Date: 14/07/2014

At Asia's biggest rail cargo base in Chengdu in south-west China, the cranes are hard at work, swinging containers from trucks onto a freight train. The containers are filled with computers, clothes, even cars. Until last year, all of it would have first gone more than 1,000 miles east to Shanghai and then to Europe by sea. But now the journey's been cut from six weeks to two. The trains are bound straight for Europe via Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. They will be unloaded in Poland and distributed to their final destinations.

External links

All aboard: China's railway dream

BBC News

Is China's revolutionising high-speed rail travel? The BBC's Carrie Gracie looks at China's rapid expansion of rail links and its ambitions abroad.