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This video is not about what the longest train is.
I mean, like, it’s not about the longest physical train.
The reason the video is about this and not this is because the answer to this is quite
boring.
It’s this one.
It was 4.5 miles long.
Great, fascinating, right?
Let’s move on.
If you’ve watched any of these videos you know that you’re not getting the answer
to what the longest train journey is right off the bat because it’s not that simple!
There’s different categories and criteria and little minutia that I just need to explain.
Namely, it’s really really hard to run a train super long distances.
You see, here’s a map.
Every different color on this map represents a different track gauge in a different country.
Much like different countries have different plug types and currencies and driving directions
and measurement systems, the railroads of different countries have different widths
of tracks.
Previous testing has proven that trains don’t work well off the track so the trains of any
given country only work in certain countries.
This can create some difficulties.
You’ll notice, on the map, that Spain and Portugal have a different gauge than the rest
of Europe.
Finland does too but that’s just Finland being Finland.
The supposed reason for Spain’s different gauge, and this is not a joke, was so that
the French couldn’t invade by train, but nowadays, the Spanish might actually want
to go to France and up until recently, they couldn’t…
at least not by train… without changing trains.
Spain built some high speed lines in the standard gauge that France uses from the major cities
to France so you can now take a direct train, for example, from Madrid and Barcelona to
Paris, but in other areas, on the non high-speed lines, you can’t cross the border by train.
If you want to take a train from Biarritz to San Sebastian, for example, you’re out
of luck because the Spanish tracks are 9.17 inches wider than the French ones so you have
to take the train to Hendaye, walk all the way across this bridge, then catch the train
from Irun, or you could just take the bus.
Now, you can actually switch the gauges of trains but it’s massively inconvenient.
At best it takes hours for a full-length passenger train, but some trains, like the legendary
trans-Siberian service from Moscow to Beijing, do exactly this.
This train stops at the Mongolian-Chinese border for four hours while its reconfigured
for the thinner Chinese tracks.
As it turns out, by doing this, this train is the third longest passenger service in
the world spanning 5,582 miles over six days.
But just for some fun, let’s do a rapid fire round of the longest passenger train
services by country.
In the United States its the 65 hour, 2,700 mile trip from Chicago to Los Angeles; in
the United Kingdom its the 13 hour, 720 mile trip from Aberdeen to Penzance; in Canada
its the 86 hour, 2,770 mile trip from Toronto to Vancouver; in Australia its the 65 hour,
2,700 miles trip from Sydney to Perth; and finally in India, its the 80 hour, 2,660 mile
trip from Kannyakumari to Dibrugarh.
However, the world’s second longest train service is, big surprise, also in Russia!
It’s also a trans-Siberian service from Moscow to Vladivostok in 144 hours and 5,772
miles, but the longest train goes to the least friendly Korea in the world—North Korea.
You see, the longest train service in the world isn’t really a full train—it’s
this train carriage.
The North Korean State Railway runs this service from Pyongyang to Moscow by sending this sleeper
car north to the border with Russia and then attaching it to the Russian train from Vladivostok
to Moscow.
This is technically a direct service since you never leave the carriage for those 206
hours and 6,380 miles which makes this, definitely, the longest passenger train service in the
world.
But of course, there’s a reason I keep saying “passenger” because there are longer cargo
services.
China, in an effort to improve connectivity with the west, has started running cargo trains
directly to Europe, and these aren’t just for show.
There’s a legitimate place for cargo trains as a medium-speed service between super fast
cargo planes, which take about 12 hours to get to the UK, and cargo ships, which take
30 days to get to the UK.
This 7,500 mile trip from Yiwu, China to London, England via to the channel tunnel takes about
18 days to complete and can definitely be called the longest current direct train service
in the world.
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