimes a whole train disappeared.

Now Russia has built a suitable harbour of its own closer to St. Petersburg so that the flow of new cars doesn't need to come to the ringroads of Helsinki (and, I expect, the economic situation means fewer cars are sold there).

Re: First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

#42

Post by bkor »

samhamilton wrote: post #7

I would guess that this is rolling out just for the PR, the sheer number of trains needed to replace one decent sized container ship just makes this all prohibitive to ever replace much sea freight plus launching when there is a glut of container ships floating around as well, which is keeping the price lower than most ship owners can breakeven. Ok so it's quicker, but it's not that quick. The only winners would be t…

Everyone is forgetting another option. Say your factory is relying on parts delivered to you by containers. One week there's heavy storms somewhere in Asia and your containers from China aren't loaded. Currently the only option is to either always keep a buffer of parts or to gamble and use airfreight in case needed.

With such a rail option you'll have an alternative: by default use container vessel then in case of a problem switch to the rail.

Re: First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

#43

Post by lostboys67 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #23

While 200 containers is not much compared to a container ship it is sufficient to carry all of the material for a Combat Brigade :-) More seriously though, it seems like an awesome rail trip if you can convince them to pull your private rail car.

That was my thought add a couple of extra passenger cars and a buffet car and you would have an interesting trip and get to see some of the less travelled part of the world.

Re: First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

#44

Post by stuaxo »

dx034 wrote: post #38
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect this is where all of the infrastructure investment is going. Assuming these trains run in both directions, then to keep speeds steady you'll need either double track, or you'll need appropriately-sized passing sidings. And then, as soon as you have the first slowdown, all that goes to pot.

The problem will be to get everyone to agree on a plan. The EU and China could probably do so (here's where having the EU is actually an advantage), but getting Belarus, Russia and Mongolia to agree to the same plan without at least one state trying to blackmail favourable terms out of it will be very hard to achieve. A proper, dedicated track could probably bring huge economic benefits for everyone involved, but I d…

I'm pretty sure most Of The route already is double tracked.

Re: First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

#45

Post by stuaxo »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #23

While 200 containers is not much compared to a container ship it is sufficient to carry all of the material for a Combat Brigade :-) More seriously though, it seems like an awesome rail trip if you can convince them to pull your private rail car.

You can already travel from China to London (or more likely in reverse) by train with a few changes, it's definitely worthwhile.

Re: First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

#46

Post by osivertsson »

martinald wrote: post #13
samhamilton wrote: post #7

I would guess that this is rolling out just for the PR, the sheer number of trains needed to replace one decent sized container ship just makes this all prohibitive to ever replace much sea freight plus launching when there is a glut of container ships floating around as well, which is keeping the price lower than most ship owners can breakeven. Ok so it's quicker, but it's not that quick. The only winners would be t…

Agreed. I really can't see this being a success for anything more than PR. If you need it ASAP, you're going to use airfreight. If you don't you're going to have it by sea. I don't see much of a need for something in between those two timeframes. Anyone specialised in logistics care to comment if there is an actual market here?

I'm a software developer working with embedded devices, but I sometimes hear snippets of conversations regarding logistics. The story can be something like this:

The device is manufactured, flashed, and packaged in China, and normally shipped by sea. But now demand has gone up, or production has been slightly delayed, and we need to get devices to customers. Maybe we will run out of stock in 1-2 weeks. We can't really (only) load a container ship and not be able to get devices to customers for a couple of weeks when demand is high. The logistics team then tries to ship limited quantities by air and/or train to bridge the gap until the next container ship arrives.

Hence my (very limited) experience tells me there is definitely a market for something like trains with time and cost in between air freight and container ships.

Re: First China-U.K. Freight Train Departs as Xi Seeks to Lift Trade

#48

Post by justincormack »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #35
dx034 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could see a train every 3-5 minutes if it was a dedicated track. Trains in Europe are much shorter than the ones in the US (and don't stack containers), but with the right signalling you can run trains at high frequencies if they're all at similar speeds. In this case it's not a track at all, more like a schedule that uses different kinds of tracks and is actually run by different companies along the way. The tra…

I expect this is where all of the infrastructure investment is going. Assuming these trains run in both directions, then to keep speeds steady you'll need either double track, or you'll need appropriately-sized passing sidings. And then, as soon as you have the first slowdown, all that goes to pot.

There is unlikely to be any single track. There are a few potential slowdowns, eg Russia has a different guage.
Post reply on HN