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Comment by MengerSponge | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know how the train compares to ships wrt CO2/kg shipped? I'm sure the train comes out on top, but by how much?

Also, how frequently could one of those trains run?

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Not sure about CO2 impact, but one problem is that these trains are running pretty empty back to china (china doesn't want to import so much from Europe by rail). I think they are running 50 trains a year, with a heavy subsidy to make it affordable (half the cost).

One thing China likes to import from uk: tourists

They usually fly though.

That's never a good view.

Maybe China could import the trains back by container ship... one way train line.

That...makes sense. The containers at least can come back by ship, assuming there is enough capacity. Then you just have the engine to get back.

Do the freight ships do the same? What do they bring back with them?

Good question. I know freight charges are cheaper going to china than coming from china, so I guess there is a demand mismatch.

Mostly they are empty IRCC.

Price would also be good to know. If it is 1/100 of the price, then 100 trains could be run for every boat.

This article says train is ~50% of air. According to this quick google that makes the cost range a 3x to 18x of sea freight cost.

https://www.transporteca.com/transportpedia/sea-freight-air-...

Looks like its cheaper than boat...

http://richardtorian.blogspot.com/2012/01/cost-per-ton-mile-...

This would make sense. I remember reading about a company adding kites/sails to some shipping vessels to help reduce fuel costs. Even when ships match the sea current, you still need a lot of fuel to keep that inertia in the ocean. With trains you're talking about the rolling friction of metal on metal.

Even if it didn't out preform ships, it outperforms trucks. That would feed the market for faster shipping of small volumes vs slower shipping of larger orders.

Nothing outperforms shipping when it comes to cost. It's actually very easy to move an extremely heavy ship. Fuel costs are not even the biggest problem (which is why sailing is still not used widely). Ships become so big because you need fewer employees, which are still a considerable factor.

That data is highly questionable. Suggest trying to get some quotes for the different modalities. Via ocean is cheapest by far. To deliver to the final destination the price increases in order of barge/rail/truck.

I work for a shipping company btw. Don't have experience about the prices globally, but that source divides data from two completely different sources. That often doesn't end well.

There are companies tracking the average price of shipping a container across various trades.

According to figures in an OECD report, rail freight has significantly higher CO2 emissions per tonne-km - 41-102g vs 30-40g.

http://www.oecd.org/trade/envtrade/2386636.pdf (p. 29)

Note that this is for diesel trains. While likely most of the length of the track won’t be electrified soon, essentially all tracks in western Europe (France, Germany, possibly Poland) are already electrified. This means that using nuclear or renewable energy generation, the trains can run emission-free there, in particular avoiding the strongly localised particle emissions by ships in and around harbours.

Most of the length is electrified already. Yekaterinburg-Madrid definitely, Kazakhstan-Yekaterinburg likely, China-Kazakhstan connection and Chinese side probably remains an issue.

I would wager that Chinese and Russian electricity is no cleaner than diesel. They have an awful lot of old coal power stations burning lignite and sub-bituminous coal.

Most of Russian generation is natural gas, with notable hydro and nuclear.

Anyway, this is fixable. Planes and ships are not.

The Chinese source 25% of their electricity from renewables.

US is at 15%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

German electricity is fairly dirty and Polish electricity is absolutely filthy - they're both heavily reliant on coal. Germany is committed to phasing out all of their existing nuclear plants by 2022; Poland has no nuclear capacity and is unlikely to have any before 2030.

Renewables are clearly going to be a growing part of the energy mix, but the issue of base load is still an unanswered question.

https://electricitymap.tmrow.co/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu... http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/warsaw/poli...

The electricity may be dirty, the electric train is not. Even with a dirty electricity, an electric train is more efficient than a diesel one (EDIT: braking regeneration).

How frequently? If this was a dedicated, two-track main line, then standing trackside I'd expect to see one train coming in each direction every 20 minutes. Of course, that depends on having massive infrastructure at each end to service those trains. To see an example of that in action in the US, head to LA, and take Amtrack or Metrolink to Fullerton station, paying attention to BNSF's facilities in LA County. Then, hang out at Fullerton for a few hours, taking note of the number (and length) of trains.

More likely, you'll see one train per day, mainly because of choke points like the Eurotunnel. It's also likely that cargo will have to be moved around at least once, since rolling stock (train cars, etc.) aren't normally certified for high-speed running. Plus, you've got a mix of at least high-voltage AC (for Eurotunnel) and diesel, so there would be engine changes. Plus, many USSR countries aren't on "standard gauge", so you either need rolling stock with wheel sets of different gauges (widths), or you need to move cargo at specific transfer points.

You could see a train every 3-5 minutes if it was a dedicated track. Trains in Europe are much shorter than the ones in the US (and don't stack containers), but with the right signalling you can run trains at high frequencies if they're all at similar speeds.

In this case it's not a track at all, more like a schedule that uses different kinds of tracks and is actually run by different companies along the way. The track is also not owned by one company (like in the US), but by a different operator in each country. According to an article, the train set is changed twice for the trains coordinated from Germany.

Eurotunnel is likely not the choke point here (they could just load it on a ferry and only lose 1-2 hours), it's the change of rolling stock along the way, and other traffic it has to share the track with.

I expect this is where all of the infrastructure investment is going. Assuming these trains run in both directions, then to keep speeds steady you'll need either double track, or you'll need appropriately-sized passing sidings. And then, as soon as you have the first slowdown, all that goes to pot.

The problem will be to get everyone to agree on a plan. The EU and China could probably do so (here's where having the EU is actually an advantage), but getting Belarus, Russia and Mongolia to agree to the same plan without at least one state trying to blackmail favourable terms out of it will be very hard to achieve.

A proper, dedicated track could probably bring huge economic benefits for everyone involved, but I don't see that coming. As long as volume is low, none of the states the freight goes through has leverage (could still be shifted back to air/sea) which somehow guarantees that it works.

I'm pretty sure most Of The route already is double tracked.

Yes, but there's a significant amount of passenger and freight traffic on the route. I don't know about Eastern Europe and Russia, but the rail system in Germany/Belgium/France/UK is mostly very close to capacity. Freight trains often have to wait till night time to get a slot.

There is unlikely to be any single track. There are a few potential slowdowns, eg Russia has a different guage.

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