Thinking REALLY big: Intercontinental High Speed Rail

Iran's priority is to get good standard gauge connections to Turkey and Pakistan so that it can restore its importance as a center of (freight) trade routes.

Note that Iran has built a link to Herat in Afghanistan, the first standard gauge rail line in Afghanistan. I am sure it will be freight only.

either that , or they just built it to annoy the Americans .

David Benton wrote:either that , or they just built it to annoy the Americans .

The border west of Herat has only been there for a couple of centuries. Historically, the whole area is Persian speaking. Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat has close links with Iran, and bases his economy on commerce across the frontier. There are excellent reasons for a link. One can imagine an extension eastward through Mazar e Sharif and on to Badakhshan to connect with China's standard gauge network. I wouldn't expect passengers on any of these links.

David Benton wrote:for your other prosposed routes , i think it will be high speed freight , not high speed passengers that will be the driving force . asia to Europe , its surprising its not faster already .

I read somewhere that the Trans-Siberian Railway was trying to cut the freight transit time from the Pacific Ports and China to Western Europe down. They advertise 12 days from Vostochny (near Magadan) to Berlin for express container trains now.
http://eng.rzd.ru/isvp/public/rzdeng?STRUCTURE_ID=87

I believe they plan to cut it down several days; they want 12 days from Vladivostok to Berlin reliably for all trains, and similarly low numbers for trains from Beijing. A trial run from Beijing to Hamburg took 15 days. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... er=germany

Russia's quite set on this because they think they can take away the majority of the Asia-Europe container shipping market; they're already running in less time, but are more expensive. They figure if they run in *much* less time, companies will start paying the premium (which won't be any higher, and will be lower if they get larger volumes). They also have the advantage of much greater reliability than shipping.

Once they've conquered that market, maybe they'll consider the 2000 miles of rail necessary to get from the Magadan railhead to the Canadian network via the Bering Strait -- it would certainly blow the entire Pacific shipping industry out of the water in terms of speed. But somehow I doubt the US and Canada will come up with the money for our half -- entrenched shipping interests, y'know.

yes indeed ,they will compete alot more with faster trains . not only with shipping , but also with air freight . how can rail taking 7 - days or so compete with a 24 hour air service ???.
Well , it can't , not for cargo that actually needs to be shipped 1/2 way around the world in 24 hours . air freight will always win . but the fact is , alot ( maybe most ) air frieght doesnt really need to be there that quick . it goes by air ( or in some cases road ) because shipping and rail is so unreliable .catch the ship , and your shipment may get there in a month . miss the ship and it may be 3 months . rail would need to have daily departures , so the transit time becomes the actual trip plus a maxuim of 24 hours . a weekly train means you must add a week to the trip time in case your shipment misses its allocated train .
ive had experience of this importing solar panels from Australia . a 3 hour flight , but thats not to important , the boat only takes 24 - 36 hours . the thing was , time it right and i could get a shipment by boat here in under 2 weeks . time it wrong and it could take a month or more . by air , even using the cheap rates , it was 2 - 3 days , all the time . even though rates were higher ( sometimes , not always ), i would choose air , because i simply couldnt afford to be that unreliable to my customers . but when i went to pick up the panels , i would see the air terminal full of goods that obviously didnt need to be there in a hurry . they went by air cos the shipper found it more convienient , and not much more expensive .
there are other factors coming into play , concepts such as food miles and carbon neutral , etc . these will penalise air , providing there is a reliable rail or shipping service that can provide a good service for less percieved enviromental costs .

David Benton wrote:yes indeed ,they will compete alot more with faster trains . not only with shipping , but also with air freight . how can rail taking 7 - days or so compete with a 24 hour air service ???.
Well , it can't , not for cargo that actually needs to be shipped 1/2 way around the world in 24 hours . air freight will always win . but the fact is , alot ( maybe most ) air frieght doesnt really need to be there that quick . it goes by air ( or in some cases road ) because shipping and rail is so unreliable .catch the ship , and your shipment may get there in a month . miss the ship and it may be 3 months . rail would need to have daily departures , so the transit time becomes the actual trip plus a maxuim of 24 hours . a weekly train means you must add a week to the trip time in case your shipment misses its allocated train .

Good points. I believe Russia is aiming for daily departures on its transcontinental container trains.

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/inter ... l-railway/

"Snowpiercer", or real-life possibility?

InterContinental Railway: All aboard the train from New York to Paris — via Siberia
...
Both the Snowpiercer movie and series were based on Le Transperceneige, a French graphic novel from 1982. The ICR, on the other hand, is being proposed by engineers and entrepreneurs, who very much believe that it can and should become reality.

If it does, you’ll be able to take a train from New York to Paris, or from Vladivostok to El Paso. The ICR would create the physical conditions for centuries of “peace, progress, and prosperity,” as the project developers’ prospectus hopefully promises.
...
For starters, the ICR would need nearly 5,500 miles (8,850 km) of entirely new railroad (the dotted lines on the map), from Yakutsk in eastern Siberia to Fort Nelson in northwestern Canada. And crossing the Bering Strait would involve building the world’s longest railway tunnel, 70 miles (113 km) long.

