The world's longest train journey now begins in China

[CHamilton]

the_traveler's next trip!

Map: The world’s longest train journey now begins in China

(The Washington Post)

On Nov. 18, an 82-container freight train left the eastern Chinese industrial city of Yiwu. It was embarking on a landmark journey that is supposed to end 21 days later, in December, in Madrid. The distance the train covers — more than 6,200 miles — marks the longest route taken by a freight train, longer still than Russia's famed Trans-Siberian Railway, as the map above shows.

 

[Anderson]

For a while the rumblings have been that the Chinese want to run direct passenger service to Europe as well, though that was also a "thing" when they were dropping HSR track miles by the thousands.

 

[oregon pioneer]

Wouldn't that be a very special trip!

 

[Guest]

I found this article http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/orient-express-china-s-grand-plan-for-a-new-silk-road-1.2913097

Analysis: Orient express, China's grand plan for a New Silk Road

High-speed trains, high-tech ports, China's new trade network is vast, fast and hugely ambitious

at CBC and thought of this thread.

"A whirlwind," "Win-win," "The new normal." China's slogans have clearly had a facelift since the time when the best on offer was "Socialism is good."

So has the country's foreign policy.

After decades of hurtling construction and development at home, China is now planning, funding, building, or helping to build, a vast network of roads, railways, tunnels, bridges, pipelines and ports across Asia and Europe.

China's proposed New Silk Road, a maritime and high-speed rail series of trade routes that could cost as much as $100 billion. (Reuters)
Chinese maps of the project show land routes snaking across Central Asia into Turkey and up through Europe as far as Rotterdam.

All while America, as a country, sits on its hands and worries that Amtrak will make us socialists.

Do you know Mandarin? :huh:

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Yeah, I know Mandarin. But you see, we already have a huge rail and road network. And lots of ports and airports, too. We don't have many passenger trains, that's all.