The Crossroads of Eurasia, Kazakhstan, Upgrades Infrastructure.

As each freight train arrives from China to Kazakhstan’s Khorgos rail depot, the largest dry port on the planet, the thousands upon thousands of arriving 40-foot cargo containers, like so many toys of a Lego set, are lifted from the incoming trains by huge cranes, and plunked down onto waiting flatcars bound for farther west.

But why? Why not just send the trains through with nothing more than a crew change?

The answer is one of history’s quirks and one reason why landlocked Kazakhstan is expanding Khorgos rail yard, to better handle the huge and growing flows of cargo, projected to more than double to 30 million tons annually in a few short years.

From Khorgos, the cargo containers will be railroaded to our “coastal” city Aktau on the Caspian Sea, or other destinations, and then usually on to Europe.

This cross-country freight railway covers 2,930 kilometres, a distance that imparts to readers an inkling of the scale of our nation, the ninth-largest on the planet by land mass. The railway also reduces travel times from China to Western Europe in half or less, when compared to shipping lines.

It’s safe to say that never before has there been such a heavy demand upon Kazakhs to move goods, whether our own reserves of critical metals, materials, and oil, or product from the world’s manufacturing platform in China and other Asian nations.

Kazakhstan in 2022 unveiled a program to spend US$20 billion expand and diversify the nation’s transport routes, and further developer integrated logistics solutions. Beijing plays a role with its Belt and Road Initiative, which utilizes Kazakhstan’s strategic location and rails as a conduit for growing levels of East-West trade. And the country, in addition, is also improving its link to emergent India, through its improving International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

Railways in the country are a consequence of history. China long ago adopted railroads with 1,435 millimeters space between the rails, based on European introduction of the steel horses to China, and continental standards.

Russia, and ergo former Soviet Union, use rails that are 1,524 millimeters apart. That’s because the Tzar of Russia in the 1840s followed the advice of George Washington Whistler, a prominent American railway engineer, and adopted slightly wider rails as more economical for Russia’s long-distance and heavy freight-carrying needs.

In any event, this schism between Europe and Russia has also become a practical division between China and Kazakhstan, and the reason for the daily heroics at the Khorgos dry port to transfer innumerable containers from one set of trains to the next.

Mindful of its role in expanding global trade and critical resources, Kazakhstan is rapidly building out its networks of roads, rails, depots and all other infrastructure, to further enable peaceful commerce and cooperation among nations.