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There is a lot more wheat to ship than could ever fit on rail cars. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61583492 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-615834

There is a lot more wheat to ship than could ever fit on rail cars. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61583492 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61583492 "Ukrainian farmers have 20 million tonnes of grain they cannot get to international markets" Let's say you could ship 10 ton (10,000 kg) per train car; that's still 2 million rail cars. The longest possible freight train would be 100 cars or so - so now we're down to 20,000 grain train runs needed for the export. It's not possible, not enough rail capacity, not enough rail cars and engines or days in a year to do it.

maxerickson 4y ago
Apparently hopper cars can hold ~100 tons. Still some tough arithmetic.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Now I learned thought that "In 2020, U.S. Class I railroads moved nearly 1.5 million carloads of grain." Apparently it's almost possible in that sense.
  - coredog64 4y ago
    It’s almost as if the US actually does have a good rail system, except it’s been optimized for freight. /sarc.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Let's say you could ship 10 ton (10,000 kg) per train car; What if we don't underestimate by a full order of magnitude? [0] > The longest possible freight train would be 100 cars or so Why? Freight trains over 100 cars are fairly routine. [0] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/commentary-moving-grain-is-a-major-market-for-u-s-and-canadian-railroads https://www.freightwaves.com/news/commentary-moving-grain-is... : “Rail’s economic advantage comes in large part from each railroad car’s capacity of up to 100 tons”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  The European network is not generally set up to handle these long freight trains, because passenger trains are prioritized and the long freights screw that up (see: Amtrak)
- kzrdude 4y ago
  I don't know. There's apparently some rail export already running, but the scale is really much smaller. https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2022/05/09/first-export-grain-train-arrives-in-austria-from-ukraine/?gdpr=accept https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2022/05/09/first-exp... "Each train consists of 25 bulk goods wagons, and each transports 1,400 tons of grain. "
- avianlyric 4y ago
  Reading around it seems the bulk goods wagons in the EU can move about 56tons each max, are about 13m long[1], and freight trains have a max length of 750m[2] but normally need to be shorter. In total that means the maximum an EU freight train could theoretically move is only 3,100 tons[3]. So to move 20mil tons of wheat in 3 months (I don’t know the shelf life of wheat) would require about 70 full trains a day. Which I suspect might be beyond what’s possible. [1] https://railrent.com/en/wagon-overview/bulk-freight-wagon/ https://railrent.com/en/wagon-overview/bulk-freight-wagon/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Europe [3] 750/13 = 57.6 wagons per train. Subtract one for an engine (but I suspect you need more than one engine) give you 56 wagons. 56 wagons at 56 tons each gives you a total of 3,135tons are cargo.
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    There are special wagons for transporting grain , e.g. [1] or [2], the main difference being that those are covered, whereas the standard bulk freight wagons are open and therefore not weatherproof. Before running into any length limits, the limiting factor at the moment will actually be the screwlink coupling, though. Using the wagon from [2], 720 m [3] would fit 48 wagons, which fully laden would weigh a total of 48 * (70.1 + 19.9 t) = 4320 t. A standard buffer and chain screwlink coupling is only good for around 4000 t on a level gradient, 2500 t at 12.5 ‰ (1:80), or in really mountainous terrain only 1400 t at 26 ‰ (1:38.4) [1] https://gueterwagenkatalog.dbcargo.com/katalog/nach-gattung/Tadgs-959-0-5851226 https://gueterwagenkatalog.dbcargo.com/katalog/nach-gattung/... [2] https://www.wascosa.ch/wagenpark/pdf/de/schuettgutwagen/getreidewagen-95m3_de_201910.pdf https://www.wascosa.ch/wagenpark/pdf/de/schuettgutwagen/getr... [3] In Germany the maximum length is 740 m, minus 20 m for the locomotive.

maxerickson 4y ago

Apparently hopper cars can hold ~100 tons. Still some tough arithmetic.

kzrdude 4y ago
Now I learned thought that "In 2020, U.S. Class I railroads moved nearly 1.5 million carloads of grain." Apparently it's almost possible in that sense.
- coredog64 4y ago
  It’s almost as if the US actually does have a good rail system, except it’s been optimized for freight. /sarc.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Let's say you could ship 10 ton (10,000 kg) per train car; What if we don't underestimate by a full order of magnitude? [0] > The longest possible freight train would be 100 cars or so Why? Freight trains over 100 cars are fairly routine. [0] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/commentary-moving-grain-is-a-major-market-for-u-s-and-canadian-railroads https://www.freightwaves.com/news/commentary-moving-grain-is... : “Rail’s economic advantage comes in large part from each railroad car’s capacity of up to 100 tons”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bobthepanda 4y ago
The European network is not generally set up to handle these long freight trains, because passenger trains are prioritized and the long freights screw that up (see: Amtrak)
kzrdude 4y ago
I don't know. There's apparently some rail export already running, but the scale is really much smaller. https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2022/05/09/first-export-grain-train-arrives-in-austria-from-ukraine/?gdpr=accept https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2022/05/09/first-exp... "Each train consists of 25 bulk goods wagons, and each transports 1,400 tons of grain. "
avianlyric 4y ago
Reading around it seems the bulk goods wagons in the EU can move about 56tons each max, are about 13m long[1], and freight trains have a max length of 750m[2] but normally need to be shorter. In total that means the maximum an EU freight train could theoretically move is only 3,100 tons[3]. So to move 20mil tons of wheat in 3 months (I don’t know the shelf life of wheat) would require about 70 full trains a day. Which I suspect might be beyond what’s possible. [1] https://railrent.com/en/wagon-overview/bulk-freight-wagon/ https://railrent.com/en/wagon-overview/bulk-freight-wagon/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Europe [3] 750/13 = 57.6 wagons per train. Subtract one for an engine (but I suspect you need more than one engine) give you 56 wagons. 56 wagons at 56 tons each gives you a total of 3,135tons are cargo.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  There are special wagons for transporting grain , e.g. [1] or [2], the main difference being that those are covered, whereas the standard bulk freight wagons are open and therefore not weatherproof. Before running into any length limits, the limiting factor at the moment will actually be the screwlink coupling, though. Using the wagon from [2], 720 m [3] would fit 48 wagons, which fully laden would weigh a total of 48 * (70.1 + 19.9 t) = 4320 t. A standard buffer and chain screwlink coupling is only good for around 4000 t on a level gradient, 2500 t at 12.5 ‰ (1:80), or in really mountainous terrain only 1400 t at 26 ‰ (1:38.4) [1] https://gueterwagenkatalog.dbcargo.com/katalog/nach-gattung/Tadgs-959-0-5851226 https://gueterwagenkatalog.dbcargo.com/katalog/nach-gattung/... [2] https://www.wascosa.ch/wagenpark/pdf/de/schuettgutwagen/getreidewagen-95m3_de_201910.pdf https://www.wascosa.ch/wagenpark/pdf/de/schuettgutwagen/getr... [3] In Germany the maximum length is 740 m, minus 20 m for the locomotive.