That’s more than double the length of the Seikan Tunnel connecting the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, which at 33.5 miles (54 km) is currently the world’s longest underwater rail tunnel.
...
On the other hand, the developers say the local geology means that the Bering Strait Tunnel would be “easier to construct than English Channel Tunnel.” Another bit of luck: the ventilation shafts needed for a tunnel of this length could conveniently be placed on the Diomede Islands, almost exactly halfway in the Bering Strait. (Big Diomede is Russia’s easternmost territory; Little Diomede is a few miles away and part of the U.S.)
...

Earlier in this thread, I had done East Africa. I will now do West Africa and Latin America. A big help is OpenRailwayMap -- it's easy to see that many of Africa's railroad lines are inward from the coasts, though some places have good coastal lines, like Morocco - Algeria - Tunisia.

Gautrain is now open - essentially an electric commuter train. Johannesburg and Pretoria are about 36 mi / 59 km apart, as far apart as Washington DC and Baltimore MD, and closer than San Francisco and San Jose, both CA.

East Africa: Johannesburg, South Africa - 600 mi / 1000 km - Harare, ZImbabwe - 900 mi / 1500 km - Dar es Salaam, Tanzania - 400 mi / 700 km - Nairobi, Kenya - 700 mi / 1200 km - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - 600 mi / 1000 km - Khartoum, Sudan - 1000 mi / 1600 km - Cairo, Egypt

West Africa: Cape Town, South Africa - 800 mi / 1300 km - Windhoek, Namibia - 1000 mi / 1600 km - Luanda, Angola - 300 mi / 500 km - Kinshasa, DRC - 500 mi / 800 km - Libreville, Gabon - 270 mi / 440 km - Yaoundé, Cameroon - 300 mi / 500 km - Port Harcourt, Nigeria - 300 mi / 500 km - Lagos, Nigeria - 250 mi / 400 km - Accra, Ghana - 250 mi / 400 km - Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire - 500 mi / 800 km - Monrovia, Liberia - 300 mi / 500 km - Conakry, Guinea - 400 mi / 700 km - Dakar, Senegal - 250 mi / 400 km - Nouakchott, Mauritania - 1100 mi / 1700 km - Marrakesh, Morocco - 300 mi / 500 km - Tangier, Morocco, at the Strait of Gibraltar

I followed the coast rather than do an inland crossing of the Sahara Desert.

North Africa: Tangier, Morocco - 550 mi / 900 km - Algiers, Algeria - 400 mi / 600 km - Tunis, Tunisia - 400 mi / 700 km - Tripoli, Libya - 600 mi / 1000 km - Benghazi, Libya - 700 mi / 1100 km - Cairo, Egypt

Turning to Latin America, Mexico has rail lines to its southernmost city, Tapachula, about 1000 mi / 1600 km from Matamoros, just across the Rio Grande from the southernmost part of Texas.

Central America: Tapachula, Mexico - 120 mi / 200 km - Guatemala City, Guatemala - 110 mi / 180 km - San Salvador, El Salvador - 140 mi / 220 km - Tegucigalpa, Honduras - 150 mi / 240 km - Managua, Nicaragua -210 mi / 340 km - San José, Costa Rica - 350 mi / 560 km - Panama City, Panama - 350 mi / 570 km - Medellín, Colombia

That looks like easy railroading. Might some Chinese construction company propose building a Mexico-Panama rail line?

In South America, I will do both the west-coast and east-coast routes.

West coast: Medellín, Colombia - 500 mi / 800 km - Quito, Ecuador - 900 mi / 1400 km - Lima, Peru - 700 mi / 1100 km - La Paz, Bolivia - 500 mi / 800 km - Antofagasta, Chile - 700 mi / 1100 km - Santiago, Chile - 1400 mi / 2300 km - Punta Arenas, Chile, close to the southern end of mainland South America.

North and east coasts: Medellín, Colombia - 300 mi / 500 km - Barranquilla, Colombia - 220 mi / 360 km - Maracaibo, Venezuela - 300 mi / 500 km - Caracas, Venezuela - 650 mi / 1100 km - Georgetown, Guyana - 240 mi / 380 km - Paramaribo, Suriname - 200 mi / 300 km - Cayenne, French Guiana - 500 mi / 800 km - Belém, Brazil - 1050 mi / 1700 km - Salvador, Brazil - 750 mi / 1200 km - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 230 mi / 370 km - São Paulo, Brazil - 210 mi / 340 km Curitiba, Brazil - 900 mi / 1400 km - Buenos Aires, Argentina - 350 mi / 560 km - Bahía Blanca, Argentina - 600 mi / 900 km - Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina - 500 mi / 800 km - Punta Arenas, Chile

Consulting OpenRailwayMap, E Brazil, Uruguay, and N Argentina have plenty of rail lines, but not much elsewhere in South America.