The Bering Express

With the proper application of cash and political goodwill, customs shouldn't need to be such a bear from China to Russia to western Europe. The break-of-gauge problem is thorny, but could be solved by either the Spanish system of quick-change bogies and sliding axles, or by building an intermodal yard with enough gantries to transfer a full load of containers from one train to another within an hour. Neither problem is really unsolvable with today's technology, if you felt it necessary to skip the boat ride around the Horn of Africa.

Even a Bering Strait tunnel/bridge and a Siberia-Alaska-Yukon Railroad would be feasible technologically. Financially though, it's a non-starter. I'd bet on high-speed container ships (30+ knots MAS) as a more practical and far less capital-intensive option, though I don't have any connections to either the railroad or the shipping industries.

Alright, I'm moving this to Worldwide Railfan.

I don't see how the Bering Express could be anything except a High Speed Rail proposition, but since I seem to be in the minority on this, I will go ahead and move it.

Like Ms. Bly, my first reaction is that this is nothing but fantasy. But after the Daily Mail reports that the Kremlin is taking this seriously, I have to crunch a few numbers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... roved.html

Container traffic from Asia to North America is running about 14 million TEUS per year. Convert those Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units to 53-foot Pacific Stacktrain containers and you have over 5 million per year. Even double-stacked, that's 300 gondola cars per hour, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Now a container ship from South Korea can reach Seattle in as little as 10 days. To be competitive, the railroad would have to beat that time significantly. At an average speed of 50 mph, the approximately 6,000 miles could be covered in 5 days. If the train could pick up one third of the Asia-American traffic, that would be 24 trains per day at 100 double-stacked gondolas per train.

I'm somewhat shocked that anyone actually is considering this. As far as I know, the agreement is nothing but that. No money has been allocated for anything. That said, I'm sure a bunch of shipping companies are having a serious WTF moment right about now.

Okay, let's start with Mr. Stolberg's numbers. That sounds like a lot of trains, but that's three 20-car trains of five-well cars per hour. Certainly not an impossible number. But an average speed of 50 MPH is way too high. Current average speed in North America for stack trains is about 25 MPH (including stops to meet other trains, change crews, etc.). So your five-day time has just gone to 10 days.

Typical stack train schedules in the U.S. get you seventh-morning delivery from West Coast to East Coast, and that's about 3,000 miles. So you're going to have a hard time beating ship sailing times.

Then of course there's the small detail that neither the Chinese nor Russian networks can accommodate double-stack cars. And finally there's that pesky break-of-gauge. To be sure, all problems that can be overcome, but with 12,000 TEU containerships on the horizon, why bother?

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is whether moving containers by rail at rates competitive with all-water would even begin to earn a return sufficient to pay for all the construction, plus recurring costs of either transloading containers or changing track gauge on the flatcars. I know that back in the 1980's none of the steamship lines was getting rich hauling containers, and I don't suppose that has changed, since it's axiomatic that nobody gets rich in a market where entry is relatively unrestricted. All-water competition would perpetually keep the rail rates down.

couple things to mention here:
—while freight might move slowly in the US, my expectation is that the route will be more-or-less nonstop for at least a third of the distance, since there is no need to load/unload cars. also, this will be an electric railroad so no need for refuel. max speed for Russian freight, according to wiki, is ~55 mph
—no money has been allocated for this project
—the payback is expected not just from freight movements but from gas/oil movements along pipelines which would be built alongside the tunnel
—the English press seems to have gone ga-ga over the idea of taking the train from London to NYC, but that's simply not the plan — this is a freight railroad first and foremost — and there is nothing in the Russian press implying that this project has been "greelighted"; it was the topic of a discussion at a far east development forum, and an important politician simply said that the funding and plans have not been solidified. it is true, however, that construction of railroads on russian side is progressing (though not because of this project); the first rail link between the rest of the Russian rail network and Yakutsk seems on track to be put into service in 2013, and there are plans to then extend this line to Magadan on the coast. there's still another 1500 miles to go on the Russian side after that. But to be honest, imho, where this project would die would be in the US & Canada.

I'd calculated some distances in this post -- about 4500 km from the Russian Far East to the Bering Strait, and about 3500 km from southwestern Canada to that strait.

Amur Yakutsk Mainline (Wikipedia)
Trans-Siberian Railroad to Yakutsk: 1200 km
Yakutsk to Magadan: 1200 km
Magadan to Bering Strait: 2100 km (great circle), 3000 km (along coastlines, crossing a few peninsulas)

On the Russian side,
Yakutsk has a population of about 270 thousand, half that of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok
Magadan has 100 thousand

On the North American side,
Fairbanks, AK has 35 thousand
Whitehorse, YT has 20 thousand

The strait itself has a width of about 85 km and an average depth of 30 - 49 m. The North American tectonic plate extends into eastern Siberia, so a Bering-Strait line should not have plate-crossing problems.

