One Belt, one Road, The New Silk Road: The first train

This post will probably be the first part of a series of post related to the gigantic Chinese project “One road, one Belt”

In this first entry we will focus in the first string of the project the new rail routes.

Until not too long ago the only two options available to transport Chinese products to Europe were take an ocean bound route, which although cheap can be very slow, or use an air carrier that is considerably faster, but also much more expensive.

A third way was unlocked when the Chinese government launched a rail freight service between China and Western Europe.

This line will connect Beijing and London, making it the first direct rail link between the two cities.

The freight will span 7456 miles (12000 km) of railways crossing Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium, France and the UK.

The route is actually not new at all, it´s part o the old Silk Road, which commenced more than 2000 years ago, through which Chinese silk caravans carried wears to Europe and Africa. Now Beijing is aiming to resurrect this historic trade route by using rail power.

This new plan is part of Chinese president Xi Jinping´s project to improve the country´s trade links and revive the ancient Silk Road route.

This new route also comes at a particularly well time for the UK, with the government of Theresa May currently sourcing the world for trade deals in anticipation of a departure from the EU.

The first cargo carrying 4 million worth of goods arrived in London on the 8th of January after an eighteen day journey that was as much an engineering challenge as a logistical problem with different types of rail track in different countries meaning the same train can´t travel the whole route and so the containers have to be removed and reloaded onto different carriages at several stages of the journey.