Originally published at: New rail line construction makes it possible to take a train from Portugal to Singapore (in just 21 days) | Boing Boing
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This is epic:
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That’s a bucket list adventure. Wish we had the cheddar to do it.
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I’m sure this journey would still be more reliable than Amtrak.
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You actually can have containers shipped between Europe and China by rail.
And it does take about three weeks, about twice as fast as by ship.
Admittedly not to Laos. (Well, maybe you can, IDK.)
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We have the technology to drill a Chunnel between Russia and Alaska
but the problem is the local areas on both sides are sparsely populated, remote, and not connected to either continent’s road or rail network
It might be a better project for bored billionaires than sending apes-in-a-can to Mars though
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Portugal is problematic.
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Great, now I’m hungry. Thanks.
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isn’t 21 days the same amount of time it takes to go by train from chicago to new york? 
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The question I have is – have trains ever, or even now – allow for disembarking where you please to spend a day or so in a city you may be interested to see up close – and then get back on again? Or would that entail more separate tickets and train schedule research?
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Breaks of gauge don’t really matter for this journey, because it is in theory composed of existing scheduled trains. The goal is not to run a train from point A to point Z but to get a passenger from A to Z.
They aren’t a big problem for containerised freight either, because containers can be unloaded from one train and loaded onto another.
By the way, there’s Russian gauge to consider too:
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The main problem is the lack of high speed rail and connections to Spain. It’s something I found odd about Lisbon - how disconnected it was from the rest of Europe rail-wise - and found out about the history of it…
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From Romania to Moldova, the carriage transfer stop to change the “bogies” takes a couple of hours. I assume it’s similar in the north?
Border patrol kills two birds with one stone by conducting checks while this is being done.
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Is there perhaps a route that doesn’t go through Belarus?
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@LutherBlisset 's article linked above goes into this. There is the possibility of going north, because there is a Finland-Russia rail link, but this involves a short walk to change trains between the Swedish and Finnish rail systems, because Finnish Rail is (almost) on the Russian gauge.
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Bald has done a big chunk of that. If you have not seen his channel it’s worth a few dozen lost hours watching him wander the remnants of the USSR.
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In my experience, this is the preferred method for disembarking on most rail lines. It’s not as flexible and reduces spontaneity, though. At times, I just ate the cost and booked again from points that weren’t my original destination. 
This excursion is definitely going on my post-pandemic bucket list. With my tendency to wander, it’d take me at least 40-60 days. Now I’m wondering about cruising back from Singapore… 
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You are looking for the Eurail pass - on-again-off-again boarding shared by multiple different rail operators. You “activate” a multi-day ticket for a day and move around anywhere you can get to, then stay where you like. Activate it again for the duration of your next leg…
In practice many larger trips still require reserving an actual seat/bed ahead of time, but in some areas it is supposed to just work like a day pass you can wave as if it were a bought ticket.
It’s not actually the pure magic it sounds like, and neither the pricing nor convenience was as amazing as I’d hoped, but yeah, it has existed for decades.
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Come to think of it, at the co-op I lived in during college, there was a can labeled “Chongos” in the cupboard. No one was sure how long it had already been there, and no one wanted to open it.
ETA: At this far remove (32 years) I can’t remember whether we confused “chongos” with “changos,” or the can actually said “changos.”
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