# New Libyan railroad to Unite Middle East and North Africa



## steamtrain6868

*Russian railways to build 1st railroad in Libya.*

Russian Railways is to help Libya to create its own modern railroad network. On 11 June the Russian company opened a rail welding plant in the village of Ras Lanuf.

The new plant is part of a contract awarded to Russian Railways for the construction of a 550 km long railway line between the towns of Sirte and Benghazi. The spokesman of the Russian railway Dmitri Bertsev has this to say:

"Initially the train speed on this stretch between Sirtb and Bengazi will be 160 km per hour but after its electrification it will reach 250 km per hour. Under the project, around 1000 artificial structures are to be built, 30 rail and 23 road flyovers, and six major stations along with 24 minor stations."

2010-06-17, The Voice of Russia.


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## Ryan

What does this have to do with commuter rail/subway/light rail?

I didn't realize that AU was to become your personal blog.


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## GG-1

Ryan said:


> What does this have to do with commuter rail/subway/light rail?
> 
> I didn't realize that AU was to become your personal blog.


Aloha Ryan

What is your objection? It is correctly located in the Miscellaneous RR section. Some members find world RR info interesting.


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## Ryan

One of the other moderators must have moved it before you, it was in the "commuter rail/subway/light rail" forum. I agree that it's a topic that could garner some discussion in the right place.

As far as the blog post comment, since the signature guidelines state that "Pictures should also not be used to link to personal websites as a way of promoting them". By extension, it seems to me that posting a topic designed to drive traffic to one's personal website would be discouraged as well. This certainly looks like such a topic with the blog links copied and pasted into the post here (the entire post is a straight copy/paste from the linked blog, which itself is a straight copy/paste from an outside news source"). The other topic that was started by this new member was also a straight copy/paste from a blog post, which itself copied directly from here without attribution (although that topic here didn't provide a link back to the author's blog or the original source).

More succinctly my issues here are twofold:

1. That the topics started by here are direct copies of posts on the authors personal blog (sometimes linking back to that blog, sometimes not).

2. Those topics are direct copies of articles posted elsewhere on the web (again sometimes linking back to that original source and sometimes not).


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## MrFSS

Ryan said:


> One of the other moderators must have moved it before you, it was in the "commuter rail/subway/light rail" forum. I agree that it's a topic that could garner some discussion in the right place.
> 
> As far as the blog post comment, since the signature guidelines state that "Pictures should also not be used to link to personal websites as a way of promoting them". By extension, it seems to me that posting a topic designed to drive traffic to one's personal website would be discouraged as well. This certainly looks like such a topic with the blog links copied and pasted into the post here (the entire post is a straight copy/paste from the linked blog, which itself is a straight copy/paste from an outside news source"). The other topic that was started by this new member was also a straight copy/paste from a blog post, which itself copied directly from here without attribution (although that topic here didn't provide a link back to the author's blog or the original source).
> 
> More succinctly my issues here are twofold:
> 
> 1. That the topics started by here are direct copies of posts on the authors personal blog (sometimes linking back to that blog, sometimes not).
> 
> 2. Those topics are direct copies of articles posted elsewhere on the web (again sometimes linking back to that original source and sometimes not).


Ryan is correct - it was in the wrong sub-forum - I moved it to this one. I also fixed the text to a few paragraphs instead of quoting the entire article which is against AU guidelines.


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## WhoozOn1st

MrFSS said:


> Ryan is correct - it was in the wrong sub-forum - I moved it to this one.


The big question: Will the OP start a petition - again - to have the thread returned to the wrong forum?


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## steamtrain6868

Ok Ok....The real issue is how the rest of the world including the third world is doing better then then US....This is not just any railroad but a high speed railroad...The political implications of a Pan-Arab States connected by high speed rail should cause concern to anyone who lives in the west and studies middle east politics. Think of the powerhouse that is the Northeast Corridor. Without high speed trains were would that be?


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## jis

steamtrain6868 said:


> Ok Ok....The real issue is how the rest of the world including the third world is doing better then then US....This is not just any railroad but a high speed railroad...The political implications of a Pan-Arab States connected by high speed rail should cause concern to anyone who lives in the west and studies middle east politics. Think of the powerhouse that is the Northeast Corridor. Without high speed trains were would that be?


Actually given the number of flights of imagination projects that exist in the third world today connecting everything with everything else at 200+kph, which finally materialize as a rickety piece of track which can barely keep a train straight on it, I'd wait a bit before I start celebrating this one. And trust me I come from the third world myself, so I do have a bit of credentials to talk about this issue. 

If all these wonderful projects that are dreamed up came to fruition, Afghanistan would have over 2000km of high speed lines through deep tunnels and high viaducts criss-crossing it today and be the the Switzerland of Asia in a manner of speaking.

Also considering that RZD in Russia has difficulty running any line other than the Moscow - St. Petersburg line at any speed significantly higher than 130kph, I am dubious about all Russian claims about high speed railroad that they will build somewhere else. I am not saying it couldn't happen. But I'd wait a while before popping the cork off of the celebratory Champagne.


