http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/7985812/China-to-build-2bn-railway-for-Iran.html
The article goes into the political implications that bring to mind the Berlin to Baghdad project of Imperial Germany a century ago.
That is certainly a different concept than what Western Politicians are currently used to.
The Projection of Political by Railroad! Usually, it seems that that kind of action was taken in the past under a military auspices by Naval activity; which then brought along a Military response from both the actors, and the acted upon.
It boggles the imagination as to the direction, and power that could be brought brought to bear in these modern times by modern mechanization. Will we see a return of the armored trains? The rail born artillery was a massive and varied presence within the German Army.
Also seems to be an opportunity for American export of technologies to take a back seat, politically and actually as the Chinese become the merchants of technologies that have been co-opted from American Industry and Business.
I will surely be interesting to see how this whole scenario plays out in the coming months.
Don’t know that China will be com the railroad builder for the world, however, at the present time they are the only country that is very actively building and expanding their own rail networks, both passenger and freight. As such they have a fully active engineering infrastructure and taking on projects in other countries is just another day at the office.
Western countries, for the most part, are just concerned with maintaining their networks not expanding them. Even the capacity improvement projects of the Class I carriers are barely more than maintenance project.
Remember the Silk Road? From China to Eastern Europe? Two branches went through Persia (Iran). You can Google “Silk road”, then click on Silk Road Map to where it went.
John
You may find this report of interest. It is the Capital Investment in Railways (Rolling Stock and Infrastructure) for 2010. The report is in Euros, but it is the relative investment by Region that is of interest.
Western Europe ( EEC) € 39.5 billion
Asia (not including former Soviet Union) € 36.5 billion
North America € 19.5 billion
Former Soviet Union (except Baltic Countries) € 13.7 billion
Eastern Europe € 9.6 billion
Africa and Middle East € 5.6 billion
Central and South America € 3.4 billion
Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania € 2.9 billion
John Beaulieu