OREANDA-NEWS. December 27, 2013. A demonstration container train consisting of forty wagons of transit cargo has left for the first time the People's Republic of China for the southern ports of China and the Republic of Korea via the Vladivostok region of the Far Eastern Main Line.

A special timetable schedule was developed specifically for this trip, with the train departing from the Grodekovo border station at 07:20 and arriving at the Nakhodka-Vostochnaya station at 18:00 Moscow time later the same day. Total travel time is 10 hours and 40 minutes.

Both China and Russia now need rail transport between Suifenhe-Grodekovo – Nakhodka-Vostochnaya (Vostochny Port) nowadays. Among Chinese shippers are large companies such as HuaShen, which dispatches between 300-600 containers every month loaded with paper, chemical products and agricultural products to China's southern ports.

This corridor is an alternative to the traditional route via the Chinese port of Dalian, which is now significantly overloaded. Rail transportation allows the shipment of goods in commercial quantities in the shortest possible time.

The project to develop an international rail connection between Suifenhe in China and Grodekovo in Russia was implemented in the framework of the decisions adopted by the Working Group of the Greater Tumangan Initiative (GTI) in October 2013.

One of the key areas of GTI cooperation is to organise transit shipments of Chinese exports via Russia's seaports in its Far East region. The regular dispatch of transit containers on this route will optimise the transport and logistics supply chain of goods from China's northern provinces and in the opposite direction by using the infrastructure of stevedoring companies of the Far East and Russian Railways.