A confession: I spend far too many hours on YouTube watching Train videos. It’s probably the big kid inside of me. So, no, contrary to what you may think, I’m not out partying at swanky bars every weekend; instead, I’m watching freight trains traverse the Rockies or travel along the Cajon Pass.
Now, for those of you who live in or have travelled around Europe, you’ll appreciate the pleasure of Interrailing. It’s a rite of passage for European youth to spend a summer exploring Europe on trains, moving from city to city and country to country. I once took an overnight train from Kraków to Budapest and woke to the cathartic clickety-clack of the train passing over rails, with the spectacular view of a late summer Hungarian sunrise from my window.
It’s one of many train journeys that live in the memory as ones that I’ve been lucky enough to experience. I’ve taken the scenic Settle to Carlisle route in the UK. I used the Japan Rail pass and travelled on the Shinkansen, the bullet train. The cog train to the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio. The smooth efficiency of KORAIL between Seoul and Busan, and the Eurostar between Paris and London.
The Channel Tunnel: not only an incredible engineering achievement but an incredible trading achievement. Trade between countries is a good thing. Forget the many pointless G-20 conferences; globalisation was created and driven by trade. The containerisation of cargo, kickstarted by entrepreneur and haulier Malcolm McLean, is a crucial driver of globalisation. There is a fabulous book, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson, about it. Without the shipping container, we can wave goodbye to global trade. And a lot of these containers get around by rail.
The USA has the most miles of railway, with most estimates placing the total length of track in the US at 220,000km! The US is a collection of reasonably independent states under one flag. They have nearly frictionless trade with one another, and this is replicated on the railroad. The tracks are the same gauge (standard gauge, 1,435mm); it has practically no electrification, so there are no different electrification issues; containers are standardised, and track ownership crosses state boundaries (the largest freight railroads are BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern). From one state to another, all elements of the railway are interoperable, and freight can pass freely. Freight crosses the length and breadth of the USA.
The importance of rail to trade and economic growth is one of the reasons why China, the world’s rising economic superpower, doubled the length of its rail network between 2005 (75,000km) and 2022 (155,000km). China has more than ten times the length of operational high-speed rail than any other country! Prizes for guessing the country in second place*.
In the UK, the railways were essential to the industrial revolution, but they are still important today. Rail gets more competitive over long distances as trucks are more efficient over shorter distances. In the UK, the break-even distance for rail freight is between 250km and 400km depending on the type of goods, the origin and the destination. Germany knows the importance of rail: the world’s largest railport is at Hamburg, on the banks of the Elbe. It has 30km of track and handles 200 freight trains, comprising more than 5,500 wagons, daily!
The USA knows the economic and strategic importance of rail. China understands the economic and strategic importance of rail. The UK and Germany see the importance of rail. It all leads me to one question: why not do it internationally?
Imagine a rail link between Europe and Africa, between Spain and Morocco, or between Gibraltar and Morocco. Let’s connect the continents! Or a rail link between Felixstowe and Rotterdam. Or the Japan-Korea Undersea Tunnel. Or the Sakhalin-Hokkaido Tunnel, connecting Russia and Japan. Or between the UK and Ireland, crossing the Irish Sea. Or between India and Sri Lanka. And probably most daring of all, the Bering Strait crossing between Alaska and Russia.
Can someone put in an order for some tunnel boring machines?
Whilst dreaming big is a prerequisite for continuing the ever expanding technological, trading and transport frontiers, I’m aware of considerable challenges in my dream of international rail routes. One of these is the immense cost of infrastructure projects, although I’m not getting lost in the world of fiscal policy today. However, the Channel Tunnel was privately funded, so you know, billionaires, hands in pockets, please. Anyway, private enterprise can make a profit out of rail. Supply and logistics is big business. Berkshire Hathaway wouldn’t have bought the cash cow that is BNSF otherwise.
Different electrification networks (if electrified at all), signalling systems, and gauges between countries are more than an annoying snag. But they are not insurmountable. Dual electrification systems with both third rail and overhead wires are common. Dual gauge systems often occur near a nation’s borders (Vietnam and China) or even within a country (Japan). Variable gauge trains exist worldwide; the China-Europe rail freight route survives with different gauges.
The optimist in me lives in the hope that trans-continental interrailing will happen. But sadly, the realist in me suspects that many of these fabulous engineering projects will likely never happen, which is a crying shame. Of course, low cost flights are abundant, providing a competitive alternative. But the success of the Channel Tunnel to French and British importers and exporters and the success of Interrailing to hedonistic European youth suggests that we may just be onto something with international rail links.
*Spain, remarkably.
