Rail Freight Group
It is rare, indeed practically unheard of, for rail freight to feature on headline news. But the arrival in Barking of the first train to operate from China did seem to capture the public imagination. Stuffed not with silk, but modern textiles and socks, the 34 containers had made an 18-day transit from Yiwu Xi station in China’s Zhejiang province, travelling across Eurasia and through the Channel Tunnel to reach the UK.
Given the vagaries of international railway gauges, the train that arrived had only the containers in common with the train that left. As explained in the accompanying news report, the locomotives and wagons needed to be changed at both the China/Kazahkstan and Belarus/Poland borders to cope with the differences between Europe’s standard gauge and the broad gauge used in the former USSR. The containers were transferred again in Duisburg, Germany onto DB Cargo rolling stock that has been approved for use in the Channel Tunnel. Yet despite these complications, the train still achieved the transit in around half the time taken by ship, with a price point around half that of air freight. In doing so, it creates a new opportunity for exporters and importers.
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