While the train can carry about 200 containers, versus 20,000 on a large cargo vessel, the trip takes about half as long as a 30-day sailing between East Asia and northern Europe. That will make rail a competitive option when maritime shipments are held up or miss the booked departure, especially compared with airfreight, which costs twice as much, according to Michael White, operations director at Brunel Shipping, the U.K. booking agent for the service.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13317649
It's just a completely different method of going about arguments.
I can imagine being in a position where shipments can be ordered 15 days in advance, but where 45 days would be unacceptable. (train vs ship)
If that's the case, you set up your logistics to come by rail, rolling in every 15 days, instead of air and you save a bunch on your shipping.
There's so many variables and volume here, it probably makes perfect sense for a whole lot of businesses.
With such a rail option you'll have an alternative: by default use container vessel then in case of a problem switch to the rail.
That wouldn't make the rail system a sustainable business because it would only make money when there are problems with sea freight. To be sustainable it needs regular bookings. That's likely to be high value goods where timely and reliable delivery are important.
Also bear in mind these goods are shipped directly to cities anywhere in Europe. For some goods Madrid might be a better hub than any sea port and it's is nowhere near the sea, so sea freight would still need to be transferred to rail or road to get there. That's not such an issue for London, but it's a factor for many of these routes.
I don't get your point about goods are shipped directly to cities? The train goes to Rotterdam and various other locations. Rotterdam has a huge infrastructure (train/truck/barge) already for delivering containers to the final destination. That would just be reused.
If it's the United States then trains across central Asia are harder to stop and require bombing a third country (unlike a shipping blockade which just requires a threat and which doesnt require pissing off a third party).
If for some reason USA wanted to stop a train, a few payments to the poorest dictator along the route would get it done. They wouldn't even have to stop anything permanently to make shipping much less reliable.
The US could certainly make a few payments to a poor dictator in Central Asia to stop a train unless, of course, that country was reliant upon that train for the flow of critical goods, in which case it would take more than a few payments.
Other ingredients to the mix would include insurance and complex financial trades (e.g. derivatives).
But I would presume there is geo-strategic interest for China to try and improve its internal and western regions. If we take this into consideration, it may be very efficient to directly ship via train to Europe, instead of first going several thousand km to the east, to reach China's coast.
I think there are a lot of companies willing to pay extra to get it in 18 days vs 27 days.
So its the airfreight cost vs the waiting cost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225_Mriya#Specifica...
That said, I think someone is considering (re)starting production.
The device is manufactured, flashed, and packaged in China, and normally shipped by sea. But now demand has gone up, or production has been slightly delayed, and we need to get devices to customers. Maybe we will run out of stock in 1-2 weeks. We can't really (only) load a container ship and not be able to get devices to customers for a couple of weeks when demand is high. The logistics team then tries to ship limited quantities by air and/or train to bridge the gap until the next container ship arrives.
Hence my (very limited) experience tells me there is definitely a market for something like trains with time and cost in between air freight and container ships.
From this article http://richardtorian.blogspot.com/2012/01/cost-per-ton-mile-..., you can cut the shipping costs by train to a pretty low level.
The gist of all that german garble is that it is about twice the speed of sea freight, measured "door to door", while costing only half as much as air freight, but twice that of sea freight. co² emission is calculated as half of that of sea freight, and 25 times less than air freight. In 2016 they shipped somewhat over 40.000 containers in about 400 trains, which carry about 50 containers per train.
The NYT covered this in 2013 with an interactive feature: http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/07/21/silk-road/ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/global/hauling-ne...
hth
almost forgotten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Eurasia_Logistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe_Rail...
I guess half as much as airfreight means that it's still considerably more expensive than shipping. But for 14 days vs 30-45 days it might well be worth it.
Low value items and very heavy items are currently not viable via airfreight, that's probably where trains can be profitable. If you produce clothes your only options are to either do so in Europe (there's a lot of production in Turkey) and have it close by, or produce in Asia and wait 40 days for every order. Cutting that time for a premium could make a lot of economic sense.
If you suddenly find a particular style/colour of item is popular and selling out it might make sense to get more items shipped via train and have them arrive in 2 weeks.
If you have to put it on a boat and wait 6 weeks you may have missed your chance to sell that item (e.g., people are moving on from summer to autumn clothing, etc.).
Could also be a way to spur growth too. If you need to spend money on something, infrastructure seems like a decent choice.
The only winners would be the goods owners who are winning form short term lower prices - is that enough for a long term business?