FDX - Euro trains competition for freight
 

Interesting story on moving time criical freight from curfew constricted airports to high speed trains.

Channel Tunnel Seen Winning Mail Bonanza From Airlines - Bloomberg

This makes perfect sense. Time from city center to city center is probably the same as with an aircraft. If I am not mistaken, FedEx owns a 10-15% stake in one of these companies that is about to make this happen. Seems like Fred is always out ahead of the crowd.

Sitting at a railroad crossing in Memphis yesterday and watched a Burlington Northern train go by with several FedEx Freight trucks on the intermodal flat cars. Also saw several trucks with "FedEx Intermodal" on the side. Looks like Freight is going to the rails domestically. Makes sense for non-time sensitive shipments. Way cheaper than pulling a single trailer.

A couple of slow-poke trains hauling 18 wheel trailers are a far cry from what could be a game changer in Europe. High speed trains, coupled with a far more integrated train network could, under the right (wrong?? :confused: ) circumstances, gut our current intra European flying. Not much we can do about it. If the railroad/ground types can figure out how to minimize ground transfer time from rail to road and the trains really can do the speeds they advertise (at night, a potential hurdle) than you can expect to see it happen. We will always loose to a ground based rival if our overwhelming speed advantage is neutralized.

Til they go on strike...

It is Europe; they will have a work stoppage at some point!!!

Maybe this is why FedEx let UPS have TNT.

A few years ago my wife and I went on holiday to Stockholm. Spent a week there and then took the "high speed train" down to Copenhagen. The trip was just over 400 miles long and took for-freaking-ever. I think it was over 7 hours, terminal to terminal, stopping in many, many small towns and villages. Whereas I don't know if they actually have "express" trains, but if they don't, it would have been quicker to go by mule or donkey. High speed (freight) trains are only high speed if they go non-stop, over fairly long distances, because otherwise they spend a lot of their time accelerating up to speed or decelerating down to a stop.

JJ

You can see that by going from NRT to KIX on the Shinkansen and the local trains. ANA and two taxis beat it by several hours. But the train is more fun.