London to Beijing...by rail?

Just saw this. Thinking BIG.
http://www.euinfrastructure.com/news/ch ... rail-link/

Fantastic, as based on or existing in fantasy: unreal. Don't they have airplanes already that can do the job in about 10 hours. At 200 mph the road bed will have to be as straight and level as the flight plan.

The 2000 mi / 3000 km would be in China itself. Beijing - Urumqi would be a good fit. Here are the great-circle distances:

Beijing to:
London: 5000 mi / 8000 km
New Delhi: 2300 mi / 3800 km
Bangkok: 2000 mi / 3300 km

The closest I could find to a primary source:

King's Cross to Beijing in two days on new high-speed rail network - Telegraph

China is in negotiations to build a high-speed rail network to India and Europe with trains that capable of running at over 200mph within the next ten years.

The network would eventually carry passengers from London to Beijing and then to Singapore. It would also run to India and Pakistan, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior consultant on China's domestic high-speed rail project.

A second project would see trains heading north through Russia to Germany and into the European railway system, and a third line will extend south to connect Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia.

According to Mr. Wang, China has been negotiating with no less than 17 countries.

Most of the routes are still undecided on, but work on a China-Burma line has reportedly started. Mr. Wang claims that construction has already started in Yunnan, on the Chinese side of the border; work on Burma's side should start soon. That agrees with Railway Technology - Myanmar to Build New Rail Link to China which states that Burma will soon start building a line from Lashio in the northeast to Jiegao on the border. Jiegao is between Ruili on the Chinese side and Muse on the Burmese side. China's preferred payment: access to Burma's lithium resources.

At Lashio, the new line will meet Burma's existing railroad network, which is meter-gauge. A sticking point in negotiations with China has been China officials' preference for standard gauge -- that would require regauging or dual-gauging existing networks. Vietnam has reportedly agreed to regauge its Ho Chi Minh City - Hanoi main line, which would anyway need a lot of rebuilding for higher-quality service. Meter gauge is narrow enough to easily fit inside of standard gauge, so a lot of southeastern-Asian trackage could be rebuilt as dual gauge.

So China could end up building a standard-gauge or dual-gauge Southeast Asian network that extends to Singapore.

A China-Burma link would also allow for building a connection from Burma to India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, though it's unlikely that India will abandon its broad gauge anytime soon.

Then there is this enigmatic statement:

We have also already carried out the prospecting and survey work for the European network, and Central and Eastern European countries are keen for us to start," Mr Wang said. "The Northern network will be the third one to start, although China and Russia have already agreed on a high-speed line across Siberia, where one million Chinese already live."

Have Russia and China agreed to build a standard-gauge line that will run parallel to the Trans-Siberian Railway?

It must be said that this scheme looks much like the Trans-Asian Railway scheme, which includes this nice map of existing and proposed lines with their gauges.

Urumqi ?? LMAO !! (I'm still trying to get there)
It would be great for passenger trains but
but freight would make more sense the only problem is that the
truck drivers would sabotage it every step of the way.

glock wrote:Urumqi ?? LMAO !! (I'm still trying to get there)
It would be great for passenger trains but
but freight would make more sense the only problem is that the
truck drivers would sabotage it every step of the way.

I believe there has been a topic on trans-eurasian freight in the Worldwide forum.

Apart from the choice of route the main problem is gauges. China is a large island of standard gauge. The nearest standard gauge link is in Herat in western Afghanistan. Could there be a link from Herat to China via Badakshan?

They hedged their bets by saying that the speeds would be UP TO 200 mph. Probably a lot of slow orders at 10 mph. This is a dream of the Flat Earth Society. The terrain between China and India has a pretty interesting history in that it was the "hump" air route in WW 2 where supplies were flown over it to American air bases supporting the Chinese Army when the Japanese closed the Lashio road and before the Burma road could be built.

glock wrote:Urumqi ?? LMAO !! (I'm still trying to get there)
It would be great for passenger trains but
but freight would make more sense the only problem is that the
truck drivers would sabotage it every step of the way.

the name conjours up similiar travel desries to timbuctoo , doesnt it . ( i went to Mali but never got to Timbuctoo ) .

I think we have to remember the Chinese plan 10 - 20 , (maybe not 30 anymore )years ahead . This will happen in part , over that time span .

David Benton wrote:

glock wrote:Urumqi ?? LMAO !! (I'm still trying to get there)
It would be great for passenger trains but
but freight would make more sense the only problem is that the
truck drivers would sabotage it every step of the way.

the name conjures up similar travel desires to Timbuctoo, doesnt it . ( i went to Mali but never got to Timbuctoo ) .

