First UK-China freight train completes 12,000 km in 20 days
The first rail freight linking the UK to China reached the city of Yiwu on Saturday, covering 12,000 km in 20 days. The train loaded with British goods departed London on April 10 and passed through seven countries. The train which covered the world's second longest journey is a part of China's efforts to revive the Silk Road trading routes.
The first freight train to link China directly to the UK reached in the eastern Chinese city of Yiwu on Saturday. The freight train covered 12,000 km which makes the journey the second-longest route in the world. This second longest journey from China to the UK is China's efforts to strengthen the trade links with western Europe along a modern-day "Silk Road" route.THE FREIGHT AND ITS JOURNEYThe train was loaded with pharmaceuticals, machinery, baby milk and whiskey. The first train which links China to the UK over the period of 20 days, passed through France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan.It finally arrived in Yiwu in eastern Zhejiang province which is a major wholesale centre for small consumer goods.THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE LINKThe route is the second largest and is longer than the Trans-Siberian railway where the run is from Moscow, Russia to Pyongyang in North Korea. The new freight train linking China directly to the UK is about 1000 km shorter than the record-holding China-Madrid link, which opened in 2014.The provincial government said that the journey should be 30 days faster than moving the goods by ship but this pilot run took two days more than the 18 days expected, NDTV reported. The first direct London-China freight train named the East Wind has much less carrying capacity. It has just 88 shipping containers compared to the 10,000 to 20,000 containers cargo ships can carry, according to the Yiwu government.London is the 15th city to be linked to a new freight network offered by the state-run China Railway Corporation, which says its services are cheaper than air transport and quicker than shipping.ECONOMIC SENSE OF EAST WIND