[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('yesplease', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'L')ook, I let us not get into a protracted argument of nothing. We each have our opinion and bias.

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'L')ots and lots of little converters cost more to manufacture, install and maintain than a few really big ones. The final part is the cost of the large HVDC transmission lines.

[Subjectivist]

Go West, Young Han!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')elcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.

You may not have the faintest idea where Yiwu is, but businessmen plying their trades across Eurasia, especially from the Arab world, are already hooked on the city “where amazing happens!” We’re talking about the largest wholesale center for small-sized consumer goods — from clothes to toys — possibly anywhere on Earth.

The Yiwu-Madrid route across Eurasia represents the beginning of a set of game-changing developments. It will be an efficient logistics channel of incredible length. It will represent geopolitics with a human touch, knitting together small traders and huge markets across a vast landmass. It’s already a graphic example of Eurasian integration on the go. And most of all, it’s the first building block on China’s “New Silk Road,” conceivably the project of the new century and undoubtedly the greatest trade story in the world for the next decade.

Go west, young Han. One day, if everything happens according to plan (and according to the dreams of China’s leaders), all this will be yours — via high-speed rail, no less. The trip from China to Europe will be a two-day affair, not the 21 days of the present moment. In fact, as that freight train left Yiwu, the D8602 bullet train was leaving Urumqi in Xinjiang Province, heading for Hami in China’s far west. That’s the first high-speed railway built in Xinjiang, and more like it will be coming soon across China at what is likely to prove dizzying speed.

[toolpush]

Any idea, if this is going to be standard gauge all the way, or will they continue to change gauge at the Russian border?
There seems to be two different projects that are being referred to.
1/ High speed passenger. I am sure this will be stand gauge all the way through, as it will be all new line.
2/ The container freight line. This could be using some of the old Russian alignment, so not sure if it will still be Russian 5ft gauge or not?

PS In 1986 my wife and I wanted to take the Silk road route through the USSR and on to China. For some reason they wouldn't let us, even though we had all the train times worked out. I wonder what they didn't want us to see at the time, lol. We took the Mongolian route instead.

[Tanada]

Europe is not one standard all the way, Russian gauge is common in the eastern half, Spain, Portugal and Scotland all have different standards from the 'standard' gauge as well unless things have changes recently. At one time the USA had several different standards and Canada had two, but as companies merged or bought out competitors it all went to a single standard. The process has not been completed in the EU so far as I can tell, so either you need flexible rolling stock, or transhipment yards where goods are moved from one style to the other.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GASMON', 'E')ngland, Scotland & Wales together with most of Europe (Except Ireland, Spain & Portugal) And China, USA also are 99% Standard Gauge - Stephenson's 4ft 8& a half inches. The 1% are narrow gauge lines, industrial tourist etc.

Russia uses 5ft gauge Spain 5ft 5and a half inches. Ireland (North & South use 5ft 3 inches. Not very handy for interconnection.

Spain's new high speed lines are standard gauge.

There are border crossings (Poland/Russia/Mongolia & Spain/France where certain cross border trains have their wheels/bogies changed to continue a through journey.

There are proposals for China to build a High Speed freight rail link down through Laos and Thailand to the port near Pattaya. In the planning stage at the moment.

A China to Europe link would probably be through Russia, too many Mountains to go directly west from China.

There were proposals for a railway across the Bering Straights to link Russia with Alaska & down to Canada / USA.

Gas

[toolpush]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ovember 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th.

Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.

[Subjectivist]

The Chinese Rail building program in Kenya is going gangbusters four months after construction began in Mombasa.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')onstruction of the much-hyped standard gauge railway has began in earnest, in a journey that will snake through an estimated 3,230 kilometres in across Kenya.

The routes include Mombasa-Nairobi (485km), Nairobi-Malaba (520km) and a Kisumu branch line of 174km. Two new corridors will be built - Lamu to Nadapal (1,350km) on the border with South Sudan, and 700km from Nairobi to Moyale on the Ethiopia border.

It is envisioned that neighbouring countries - Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan - will extend the railway to their capitals. During construction, the first phase from Mombasa to Nairobi is expected to create about 60,000 jobs directly and up to 200,000 indirectly over the 42 months since last October.

Project costs have been pegged at $4 billion (Sh364.40 billion), of which 85 per cent or $3.60 billion is to be loaned by the China Exim Bank. The government will finance the rest through budgetary allocations and the railway development levy introduced in the 2013/14 fiscal year, which charges 1.5 per cent on imports.

