Carriers serving US East Coast Ports and Western Europe have begun routing their backhauls via the Cape of Good Hope and avoiding the expensive Suez and Panama Canals. With so many ships anchored due to overcapacity the headhauls are expected to follow. Also CMA CGM has assigned all six of their “CMA CGM Ben Franklin” sistership to the China - US West Coast service.
Interesting article - illustrates when an oversupply of transport equipment with high fixed costs and low variable costs meets limited demand; and the slower/ longer/ cheaper alternative is better because they’re paying for the ships anyway, the crew and fuel costs are probably less than the avoided canal tolls.
Analogy: If you have lots of time and gas is cheap, why not “take the scenic (roundabout/ circuitous) route” and avoid the toll road ?
Yup and note these are the Asia - North Europe routings headed East because the Western routing is slower over land and by Canal and Sea.
Even with the new and improved Canal open to traffic the transit time across the Canal are slow because the faster the ships go, the more wake they create and the more wake they create the faster the shores erode into sediment on the bottom of the Canal. Thus I suspect our Central American friends never quite put the entire equation together of how the market will never meet demand with the current project.
Even if Nicaraqua goes ahead with it’s more insane proposal that threatens to create a large scale environmental disaster. Even with Canal #2 wide open to use, you still have a capacity issue with the the time it takes to steam the ship down there and then back up on course and the time it takes to transit the canal. If U.S. Western Railroads can’t beat that time via performance already (without upgrades) they are in pretty sad shape and deserve to lose the traffic. My guess is they can and the only worry is limited capacity at our West Coast ports to handle ships…which is a cheaper cost to address than building new Canals.
I just do not see a massive traffic shift with intermodal in the United States. Western Europe and Africa will see the most benefit of the canals and faster transit times from China. China and Asia will definitely benefit.
As I said in another thread, China’s attempt to build a China to Europe trade railway will fail because they are attempt to do so outside of Russia. Only way I think that can work is via Russia and former USSR territories BUT then you get into the Russian paranoia with China concerning improved rail transit times and what that means militarily.
And the fact that at present, Russia is wide gauge and China is standard gauge.
Truth.
And the solution, if there is any that is cost affective, is just to do what?
In 1871 in the US on a single weekend a large number of non-standard gauge roads converted their trackage to standard gauge, with what from today’s vantage point would be a massive amount of manpower.
However, there must be a will to do it, and Russia has no such will.
Engaged the Russian side on that discussion elsewhere on the Internet. The root reason you eventually arrive at after some argument with the Russians is they are concerned that if they standard gauge, their own railway system will be used against them during an invasion. It’s similar to why they built the BAM railway. The PR behind BAM was they wanted a second transcontinental route…military and paranoia reason was the first transcontinental route was too close to the Chinese border and there was fear the Chinese could take it out quickly in a future military conflict.
They need to establish better relations with their neighbors and get over the paranoia, IMO. Russia could easily be a highly efficient rail land bridge between Asia and Europe if they did establish better relations with everyone.
How difficult would it be to add a third rail as they have in several parts of Australia where broad gauge and standard gauge coexist around Perth and Melbourne, and standard gauge and Cape gauge coexist around Brisbane? I suppose the most difficult and a very expensive part would be replacing switches, and depending on the tie structure, there might need to be a lot of tie replacement, particularly if concrete is used.
But a third rail setup could rather easily be dismantled in the event of pending conflict, one would think.
The problem that has come with dual gauging is that maintaining the track is a lot more expensive. One of the gauges (usually broad gauge) is also speed restricted.
(The trackage around Perth and WA is narrow gauge and standard gauge.)
As if modern gauge-changing apparatus isn’t sufficiently advanced that any aggressor wouldn’t build the number and type of vehicles or bogies for an invasion… or modern track equipment and techniques would not optimize relatively easy preparation of ‘one side’ of the track for rapid shifting of gage either ‘in’ or ‘out’ quickly for whatever part of routes needed, and perhaps preparation of key switch ‘panels’ to be dropped in quickly.
Quick quiz: I found out something I didn’t realize before in looking at high-speed service between Finland and Russia (associated with the thread on underfloor HSR distributed traction). The Russian railroad gauge is similar to Russian WWII tank gun caliber (etc.) in what interesting respect? And different in what interesting-to-this-discussion sense?
Russia, China, India and several other countries have newest tanks equipped with 125 mm smooth bores. The US and Germany and others use a 120 mm smoothbore currently.
Yes, indeed, comrade! LOL
And we all know that the Russians invented not only the steam engine but also railroading itself!
Umm, Panama Canal. Remember? Would the backhaul of empty ships from the east coast ports back to china as opposed to the backhaul from west coast ports make this all a moot point? Would railroads still be a better choice from the west coast despite an enlarged Panama Canal?