I think we have to remember the Chinese plan 10 - 20 , (maybe not 30 anymore )years ahead . This will happen in part , over that time span .

Kashgar is the magic place (but I believe it now has shopping malls, like everywhere else in China).

China has a rail line to Lhasa. It may well be extended into India.
If ever Afghanistan becomes peaceful I think a line to Badakhshan from Herat is at least a possibility. From there into China. The line would need some engineering and tunnels but would not be anything like as difficult as the Tibet line.

Speaking of Lhasa, THAT was shock. Potala Palace with a 4 lane road in front of it....NOT how I pictured it,
and a strip mall below to the left (facing it). I love the Chinese people. They're
not responsible for the mess in Tibet, though many have been convinced it was/is necessary.

A great book to read is China Road - NPR correspondent Rob Gifford finished his appointment in China
and hitch hiked across China on the old "Silk Road" RTE 312 (kinda like our Rte66) from Shanghai thru the Gobi and Urumqi to Turkestan
interviewing all kinds of real people along the way. Great read.

george matthews wrote:

David Benton wrote:

glock wrote:Urumqi ?? LMAO !! (I'm still trying to get there)
It would be great for passenger trains but
but freight would make more sense the only problem is that the
truck drivers would sabotage it every step of the way.

the name conjures up similar travel desires to Timbuctoo, doesnt it . ( i went to Mali but never got to Timbuctoo ) .

I think we have to remember the Chinese plan 10 - 20 , (maybe not 30 anymore )years ahead . This will happen in part , over that time span .

Kashgar is the magic place (but I believe it now has shopping malls, like everywhere else in China).

China has a rail line to Lhasa. It may well be extended into India.
If ever Afghanistan becomes peaceful I think a line to Badakhshan from Herat is at least a possibility. From there into China. The line would need some engineering and tunnels but would not be anything like as difficult as the Tibet line.

Kashgar.
Sadly, those of us that have not already seen Ancient Kashgar, may never... I hear that like in Tibet,the bulldozers are wailing away in old town. Gone forever.
So sad. A high speed train is all they need.
The discontent in that region is yet another reason why a 200+mph train through there is ill conceived- at best.

http://www.angelfire.com/mac/egmatthews ... jiang.html
Is there a train to Kashgar?

Well I can see a rail line and lots of freight infrastructure,sidings,yards etc. in Google earth.
so, if I had to guess, I'd guess yes. But Chinese trains, can be, shall we say, an experience
unless (even if, actually) you're fluent and a well seasoned traveler.
I would fly.

glock wrote:Well I can see a rail line and lots of freight infrastructure,sidings,yards etc. in Google earth.
so, if I had to guess, I'd guess yes. But Chinese trains, can be, shall we say, an experience
unless (even if, actually) you're fluent and a well seasoned traveler.
I would fly.

The films I have seen of the best trains show them to be luxurious, at least in First Class. I would have no doubts about travelling by rail there.

George.

I haven't seen those. i heard that a 5 Star train was going to be starting the Chengdu-Lhasa run but I don't know
if it's started. I did meet a guy guiding a group in inner Mongolia that gave us a brochure for a pretty luxe looking
steam train there, but all of my travel in China has been by plane and car.
The advice I passed along was from other adventurers that I interrogate whenever i encounter them
while traveling there. The consensus has been, "it ain't Europe, or even Amtrak, baby."
In fact I've heard with "sleepers" that other peoples arses occupy your bed ALL DAY until it's 'bedtime' at which point they move and you lie down.....
but, that's 2nd hand info......

Kazakhstan, the other ex-USSR countries, uses Russian gauge. But I've found some references to a plan to create a standard-gauge line between China and Iran that goes through that country:

Asia-Europe link begins: work is underway on the first section of Kazakhstan Railways' ambitious plan to build a 3083km railway across the country, The objective is to create the first standard-gauge railway from China to Europe | International Railway Journal | Find Articles at BNET However, that was from 2004, and I couldn't find out anything since then. Checking on Qazaqstan Temir Zholy - Wikipedia, on Kazakhstan's national railroad company, it did not have any sources more recent than that.

The eastern end of that line will be at Dostyk, and that article claims that work on the standard-gauge line started in 2007. Its western end will be at Aktau, on the Caspian Sea. It would be necessary to build an additional line to connect it to Iran.

But if that line gets built, then there will be a standard-gauge connection from China to Iran and Turkey. The Turks are building their "Marmaray" tunnel to connect the Turkish mainland with Europe, and they are considering replacing their Lake Van rail ferry with a track around the northern shore of that lake.

The completion of those projects would create a Eurasia-spanning standard-gauge network.

I suspect that not much of this new line will have high-speed passenger service, however -- large parts of it are very thinly-populated.