Project engineer Maxwell Mengich said tests and earth works have been completed, paving way for actual laying down of the rails. "The SGR will relatively be shorter than the existing line [from Mombasa to Nairobi], because it will avoid meanders spanning through the valleys, and cross existing roads and the old metre gauge line," he said.

Upon completion, the line is anticipated to ease the cost of doing business significantly by reducing transport time and costs to and from the port of Mombasa. This is in turn expected to boost regional trade by improving competitiveness across the five-country East African Community bloc.

The railway is designed to accommodate speeds of up to 100km per hour for cargo trains and up to 120km an hour for passenger transport. It will have a daily capacity to host up to 20 trains on either direction pulling over 46 locomotives and wagons.

Double-decked container wagons and passenger coaches will also be accommodated, besides a provision for future expansion and electrification.

It is expected that the SGR, as it has become popularly known, will contribute to the growth of the country's real Gross Domestic Product. The first phase is expected to be ready in March 2018, a year behind initial schedule, which has been occasioned by delays over questions raised about the governance framework and compensation for those to be relocated.

A total of Sh2.2 billion had been released by the National Treasury by December to compensating families whose land has been acquired by the state for the project, according to Mengich. The National Lands Commission acquired the land compulsorily in places such as Mariakani, Mtito Andei, Voi and Kiboko.

He said single household compensation ranged from Sh2.5 million to Sh70 million for those displaced by the project. So as to allow free movement in the Tsavo parks' elephant corridor, seven-metre high underpasses will be built and will be 50 metres wide.

[Newfie]

Sub,

What's your take on this, is it good, bad, or indifferent?

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'S')ub,

What's your take on this, is it good, bad, or indifferent?

[toolpush]

Sub,

I note they are building for double stack containers, and future electrification. This is the time to do it, design and build for double stack electric, trying to modify a railway for this after lots of bridges and tunnels have already been built is the problem.
From what I have personally seen the Chinese building in Africa, they are doing a wonderful job. They are really building a lot of infrastructure, that the western countries have never attempted. Instead they have paid money to governments, and that money has caught the first flight to Switzerland.
Now what the long term payback on these projects is? Well that is the unknown answer.

[Tanada]

When the colonial powers built infrastructure in Africa (or elsewhere like China and Southeast Asia/India) they were designed strictly for resource extraction, not the general benefit of the local population. Doesn't matter if it was a crop like rubber or bananas in the jungle or a mine deep in the interior, almost every road or railroad they built was intended to service one thing alone, hauling materials out to export back to the home country.

The problem with this is when the colonies became independent their infrastructure was locked into resource extraction and export. If they did not want to or were no longer able to export whatever the infrastructure was designed around, well too bad so sad it wasn't good for much else.

In Europe and North America railroads were built spider webbing all over the place linking communities with cheap transportation and promoting an integrated economy where lots of people on the network could compete for business with anyone else on the network. In Africa especially the railroads are not webbed works, they are as close to a straight line from a port city to a resource as they could make them. If you do not live right on the rail as planned and built by the colonist powers you might have to travel 100 km or much further to get to a railroad station. Amtrak stations are a poor example in the USA because the network is poorly run, but even here in much of the eastern states you can get to a station in 50 km or less, and in the EU they are practically next door to one another.

The map in one of those Africa articles show China is planning links between lots of cities north and south of the first main line they are building in Kenya. If they actually do that it will completely change how people in different African countries are connected to their fellow citizens.

[KaiserJeep]

I don't know if any of you are fans of the BBC production Connections from the 1970's. My favorite episode started with the width of two horses behinds and ended at the Space Shuttle. From Wikipedia:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') great program known as Connections was produced by James Burke for the BBC in the late '70s. It looked at how various scientific discoveries and historical world events were interconnected to bring about particular aspects of modern technology. One episode discussed how the width of a two-horse Roman chariot determined the width of a Roman road. The ruts caused by the chariots determined the width of later-day wagons using the same roads. In England, the first railroad tracks were made with the same wagon jigs. Those dimensions (4 feet, 8.5 inches) were brought to America, which Is why our railroad track widths use this same odd measurement today. Finally the fuel tanks of our space shuttles were made in Utah and shipped by train to Cape Canaveral in Florida. As they had to pass through mountain tunnels, they had to be not much wider than the railroad tracks, or the width of two horses' rear ends. Therefore, one of the major Space Shuttle design features (the diameter of the boosters) of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's rear end.