I thnik you may be refering to the 1960’s when the Russian railway gauge was, in effect, tightened from the 5ft measurement to a" new’ gauge of 4 ft 11 inches (?) which could accept without a lot of other 'equipment alterations’of the 5 ft gauged equipment?
Ast to the other part about Russian ammunitions: [Reaching back to some arcane source from my USMC time, in RVN]
The AK’s we ‘captured’ could fire both Russian/Chinese ammo, and U.S. ammunitions that fit the US M-14’s( 7.62). This was during the time when US and ARVN were transitioning from the M-14s to the original M-16s. Which was at first, a very unsatisfactory POS…[my2c]
NVA/Russian/Chinese(?) tanks could fire(chamber) our ammo (120 mm smoothbore) as well, accuracy ?
Hope that answers your questions…Wizlish
The interesting thing about the Russian tank gun was that it was about 2mm larger than the German main gun – so when the Russians captured ammunition it could be fired, but the Germans would have a barrel explosion if they tried the same… there were some small arms that had the same ‘design philosophy’ and I do think “7.62mm” NATO was an example…
I had thought the Russian ‘tightening’ was done as a security precaution, but it’s only about 4mm off five-foot gauge, so I have to wonder if it’s like the PRR tightening up tangents in the '60s to something like 4’8-1/4" (Trains had a comment about that in an old issue saying 'we may be longer but we’re not as wide…)
What would you expect from something designed by a Stoner and made to a price by a refrigerator or automatic-transmission company?
Classic short line retort: “Well, we may not be be quite as long, but we’re just as wide !”
This one was a variation something like this (I think): “Well, we may not be be quite as long, but we’re wider !”
That was - as I recall - an early attempt to limit truck hunting. I believe there were even a special series of tie plates punched the 1/4" narrower so that the rail wouldn’t push out to normal gauge with the resulting looseness of a regular gauge tie plate spike hole. (I was trained / mentored by 3 ex-PRR track supervisors, 2 of whom had high-speed territory, and 1 of whom was Asst. Division Engineer.)
- Paul North.
USSR 45mm vs GER 50mm; USSR 76.2mm vs GER 75mm; USSR 85mm vs GER 88mm.
This is a comment I posted on another thread last year. I would add to this that the canal tolls and the increased transit time for shipments moving via the canal would be additional disincentives for a shipping company that tried to serve U.S. markets via the canal.
I agree western railroads won’t “benefit” from the Panama Canal expansion. But I want to make the same point I’ve made before. It isn’t nearly as evident as you may think that the project will hurt western railroads to any significant extent.
Now, why would I say such a thing? Isn’t it obvious that the canal will allow large containerships to go through the canal and avoid the rail move from west coast? Well, yes, but consider this. The ship transit time to use the canal rather than just go to a west coast port will be two to three times as much as the transit time required to serve a west coast port. That means a shipping company will need two to three times the number of vessels for the same volume of traffic to operate through the canal than they would need if they just did a west coast shuttle. Ships are expensive build and operate. It is this consideration that has led many containership operators to avoid calls on multiple west coast ports - it’s better to turn the ship quickly and go back for another load than to have the ship tied up serving multiple ports. The same consideration would seem to apply to canal service.
So, the question becomes whether the additional revenue a steamship company might be able to earn by going through the canal and cutting out the rail move from the west coast will be sufficient to justify the costs of the additional ships required to provide this service. I doubt that it would in most cases. The cap on the additional revenue the steamship co
Destroying OPFOR tanks used to be my Army job.
The Germans are upgrading to 130 mm on the Leopard Tank and usually when the Germans upgrade the U.S. follows just to keep the ammo standardized between NATO countries. All three countries tanks are vulunerable to our anti-tank missiles. In fact, the BGM-71 TOW Missile which is blowing up the Russian equipment in Syria is from the 1970’s and is no longer used by U.S. Armed Forces (out of date)…they are getting those from Saudi Arabia. Both the Marines and Army use the ITAS TOW which now has a laser range finder and is fire and forget vs wire guided and uses different rounds now.
I went to a 101st Reunion in 2009 and had a look at an ITAS TOW (those reunions are pretty neat they let you all over the new equipment including some of the 5th Group Special Forces stuff…open to the public) The new FLIR sights they use on the ITAS TOW are pretty powerful…it will take the Russians at least another 15-20 years to catch-up or defend against it…if then. The 101st Soldiers told me the Afghans called the new TOW…“The finger of God” because of it’s long range and deadlly accuracy against their fighting positions.
Geez man, not all the ships are empty, we have exports too as well as serve as a transshipment point sometimes from Europe. What have you been reading?