Rail Freight

Block trains depart inland terminals — Xi'an, Chengdu, Chongqing, Zhengzhou and Yiwu are the main ones — and reach Poland and Germany in eighteen to twenty-eight days terminal to terminal. Two gauge breaks sit on the route: Chinese standard gauge into the 1520 mm broad-gauge network at Alashankou or Khorgos on the Kazakh border, then back to standard gauge at Brest or Małaszewicze on the Belarus–Poland border. Boxes are transhipped at both, and that is where nearly all the schedule variability comes from.

Rail typically costs a few times ocean and a fraction of air for the same cargo, so the case for it is almost always a date that sea cannot hit. A 40-foot box at fifteen to twenty-five tonnes is where it works best. It also sidesteps the port congestion that periodically adds two or three weeks to an ocean transit, which makes rail a good second lane to hold open rather than a sole one to depend on.

Two things catch people. Most operators refuse lithium cells outright and restrict a range of dangerous goods, with the list varying by operator and by which countries the train crosses. And the containers are unheated — a winter routing through Kazakhstan and Russia routinely sees −30 °C, so anything that freezes, cracks or draws condensation needs an insulated liner, desiccant, or a different mode.