I'm 34 years old and still staggered at how little I know about the world sometimes.

I'd assumed the vast distance between the two countries, meant air/sea transport was virtually the only option for cargo to be shipped between the two.

Did not realise there was an 18-day train service that goes from Barking to Yiwu (Yiwu–London railway line – Wikipedia)

I'm now fascinated and model railway collections, don't seem so odd to me anymore…

by FatherJack_Hackett

15 comments

  1. Youve got to remember that trains came a LONG time before air travel but it is indeed very impressive, its not like it was built purposely but its still incredible to think that you could traverse the majority of the world landmass in so little time and without setting foot off land.

  2. Train throughput in both cargo and passengers is genuinely insane. They’re pretty damn amazing things, especially since the basic principle behind them is nearing a couple of centuries old.

  3. That route only opened in 2017, so for most of your life it did not exist.

  4. Seems weird that it’s so slow! 17 days for 7500 miles, and granting 1day each for two guage changes, is only 500 miles a day, or 20mph! You’d think it would be about 3 days, at 100mph, or a week at 50mph…

    Still better than by boat though. I wonder what the security and reliability on it is like.

  5. I wonder how this works with the war in Ukraine? Wiki says it passes through Russia and Belarus? Is it just not running at them moment?

  6. It’s part of the belt and road initiative, it’s been painted as similar to the Marshall Plan, or as colonialism, or a bit of both.

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/china-new-silk-road-explainer/

    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2018/jul/30/what-china-belt-road-initiative-silk-road-explainer

    https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-09-07/the-new-silk-road-chinas-controversial-great-strategic-plan-turns-10-years-old.html#

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/business/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-bri.html [gated]

  7. 4 days to get from barking to the Chunnel, another 4 days for freedom paperwork, then 10 days on decent high speed rail across the continent and China? Or am I being cynical 🤣

  8. I’m sure there’s an opportunity to have passengers on this service? I’d pay. The scenery it must go through I imagine is awesome. But if it is 4 days from Barking to the Chunnel I’ll get on there.

  9. If you need to change train to a different gauge twice on the route, is it a single railway?

  10. I feel like there is a hell of a lot of things like this people don’t know about with transportation and heavy engineering.

    When I was working in large scale power generation and motors I learned a lot about how the world works and how the industrial revolution is so pivotal in our existence on this planet.

    I take a lot of pride in knowing that I was part of the team that manufactured just one of the motors that powers the pump on the Langeled pipeline. When you Google these things, it’s a real wormhole and is fascinating.

  12. I only became aware of this when i discovered that had i chosen the saloon instead of the estate when i ordered my Volvo it would have been delivered on that train route!

  13. Haven’t you seen 92015 with the special livery?

  14. The best way to try and comprehend it that is fairly easy is to try and witness a freight train passing.

    When you see a real freight train pass by you, you understand quite quickly why it air doesn’t work so well for it.

    They are LONG and carry a lot of stuff

  15. Are those the trains that end up coming through Stratford? The big yellow ones with Chinese writing that suddenly kills phone service as it passes

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