[Quinner]

Cargo trains are much longer than container ships (at least in the US). The average train is over a mile long, and trains that are 3 or more miles long are not uncommon. A single ship is of course still going to carry a lot more cargo, but don't underestimate the throughput of trains.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-443.pdf

[Denvercoder9]

Trains actually get a lot closer to container ships than I had expected. With double stacking you can get up to about 1000 TEU per mile of train. Big container ships are generally about 20,000 TEU.

[Denvercoder9]

For posterity: I messed up the calculation, it's a little less than 500 TEU per mile of train (double stacked).