As to going by train from London to NYC, one would have to go a LONG way.

London - 458 km - Paris - 498 km - Koeln - 1127 km - Warsaw - 1200 km - Moscow - 7300 km - Bamovskaya - 1200 km - Yakutsk - 1200 km - Magadan - 2000 km - Bering Strait - 3500 km - Edmonton - 2000 km - Toronto - 800 km - NYC

Grand total: 21,000 km, over half the Earth's circumference. Nearly 9 days at a sustained speed of 100 km/h.

London - Paris: 2h22m - 194 km/h
Paris - Koeln: 3h14m - 154 km/h
Koeln - Warsaw: 12h47m - 88 km/h
So a 100 km/h average is likely optimistic.

george matthews wrote:

So when you figure the distance, the break of gauge (from Russian to North American), and customs issues, this idea is pure fantasy. It's fun to dream, though.

Two breaks of gauge if you want to get beyond Vienna.

Have people worked out what the Northwest Passage will do to trade with Europe?

And by the way, whatever they think in the US, climate change is happening and the cause is known, and also the remedy.

Perhaps railroads to the northeast of Canada may be the new land bridge in North America . with less ice allowing ships to venture further north , who knows if the reduction in sailing time would make it worthwhile .

We're looking at the "Northwest Passage" and "Northeast Passage" right now, as part of a study of the impacts of the Panama Canal expansion. Preliminary conclusions:

1) Arctic ice isn't melting quite as fast as the doomsayers had been predicting, so an ice-free Arctic may be a few decades away, yet.
2) The lack of aids to navigation, and the complete absence of emergency response, places to refuel and refit, etc. would be a major problem on either route
3) Asia to Europe via the "northeast passage" could save one ship in a "string" (a group of ships providing regularly scheduled service) in comparision with a Suez routing
4) Going to the US East Coast via the Northwest Passage would not save a vessel, and so is probably not worth doing.

I'm glad Mr. Matthews believes in global warming. I believe in considering how to adapt to its effects, but not in spending any money to curb greenhouse gases because we're not sure enough about *why* the warming is occurring. Could be natural, after all.

You may think freight "moves slowly" in the US, but take a look at average freight speeds elsewhere. They make North America look like HSR.

Loooks like NEw Zealand leads the world in freight trains speed then . most trips areovernite , or 36 hours max .

Is the ancient landbridge is closer to reality?

Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Rail Travel from America to Russia and Beyond

In rapid succession, the government leaked a plan to create a “super agency” to develop the Russian Far East; President-elect Vladimir Putin vowed to spend $17 billion a year for new and improved railroads, and Vladimir Yakunin, president of Russian Railways, promoted a think big plan — a rail and tunnel link connecting Russia and the United States.

“It is not a dream,” Yakunin, a close ally of Mr. Putin, told reporters last week. “I am convinced that Russia needs the development of areas of the Far East, Kamchatka. I think that the decision to build must be made within the next three-five years.” Next year, Russia’s railroad czar will open one big leg on the trip toward the Bering Strait – an 800 kilometer rail line to Yakutsk, capital of Sakha Republic, a mineral rich area larger than Argentina.

But the 270,000 residents of Yakutsk do not want to live at the dead end of a spur line. They dream of five kilometer long freight trains rolling past their city, carrying Chinese goods to North America, and North American coal and manufactured products to Russia and China. From their city, 450 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle, passenger tickets could be sold west to London, and east to New York. With the West’s swelling population of aging affluent retirees, what better gift for Mom and Dad than a one-month train trip, rolling across the International Dateline, traveling by rail three quarters of the way around the world? A TransBering rail voyage would make the TransSiberian and the TransCanada look like short hops.

To push thinking along, Yakutsk hosted a trans Bering rail conference last August. Engineers showed charts indicating that the tunnels under the Bering Strait would be 103 kilometers long, about twice the length of the tunnel under the English Channel. Unlike Europe’s “Chunnel,” there are two islands along the Bering route – geographical factors that would ease construction and allow for ventilation and emergency access.

Will the Russians pay for the North American link of the project? Can the US import goods for ever? What happens when the north Americans run out of money to pay for these imports (because of not producing anything)?

I can't see the freight to pay for this link.

it's an election year. they will be glad to promise a colony on the moon just to make people happy. don't read too far into it.