Unpowered cargo gliders on tow ropes promise 65% cheaper air freight

A bit less, by tonnage per annum.

    In a typical year, (USofA) freight railroads haul around 1.6 billion tons of raw materials and finished goods. Redesigned railcars have helped increase average tonnage. In 2022, the average freight train carried 4,089 tons, up from 2,923 tons in 2000.

https://www.aar.org/data-center/

    According to official statistics data, as of October 2023, the overall traffic (in Russian rail freight) amounted to 1 billion 243.8 million tons

https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2023/10/31/russian-r...

Smaller, by total track length:

    The total length of line used by the Russian Railways is, at 85,500 kilometres (53,130 mi), one of the largest in the world, exceeded only by the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_R...

The arc of Russia across the globe is likely what "wins" on east | west extent, but less total track carrying less tonnage.

This is true, and I've made the point myself previously on HN.

But US freight tonnage is dominated by cheap bulk goods, most notoriously coal, though grain and bulk liquids (petroleum, industrial).[0]

There's also a lot of intermodal / containerised freight, but this is almost exclusively long-haul "land bridge" traffic, with very little trade or viability for short-haul freight (Cross-country carriage still takes 10--14 days, despite the fact that a through-routed train travelling at 79 MPH (peak speed on most freight lines) could in theory make the distance in about a day and a half. For time-sensitive goods, including much fresh produce, this means that truck or air freight is the only viable option.

I've gone digging for any recently published research on new innovations in traditional freight technologies and ... there simply isn't any to speak of.[2] Much of the underlying infrastructure is literally a century or more old. The last major powerplant revolution was the introduction of the diesel-electric locomotive which will have its centennial next year.[3]

Given the present obsession with electrified lorry projects, it seems to me to make far more sense to look at optimising rail-based delivery to provide for far more flexible routing, dynamic trainset assembly and disassembly, higher-speed fright,[4] integration of light freight (e.g., document and high-value product delivery) with high-speed rail systems,[5] or rail-trolly systems, in which local delivery occurs via either autonomous or small-trainset convoys which decouple from a through system and reach endpoints or local distribution centres at lower speeds on local rail or dedicated roadbed routes. Similar discussion from about a year ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32967216>

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Notes:

0. Some 10 year old values by modality here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6858737>

1. Yes, there's some of each, but in general, lorry-based over-the-road haulage dominates both markets.

2. Raised two years ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32611937>

3. https://www.borail.org/collection/cnj-no-1000/>

4. At 120 mph, cross-country transit drops to just over a day, at 25 hours. At 160 mph, 18 hours, for same-day delivery as an option.

5. At 180 mph, typical of many high-speed rail systems, delivery time from San Francisco to Los Angeles is about 2h 15m, and routes such as NYC or Denver to Chicago, Dallas to Atlanta, or Miami to Washington, D.C., or Norfolk, VA, to Boston 5--8 hours.

72 hours is too long. You need 48 hours or less for e-commerce or you’ll lose business to Amazon. You could go multiple warehouses but that’s a huge expense with splitting inventory especially if you have lots of low volume skus.

You probably wouldn't go totally fuel free - you'd go mostly fuel free.

And yes, the craft would have to be absolutely huge for a decent payload - and it might make sense to use different construction techniques considering that - for example an inflatable fully pressurised craft.

That's exactly correct A.Sperm - a smaller system by track length and tonnage, stretched out thin to look bigger.