[samhamilton]

I would guess that this is rolling out just for the PR, the sheer number of trains needed to replace one decent sized container ship just makes this all prohibitive to ever replace much sea freight plus launching when there is a glut of container ships floating around as well, which is keeping the price lower than most ship owners can breakeven. Ok so it's quicker, but it's not that quick.

The only winners would be the goods owners who are winning form short term lower prices - is that enough for a long term business?

[paradite]

For anyone looking for a quick answer, this is from the 4th paragraph in the article:

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.

[jessriedel]

It's amazing the contrast in usefulness between samhamilton's comment and jakozaur's Fermi estimate elsewhere in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13317649

It's just a completely different method of going about arguments.

[jessaustin]

The arguments have different content, as well. One says air freight costs twice what rail freight costs, while the other, more correct, comment observes that it's actually (6-18)x.

[Shivetya]

I will be very curious if the savings hold up. Then throw in the risk of cargo theft which will be higher by this method of transport and this method is also more subject to mechanical issues with both vehicle and the rails it rides on.

[ju-st]

If shipping by air only cost 2x more than by train, then using air cargo is a no brainer.

[neals]

No, it is never just that simple. And I don't believe anybody would say such a thing.

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.

[bkor]

Everyone is forgetting another option. Say your factory is relying on parts delivered to you by containers. One week there's heavy storms somewhere in Asia and your containers from China aren't loaded. Currently the only option is to either always keep a buffer of parts or to gamble and use airfreight in case needed.

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.

[simonh]

>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.

[alkonaut]

I suspect that a large part of european goods is dropped in Rotterdam, regardless of its final destination, simply because on a 20000 container ship you have many destinations. All those containers will continue on road or rail to their destination. A train to London and a train to Madrid doesn't have that detour.

[bkor]

There's a crazy amount of containers going from China to Europe. IMO just 200 containers on one train far from not enough. Shipping by sea is NOT reliable and there are an insane amount of containers being delivered every week.

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.

[crdoconnor]

Also blockades. This lets China continue trading with Europe if access to the straits of Malacca or Suez canal are cut off.

[jessaustin]

If we're considering such scenarios, train shipping seems much more vulnerable to interruption. After all the tracks transit many states rather than just one or two.

[crdoconnor]

If we're assuming that, say, Kazakhstan is the belligerent then yes.

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).

[jessaustin]

Any nation would be hard-pressed to unilaterally close the Strait of Malacca. Pirates might occasionally delay or steal individual shipments, but I doubt even Malaysia and Indonesia could close it down together, if by some miracle they could agree to do so. Egypt would have a better chance closing Suez, but that's one of their few remaining sources of foreign cash so it would really hurt.

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.

[crdoconnor]

The US could probably close down the straits to commercial shipping with one carrier group.

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.

[arctangent]

It's a hedge bet.

[wastedhours]

I don't claim to understand logistics - but will we see companies pay for slots on the trains as insurance, but not use them if everything's fine? Train company gets a deposit, shipper gets an insurance policy for semi-important payloads?

[arctangent]

I'm fairly sure that such an approach plays a part in what would be a mixed strategy approach to mitigating risk.

Other ingredients to the mix would include insurance and complex financial trades (e.g. derivatives).

[wastedhours]

Is there a second-market in freight spots already? As in, I'm guessing major manufacturers need to pre-buy to a certain degree and then might not use them all (or are the shipping companies so over the barrel at the moment that it's a non-issue?)

[loxs]

What you say is true, if we only take into consideration shipping from coastal China.

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.

[pasta]

If waiting for a part costs thousands a day, every day saved is a plus.

I think there are a lot of companies willing to pay extra to get it in 18 days vs 27 days.

[ekianjo]

if that is the case you use airfreight.

[pasta]

It depends. A big airplane can carry like 20,000 kg total. This is the weight that fits in most containers.

So its the airfreight cost vs the waiting cost.

[csiegert]

A big airplane can carry a lot more than 20,000 kg (20 metric tons) total. The Antonov An-225 Mriya can carry a payload of 200 tons for 4000 km[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225_Mriya#Specifica...

[mattkrause]

There is exactly one of those planes in existence.

That said, I think someone is considering (re)starting production.

[sbierwagen]

An airframe isn't going to fit inside an ISO container

[hueving]

Who said anything about putting an airframe in a container?

[sbierwagen]

We discover here the perils of commenting right before you fall asleep.

[jessaustin]

You weren't wrong...

[martinald]

Agreed. I really can't see this being a success for anything more than PR. If you need it ASAP, you're going to use airfreight. If you don't you're going to have it by sea. I don't see much of a need for something in between those two timeframes. Anyone specialised in logistics care to comment if there is an actual market here?

[osivertsson]

I'm a software developer working with embedded devices, but I sometimes hear snippets of conversations regarding logistics. The story can be something like this:

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.

[nullnilvoid]

Compared to container ships, freight train is another option. Although not many, there are times when the goods are needed more urgently than container ships (think of some industries that require parts urgently but cannot afford air). In addition, some landlocked cities simply do not have container ships as an option. They need to ship goods to a nearby port by train or truck and then load all the containers to a ship.

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.

[CaliforniaKarl]

There are people who want more than just the within-a-day (air) or within-a-month (sea) options. When you ship something cross-country (for the US) by Ground, that's going by train for most of the journey.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

I'm not into logistics, but following this out of curiosity. In Germany this started in 2008, and didn't make sense to me either. Got aware of it because the local press covered it. (Sorry for the german links) http://www.mopo.de/peking-hamburg-container-express-der-mons... , http://www.mopo.de/-trans-eurasia-express-hier-kommt-der-xxl... Then over the years, it was busisness as usual, slowly expanding: http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/dienstleister/china-zug-deuts... , http://www.dbschenker.com/ho-de/news_media/presse/corporate-..., https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article118648469/Neue-Bahnver... , https://www.welt.de/regionales/duesseldorf/article126318669/... , http://www.transa.dbschenker.de/log-transa-de/start/China_Co... , http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/von-westeuropa-nach-ch... ,https://www.deutschland.de/de/topic/wirtschaft/globalisierun...

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...

[dx034]

That would mean that airfreight is only 4 times as expensive as shipping? I'd expect it to be at least a magnitude more expensive, if not more.

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.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

That depends on the shipped goods, i think? One calculation was that of a 15 inch notebook at 2kg weight, they wrote: 28 days per ship, at 2,50 € and 184 kg co². By air 3 to 4 days at 23 € and 4950 kg co² emission. By train 17 to 18 days at 5,50 € and 270 kg co². But that is for a laptop, packaged in a specific volume with that weight. They also ship tires, automobile parts, shoes, clothing, textiles, whatnot.... in both directions btw. BMW ships parts from .de to .cn

[dx034]

Yep, air freight is generally by weight, shipping by volume. Electronics are already sent via air, saving $3 shipping on a $1500 item doesn't make much sense. Taking the UK as an example, 70% of non-EU exports by value go via Heathrow. Would expect the value to be similar for China. By volume it's probably low single digits for airfreight, by value likely >50%.

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.

[goatforce5]

Yes, I was thinking this would be useful for fashion.

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.).

[stock_toaster]

My guess is simply logistical redundancy. If the shipping lanes were impassible for some reason (blockade? ports damaged due to tsunami?), goods could still be sent/received via rail more cheaply than by air.

Could also be a way to spur growth too. If you need to spend money on something, infrastructure seems like a decent choice.