Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 4, 2010

The Eurasian Land Bridge, sometimes called the New Silk Road, is a term used to describe the rail transport route for moving freight and/or passengers overland from Pacific seaports in eastern Russia and mainland China to seaports in Europe. The route, a transcontinental railroad and rail land bridge, comprises the Trans-Siberian Railway, which runs through Russia and is sometimes called the Northern East-West Corridor and the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge, running through China and Kazakhstan. Completed in 1916, the Trans-Siberian connects Moscow with Russian Pacific seaports such as Vladivostok. From the 1960s until the early 1990s the railway served as the primary land bridge between Asia and Europe, until several issues caused the use of the railway for transcontinental freight to dwindle. One issue is that the railways of the former Soviet Union (USSR) use a wider rail gauge than most of the rest of Europe and China. Recently, however, the Trans-Siberian has regained ground as a viable land route between the two continents. In 1990 China linked its rail system to the Trans-Siberian via Kazakhstan. China calls its uninterrupted rail link between the Chinese port city of Lianyungang and Kazakhstan the New Eurasian Land Bridge or Second Eurasian Continental Bridge. In addition to Kazakhstan, the railways connect with other countries in Central Asia, including Iran, but do not connect all the way to Europe through south Asia. Proposed expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge includes construction of a railway across Kazakhstan that is the same gauge as Chinese railways, rail links to India, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia, construction of a rail tunnel or bridge across the Bering Strait to connect the Trans-Siberian to the North American rail system, and construction of a rail tunnel between Korea and Japan. The United Nations has proposed further expansion of the Eurasian Land Bridge, including the Trans-Asian Railway project.