Freight containers ‘the first rail freight service’ to be routed from Łódź in Poland to Chengdu in China via the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad were transhipped between different size networks at Chernyakhovsk on September 25.
The 9559 km service via Kaliningrad oblast, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan service was organised by European transport companies, and CRIMT of China, with the objective of creating an alternative to the route for freight via the busy border crossing between Poland and Belarus at Brest.
The 41 freight containers on the first service contained goods including water filters, paint, machine components, textiles and light industrial products.
It is planned that the service will initially be one train per day routed via Kaliningrad.