The world’s largest wind powered cargo ship recently completed its first transatlantic voyage from France to New York.
From the article: Anemos, commissioned by the French company TransOceanic Wind Transport (TOWT), embarked on its maiden voyage earlier this month from Concarneau, a coastal town in Southern Brittany, France. The 81-metre-long ship is now on its way to New York, carrying 1,000 tonnes of high-value cargo, including products from coffee importers and French cognac producers.
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1,000 tonnes might sound like a lot of cargo. It is about the same amount that the 19th century clipper ships could carry. However, if compared to today’s big container ships, 1,000 tonnes is quite small.
1,000 tonnes is about the average loaded capacity of 100 standard TEU containers. (The average TEU is loaded with about 10 tonnes of cargo.) Today’s largest container ships can haul more than 24,000 TEUs.
It sounds to me this French sailing ship is more of a novelty than a real game-changer.
Speaking of the future of shipping, Mexico is breaking ground on a rail route for shipping from Pacific to Atlantic and vice versa, starting with $7.5B to clear a 180 mile route through two lower provinces of the country.
The route would require ships to offload containers on one side, transport via rail and reload onto a different ship on the other side. Sounds sketchy to me, but there actually was one of these around 1900 which got schmeared when the Panama Canal opened.
Now, however, the Canal is restricted due to low water in Gatun lake, the size ship it can accommodate, and more. Ships sometimes have to wait weeks for their passage slip, or pay exorbitant fees to jump the line.
Mexico says at best their kludge rail line could handle 5% of what the Canal does, so it’s not really competition. But even with offloading and reloading fees, transit fees for the rail, and having to have two ships to handle things, they claim it will be (modestly) cheaper than the Canal, so we’ll see.
I figure about 188 miles worth. Just one long train, going like the luggage conveyor belt at the airport. Gotta figure a way to load and unload while it’s moving, tho to keep things moving.
Trains can only get so long though. Couplers are only so strong. Plus curves want to make the train jump tracks to the inside if too long. Next let’s talk hills. This is why some very, very long trains have engines at the back as well – they are literally pushing the train together as the length and weight tries to pull the train apart.
Looks like trains could haul about 250 containers, possibly up to 350 or even 400 max. This is two containers per car, at 120 cars per train for an average long train, and 200 cars seeming to be the absolute maximum.
This could require on the order of 10 trains per ship!
Couldn’t they do locomotive with 100 carriers plus a locomotive in back. Then a gap of a mile or so. Then another train locomotive-100 carriers-locomotive. Etc. 188 miles could be maybe 70-80 such groups, maybe a bit more. So 7000 to 8000 container carriers on the tracks at all times. Need a big train yard on each end, but since they should constantly be loading and unloading, they would only be there for the time it takes to unload/load. Can the tracks handle such heavy usage? Can the trains run such a heavy duty cycle? Maybe or maybe not, but they can probably be engineered to do so if necessary.
Coal trains to power plants run similar schedules. A plant will get a delivery a day, but might be 5-6 days away from the mine. Hence, 5-6 trains en route on the same tracks, spaced apart by 24 hours.
Shades of the Spanish empire. Manila used to trade throughout east Asia for spices and such. The Spanish ships would then sail across the Pacific to Acapulco, the cargo would be loaded on mules and hauled to Veracruz on the Caribbean. Then on to boats to Spain…
Iron ore from Mt Whaleback in Australia is transported to Port Hedland on trains that have made it in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest and heaviest trains in the world. The record breaking train weighed in at 99,734 tons and was 7.3 kilometers long.
