The problem will be to get everyone to agree on a plan. The EU and China could probably do so (here's where having the EU is actually an advantage), but getting

The problem will be to get everyone to agree on a plan. The EU and China could probably do so (here's where having the EU is actually an advantage), but getting Belarus, Russia and Mongolia to agree to the same plan without at least one state trying to blackmail favourable terms out of it will be very hard to achieve. A proper, dedicated track could probably bring huge economic benefits for everyone involved, but I don't see that coming. As long as volume is low, none of the states the freight goes through has leverage (could still be shifted back to air/sea) which somehow guarantees that it works.