The Great Silk Road now made of Steel: where the caravans were once going ...
Where trains of caravans went in old times, railroad tracks lay now. And the camels have long been replaced by trains. The Great Silk Road turns into steel, becoming a transport corridor linking practically along the same route as in antiquity, the states of the vast region of the planet.
And in the center of this path is Turkmenistan. Recently in the country, on the very north of the Turkmen seaside, a "shopping caravan" from the Middle Kingdom was met: a container train making a test run. The composition crossed the entire western region of the country from the top down - from the border with Kazakhstan in the north to Iran in the south. The final destination is Tehran.
This is one of three freight trains testing the capabilities of the Turkmen railways sent one after another from different provinces of the PRC. The first test gave excellent results, the transport overcame the path even in less time than previously calculated.
So the new transport corridor China-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran will soon open a regular movement with the prospect of connecting other countries of the continent to it.
Rail transport retains a predominant position in the transportation of such bulk cargo as oil and oil products, building materials, fertilizers.
In 2017, the volume of cargo transportation by the Ministry of Railway Transport of Turkmenistan increased by 6.7% compared to 2016.
Of the total volume of transit cargo transported during January-November 2017 through the territory of Turkmenistan, the predominant part fell to the country's railways - 61.2%.