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## Ryan

WhoozOn1st said:


> MrFSS said:
> 
> 
> 
> Ryan is correct - it was in the wrong sub-forum - I moved it to this one.
> 
> 
> 
> The big question: Will the OP start a petition - again - to have the thread returned to the wrong forum?
Click to expand...

Clearly if the line was fast enough, one would be able to commute from great distances, so of course it's on topic.  



steamtrain6868 said:


> The political implications of a Pan-Arab States connected by high speed rail should cause concern to anyone who lives in the west and studies middle east politics.


As someone that lives in the west and studies middle east politics, I'm curious what you think the political implications would be and why I should be concerned? This is, of course, assuming for a moment the highly UNlikely happens, Jis is wrong, and the line actually gets built as described.


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## steamtrain6868

The dream of a pan arab and pan Africa State goes back to Cecil Rhoads. Here you have a people that is transit dependent and that could now move easlly once this is built. China built the railroad to Tibet as a show of power and to shuttle in the the Chinese Army when problems occur.


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## Ryan

You mean Cecil Rhodes (no 'a')? He doesn't really have any connection to a pan-Arab state, and his vision of a pan-African state was limited to an Africa under the control of the British Empire.

While yes, a railroad may have some military utility the possibility of this bringing about a pan-Arab state is even less likely than the likelihood of the railroad being built in the first place.


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## jis

steamtrain6868 said:


> The dream of a pan arab and pan Africa State goes back to Cecil Rhoads. Here you have a people that is transit dependent and that could now move easlly once this is built. China built the railroad to Tibet as a show of power and to shuttle in the the Chinese Army when problems occur.


So your point is it would be a good thing to build a railroad so that armies could be moved around when trouble occurred to kill more people in those hapless lands under the thumbs of despots? :unsure:

This could fast descend into a political discussion with no railroad content. However, one of the reasons that Pan-Arabism has not come to fruition so far is that it itself is based to some extent on a fond fantasy, to some extent given credibility by the British attempts to use the concept to build an anti-Ottoman front through Sharif Hussain Ali during WW I (Remember Lawrence of Arabia?). Of course once the war was over the British reneged as fast as they could through the Sykes-Picot agreement divvying up the territory captured between them and the French, and then Churchill went on to construct the mess that is Iraq today, among other things.  Historically, more often than not Arabs have spent more time and energy fighting with each other and killing each other than defending Arabism against non-Arabs. The most cogent common thread on which pan Arabism could be built is Islam, and even there the divisions and fissures are palpable, and not about to disappear.

Maybe this time around something different will happen. But the fact that Egyptian nationalism and Arabism have only been incidentally aligned on occasions for brief periods, does not give much hope. Even currently the alignment in the movements don't appear to exist except for temporally being around the same time.

Of course one reason that Pan-Arabism and its manifestation could legitimately be feared by all lovers of freedom, is that the most significant political product of attempted Pan-Arabism has been the various Ba'ath Parties in various countries - a mish mash of Fascism, Communism and narrow parochially focused nationalism which swayed the elite leadership of the Pan-Arab movement since the '30s, starting with Aflaq. A repeat of that experience would be an unwelcome outcome overall.

Oh and BTW that would be Sir Cecil Rhodes who didn't have much to do with Pan-Arabism, and was an imperialist par excellence fully invested in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxons and their destiny to rule the world. His interest in pan anything in Africa was in the service of the Empire.

To bring all this back to railroads, incidentally one of the by-products of that was Sir Rhodes' desire to build a railroad from the Cape to Cairo. But the individuals who actually lived anywhere on its purported path were just inconveniences to get rid of as far as he was concerned, unfortunately.


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## steamtrain6868

JIS brings some good points.....My prof and mentors taught me that there are conflicting "Pan Regions" that are in constant battle with each other. If you look at the world like the Game "Risk" and follow geopolitics it would seem that is exactly what is going on now. Come on now we are in 3 wars in 3 countrys, The railroads are only one game peice on teh block Japan,China and Saudi Arabia met secrectly to look at the future of the US Doller as the worlds reserve currency and possibly price oil in somthing else. CN and the Candian Grain Board are finnaly making up do to demands from China and the east for on time grain shipments. I also checked the WSJ Commeditys report and it takes twice as much green pices of paper as last year to buy basic commodities. The only reason prociesat A&P and Safeway have not doubled is that the economy cant absorbthe price increase....Our doller is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Goverment. It is only worth something if others have faith in it too. Like Rome so goes the PAX Americana. If we dont win a war soon to show a sign of power the world the other inmates on the cell block will make us there pansies....to get this back to railroads we cant even build simple light rail infrastruture withouit huge cost over runs that the rest of the world considers routine. Go to Pittsburgh for the 200 milloin doller 1.5 mile subway line to the Stadiums... Other countries look at that and wonder if its worth holding on to our dollers and T Bills.