[toolpush]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'W')hen the colonial powers built infrastructure in Africa (or elsewhere like China and Southeast Asia/India) they were designed strictly for resource extraction, not the general benefit of the local population. Doesn't matter if it was a crop like rubber or bananas in the jungle or a mine deep in the interior, almost every road or railroad they built was intended to service one thing alone, hauling materials out to export back to the home country.

The problem with this is when the colonies became independent their infrastructure was locked into resource extraction and export. If they did not want to or were no longer able to export whatever the infrastructure was designed around, well too bad so sad it wasn't good for much else.

In Europe and North America railroads were built spider webbing all over the place linking communities with cheap transportation and promoting an integrated economy where lots of people on the network could compete for business with anyone else on the network. In Africa especially the railroads are not webbed works, they are as close to a straight line from a port city to a resource as they could make them. If you do not live right on the rail as planned and built by the colonist powers you might have to travel 100 km or much further to get to a railroad station. Amtrak stations are a poor example in the USA because the network is poorly run, but even here in much of the eastern states you can get to a station in 50 km or less, and in the EU they are practically next door to one another.

The map in one of those Africa articles show China is planning links between lots of cities north and south of the first main line they are building in Kenya. If they actually do that it will completely change how people in different African countries are connected to their fellow citizens.

[Newfie]

Tool push,
I just read "the Last Train to Zona Verde" by Paul Threoux, the well know adventure travel writer. This was about a trip up the West coast of Africa. South Africa, Namibia, Angola. He makes a lot of the same points you do about Africa.

[toolpush]

Newfie,

I always though an African train trip would be interesting. I can remember looking at the timetable board at Pointe Noire, Congo, rail station. All the place names lined up in a column. There were two other columns, one with the heading in French, Normal, and the other Possible. There was only one time written on the board, and that was against Brazziville, the capital and that was in the Possible column.
Of course that was only a few weeks after a coup, but a trip to expect the unexpected.
I have traveled by train in Morocco, which is Africa, but can I say, rather civilized by comparison.
As a side note the Chinese are building a new international airport terminal at the moment. They is oil off the coast, if you were wondering about the connection.

[Tanada]

Very interesting piece on what is happening in the USA with rail traffic at very low rates currently. Much more at link below quote,

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e continue to get more evidence that the U.S. economy has entered a major downturn. Just last week, I wrote about how U.S. GDP growth numbers have been declining for three quarters in a row, and previously I wrote about how corporate defaults have surged to their highest level since the last financial crisis. Well, now we are getting some very depressing numbers from the rail industry. As you will see below, U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April. That is an absolutely catastrophic number, and the U.S. rail industry is feeling an enormous amount of pain right now. This also tells us that “the real economy” is really slowing down, because less stuff is being shipped by rail all over the nation.

One of the economic commentators that I have really come to respect is Wolf Richter of WolfStreet.com. He has a really sharp eye for what is really going on in the economy and in the financial world, and I find myself quoting him more and more as time goes by. If you have not checked out his site yet, I very much encourage you to do so.

[Synapsid]

Tanada,

Part of the drop in rail traffic is likely due to decreased transport of oil, coal, and fracking sand.

Good ol' POD.

[ROCKMAN]

Syn - As you said:

Railroads that had their valuations slashed in 2015 due to decreased traffic at the very least should see the bleeding slow this year as coal volumes are expected to improve. Total rail traffic in 2015 declined 6.1 percent to 14.3 million in 2015, according to the Association of American Railroads, an industry group. The industry relies on coal shipments, which compose about 15 percent of rail-cargo volume and as much as a third of its profits – as coal production and shipments go, so do rail profits, says Matt Troy, a New York-based analyst at Nomura Securities International. Stock for Union Pacific Corp. (ticker: UNP) dropped 34 percent in the past year, while Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (CP) shares declined 37 percent and CSX Corp. (CSX) fell 31 percent.

Coal output in the U.S. fell 10 percent in 2015 to about 900 million short tons, the lowest level since 1986, according to the Energy Information Administration. Consumption also declined 10 percent as warm weather reduced the amount of coal used for heating. Rail cargo volumes, however, are forecast to stabilize in 2016 on increased coal consumption as winter weather takes hold in much of the nation and natural gas prices increase, the EIA says in a recent report. While it won't be a blockbuster year for the industry, improved coal consumption may be enough to get the railroads back on track.