[brunnsbe]

China, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France uses the standard gauge of 1,435mm but Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan has 1520mm. I guess they are shifting wagons at the borders of China and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Poland. Or are the wagons mixed-gauge?

[paradite]

Quick wikipedia yields this:

It has been reported that, for example, when containers are shipped by a "direct train" from China to Europe, it is only containers, and not the railcars, which move from China's railway network to that of Kazakhstan. At the border station at Khorgos, two trains (the Chinese standard-gauge one and the Kazakh Russian-gauge one) would stand side by side at parallel tracks, while the cranes would move the containers from one train to the other in as short time as 47 minutes.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-of-gauge#Containerisatio...

A break of gauge needs to be crossed when entering Mongolia from China (or Russia directly from China, if traveling via Manzhouli/Zabaykalsk), and then another one when leaving Belarus for Poland.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Eurasia_Logistics

[mattdoughty]

When I crossed the border on a passenger train from Poland to Belarus and from Mongolia to China, the train went into a warehouse where the compartment was lifted and new bogies slid underneath. All while the passengers remained on the train

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjdoughty/8502710543/

[fennecfoxen]

Loading gauges might be a problem as well. Parts of the UK rail network are still on W6a, which means the clearance from tunnels and bridges and turns is too small to take standard containers on standard wagons: you need special low-deck wagons where the container sits down between the wheels (so there's extra space between the containers, where the rail bogies are). This isn't the most efficient way imaginable to move goods over long distances. The W10 standard (which allows the taller Hi-Cube containers for refrigerated goods and the like) is available only on a few corridors.

(Mind you, in the US, they use low-deck cars like this for about 70% of containers... the difference being that the US railways can double-stack the containers. It's a wonderful rail system.)