So this will just be one big tunnel. Awesome.
I always thought digging to china was a joke.
Dumb donkey
Richmond BC has had a large Chinese population for the last 25 years. There was a big spike in (HK) Chinese residents in the 90's prior to the handover. The Chinese demographics composition has since changed to growth mainly driven by Mainland and Taiwanese immigrants since then. In fact, I think the overall Chinese population has been dropping in Richmond recently from their highs in the 90' and 00's.
Last edited by Watercooler; 10-05-2014 at 04:33 PM.
Reason for the train is most likely because they intend for it to transport goods as well as people. If it were only people, they would have better aspiration than using old technology (Elon Musk proposed technology etc).
It would be good if the various nations could sort out customs and gauge issues to allow a decent rail route to Europe.
Would shave significant time off freight journeys to and from Asia/Europe.
If there is to be a new line, I agree it would be logical for all these countries to agree to a single gauge that can work for all of them. But politics and nationalism will likely get in the way before this agreement can be created.
There are trains that have a dual/variable gauge system on their locomotives and rolling stock that can use both the standard gauge and broad/narrow gauges. But those kind of trains are not common if I'm not mistaken. Probably not cost-effective for the train companies in question to deploy them in wide use I guess.
Last edited by Watercooler; 12-05-2014 at 09:17 AM.
It would be better in terms of speed and efficiency if there were no need for change to new rolling stock in the first place due to break-of-gauge, that is the inherent advantage of trains with dual/variable gauge systems. But in terms of cost, maybe its harder to justify. So if the present method of changing rolling stock is cheaper than getting trains with dual/variable gauge system, then shippers would prefer incurring that little bit of extra time to change rolling stock than to use dual/variable gauge system trains I guess.