Not in the least sympathetic Russia was bypassed but it is yet another lost opportunity for that country. It reads like this route is going to have quite a lot of online traffic generation though. Also the geography the line is traversing looks to be challenging as well. Interesting article.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/china-signs-major-railroad-deal-150000455.html
The premier quote from the article -
The US and Europe are slowly decoupling from China. Both Russia and China have proven to be unreliable as supply chain partners. Russia through its war in Ukraine, and China as a result of its ZERO-Covid policy. Even Apple has finally decided to move a significant part of their final assembly to India.
If I recall correctly Iran railroads are Standard gauge as are Turkey’s.
That’s a mind boggling idea if you look up the proposed route through from China to Iran. How in the world could this compete with ocean shipping from China to Europe, both of which have lots of sea ports?
There will still be 2 gauge conversions on the route: from China’s std gauge to the former soviet republic’s russian gauge, and then back to std gauge.
China is on a rather rapid path of depopulation due to it’s earlier one child policy and the new yuppies do not want to have kids as it is 100K more expensive to raise a kid in China than the United States and the yuppies are enjoying their quality of life with out kids. CCCP is pretty worried about this as it means much slower growth and missing most of their future goals. Russia has a similar issue which is being hastened by the death rates inflicted on their male population via the various wars they keep fighting. So even if we didn’t decouple I think trade would eventually shift away from both towards countries with more dynamism.
It might be better to dual guage the broad guage portions which would enable thru running. We might expect that rail cars would all be built to China ( or US ) standards. The main problems then would –
Couplers. Doesn"t china use a version of the standard Janey coupler where as the European essentially link and pin.
How the China braking system works has not been posted so some European and other countries might need modifications.
Would dual gauge work? By my math, the two are only about 3-3/8" difference in width.
The Chinese are pushing International Rail Links all over the map…In many cuntries they are ‘funding’(?) construction rojects, that will eventually ake disparet liks into a system? I am notgoing to address their reasoning or their political gamesmaship… Only to suggest that they seem tobe able to accomplish their project, bit by bit…
The diiscussion is getting fairly interesting, so to avaid highjacking this Thread I am going to take it in another, similar direction: "The Siberian- Alaska Rail Bridge and Tunnel" That was apparerntly,proposed, and went nowhere; when it was offered several years back? Seems to be gaining some more recent support,and interest?
Yes China uses our AAR coupler. While the CIS nations this route will pass through use Russian SA3 couplers and 1520mm gauge, which are incompatible. Containers will have to be swapped at the border. One also must also realize these Chinese overland services are heavily subsidized due to high operating cost …
Not being able to; doublestack, low axle load, restricted train length, and incompatible gauges and rolling stock…
That is a very real concern. our AREMA experts need to tell us the width of the bottom of rails for various rail weights. As well the need to separate rails enough to attach both rails on each side of the rails to ties.
Then you will need various designs of tie plates to meet various designs of concrete cross ties. Can present concrete sleepers accept dual guage rails with specialy tie plates? Wooden sleepers probably would only need one kind of tie plate per rail weight if both rails the same7.
How about rolled double rail with the proper separation of the head of the rail, with a single base to be affixed to the crossties.
The “Stans” seem to be cozying up to China. They might want to google “Uighur” before they sell their soul to the Chinese.
A brilliant suggestion!! But, how well would it contour through curves? (CWR)
To my mind it would curve just like normal rail - it might require some cuves to have their degree of curvature reduced. Feature that the web and base of the rail would be wider than at present - but the configuration of the the normal T rail would be continued as much as possible. The rail as rolled will still act like steel spaghetti.
I am not an engineer or invoved with on the ground MofW activities - mudchicken would be the local expert. Steel mills have been rolling ‘channel rail’ for use with rail in normal roadways for streetcars etc. for at least a century.
Maybe they’re looking at shipping ore and minerals out of parts of Central Asia that are currently isolated from shipping ports?
How do you propose to roll the curve between head and web into ‘both sides’ of this rail? You’d still be better off rolling the two rails and then weld the bases (which is where the CA laser keyhole welding would come in; submerged-arc with the base of the rails turned up to weld downhand through a flux blanket would also work…
That’s a possibility. But even then, wouldn’t it me more feasible to just extend the existing Chinese tracks into the area and ship the ore and minerals on existing tracks to exisiting ports?