On 13/05/2022 19:55, John Levine wrote:
> According to Arthur Figgis <afiggis@example.invalid>:
>>> Transship, or use car floats? That's an entirely reasonable route for
>>> a car float. The trip across the Black Sea is shorter than the one
>>> from Alaska to the contiguous U.S.
>>>
>>> They'd still have to change the wheels from Russian to standard gaugue, but don't
>>> they have to do that anyway?
>>
>> Containers don't have wheels.
>
> Sure, but is everything on the train in containers?

Is there any reason it wouldn't be?

> I've seen videos of swapping axles to do change of gauge
> on goods trains and it's not obvious to me whether lifting
> containers off one car and onto another is easier or harder
> than leaving the container and switching the axles underneath.

One requires two vanilla bits of track, some space and a reach stacker.
The other requires complicated equipment and dedicated fleets of
expensive wagons, which might only change gauge twice in a two to three
week period.
--
Arthur Figgis

On 13/05/2022 18:27, Arthur Figgis wrote:
> On 13/05/2022 00:50, hounslow3@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>
>> China is 1435mm, whereas Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are 1520mm. This
>> assumes that freight shipments would go via Turkmenistan.
>
> Possibly easier to sail from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, as it's one less
> border to deal with.
>
>
It would not surprise me, however, if the customs process in such cases
is streamlined.

Turkmenbashi is much closer to Baku than Aktau is.