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## ALC Rail Writer

I congratulate the OP for... I mean, do you even turn your TV... It's on every...

Libya! I wonder when the Russians are going to give them a train, will it be before or after NATO stops blowing up the Russian tanks that are currently blowing the Eastern rebels to bits?

Two words for the OP: Big Picture.


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## George Harris

Another "big picture" point for Mr. Steam Train:

What goes on in railroad and transit construction in other parts of the world is not near as wonderful in comparison to what goes on in the US as he might imagine. It is just that the monumental messes that occur in other countries do not make the news in the US. There are some projects in Japan that could be used as examples of delays and cost overuns, but unless you are involved in the industry and looking you will not hear about these or those anywhere else because, 1. They are too far away to make any news of significance here - we would rather make a to do about the latest drug addled actor/actress, and 2. Outside the US most nations do not loudly wash their dirty laundry in public.

There are partly built or built and unused facilities in almost all countries. As to the wonders of the Chinese Railway into Taibet: It will be interesting to see how well it is doing in 10 years time. A considerable amount is on permafrost country, and the whole project was built in great haste. It is also outside the view of most foreignors.

There have been railroads built or proposed in several African countries with foreign aid from Russia and China. Generally they make a splash in the trade press at the time, and after a few years, thundering silence.

Afganistan was mentioned: At one point the Russkies were building a line into Kabul and a connecting line on their side of the border. What happened? I have no idea, but both projects got press for a while. Seems that it has all evaporated.

By the way, Hitler had a group working on plans for a Europe wide wide gage high speed railway network all the way up to the point that his armies had retreated to within the borders of Germany, itself.

Words and paper are cheap.


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## Ispolkom

steamtrain6868 said:


> I also checked the WSJ Commeditys report and it takes twice as much green pices of paper as last year to buy basic commodities. The only reason prociesat A&P and Safeway have not doubled is that the economy cant absorbthe price increase....


No, the reason that grocery prices haven't risen as much as commodity prices is because the cost of the commodities is generally an insignificant part of the cost of the grocery item. For instance, very little (less than 5%) of the cost of a loaf of bread is from the cost of the wheat that made it. For that matter, even a small brewer will tell you that the six pack holder for his beer costs as much to him as the beer in those six bottles.

Obligatory train content: Once again George Harris is correct. Talk is cheap, railroads, on the other hand, are expensive. I wonder if the Chinese Tibet railroad will be as much of a boondoggle as the Soviet BAM, the Baikal-Amur Mainline.


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## jis

Ispolkom said:


> Obligatory train content: Once again George Harris is correct. Talk is cheap, railroads, on the other hand, are expensive. I wonder if the Chinese Tibet railroad will be as much of a boondoggle as the Soviet BAM, the Baikal-Amur Mainline.


Whether a piece of infrastructure is a boondoggle or not depends on the context in which that determination is being made. I would caution that in the case of many of these rail lines and roads that are built to previously inaccessible regions of a country the normal economic rules are not the determinant of the true usefulness of a link. Often it is the psychological impact of making a remote region feel they are getting more fully integrated is of immense value on which no monetary amount can be easily assigned. So what might appear to be a complete boondoggle to an oitsider may for the local population be just the opposite and it may be so in a positive or a negaive way depending on the individual's outlook. But such massive projects are seldom with negligible effect, which would make it truly a boondoggle.

Speaking of the permafrost issue brought up by George, if that turns out to be a big problem, my guess is that the Chinese will eventually build the much more difficult but more direct link from the Chinese heartland from Chongqing to Namche Barwa across multiple perpendicular ranges and deep valleys - lots of tunnels and viaducts, that will connect to the Tsangpo Valley Line, which they are already building, at Namche Barwa.

I also believe that with every passing year it is looking more and more likely that one of the traditional southern Silk Routes will eventually get a rail link through Nathu La Pass connecting the Indian and the Chinese systems. India is already building a link from Sivok on the Assam Rail Link to Gangtok (capital of Sikkim) and on to Nathu La, and China has a link from Xegaze to Yadong and Nathu La on the drawing board. This trade route has seen trade volumes explode ever since the border crossing was opened for such about 8 years back. Even by road it is cheaper to ship things into Tibet that way from India, and day to day consumables prices have dropped in Tibet with the availability of Indian goods, and of course prices of consumable nick-nacks of Chinese make have dropped in India due to cheaper transportation from China across the Himalayas rather than via long sea routes.

So all in all the jury on this is still out in many respects and the outcomes will depend on political and economic development of the Himalayan border region. There is on the one hand the political issue of mistrust of China by India and vice versa, and on the other hand the mistrust of US by both China and India, that will play into this.

Incidentally a second route from India to China that is seeing increased use is the so called "Hump" route, that was used to supply China during WW II from India. This route connects Ledo in India to Kunming in China, another difficult road route which is still cheaper to use for certain types of things.


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