The latest Sino-Europe service, and the first for the UK, is operated by Swiss-based InterRail Group, on behalf of China Railways' affiliate CRIMT. It left Yiwu station with 34 45ft high cube containers loaded with clothing and other "High Street "goods, on 2nd January and is due to arrive in London Barking on Wednesday, 18th January, after 16 days and 12,000 kms.

The train had two gauge break container transfers, at the Sino-Kazakh and Belarus-Poland borders. China Railways hauled the train to Dostyk. From there, the union of Russian, Kazakh and Belarus railways all sharing the same 1520mm Russian broad gauge enabled a Kazakh loco to haul the train to Brest, where the containers were transferred to the third set of wagons on European standard gauge and hauled by PKP Cargo to the German rail border.  DB Cargo AG moved the train across Germany, stopping in Duisburg and then Aachen, on the Belgian border, where the train was picked up by SNCB Logistics, which hauled through Belgium and France to Calais (Fréthun). DB Cargo UK ran the service from Fréthun via the Channel Tunnel and HS1 to its London "Eurohub" in Barking.

Paul Hawes, DB Cargo UK's Customer service Manager, confirmed to WorldCargo News that for this launch service, all the containers loaded in China were bound for the UK. The service is expected to run weekly for 3-4 months to assess customer demand and economic viability. Westbound headhaul rates are said to be half those of airfreight and journey time is half that of seafreight, so it might work – it does for almost 40 weekly trains from China for various European destinations.

Around 20 of these trains stop in Duisburg, Europe's biggest inland port and leading "steel wheel hub." On this occasion, the stop in Duisburg was a technical stop, necessary to transfer the containers to the fourth set of wagons – 17 x 110ft long DB Cargo megafrets, which are approved for Channel tunnel use.

Looking ahead, however, if the China-London service proves to be a success, DB Cargo is considering using Duisburg as a more general container exchange stop. Containers from China bound for continental European centres could be taken off and replaced with containers/swap bodies from European centres bound for the UK. 

This could increase the competitiveness of Channel Tunnel intermodal for Germany-UK and Italy-UK traffic flows.

Wednesday, 18th January 13.05H GMT – DB Cargo AG has added the following: The UK is just the latest destination added to the China-Europe rail link. The train is initially being operated as a test train. London is one more international connection for the InterRail Group, along with Duisburg, Madrid, Afghanistan and Riga, on the "One Belt – One Road" corridor, an initiative of the Chinese government.

"DB has collaborated with partners since 2011 to operate weekly container trains on the world's longest rail line, which connects, among other cities, Duisburg and Hamburg to Wuhan, Chongqing and Harbin, and as of mid-2016, Hamburg to the Chinese province of Hefei. A record number of containers, around 40,000, were transported by train along the Silk Road in 2016. The volume is expected to increase to some 100,000 containers by 2020.

The 10,000 to 12,000 kilometre journeys usually take 12 to 16 days and require containers to be unloaded and reloaded multiple times due to changes of gauge. The service is used in particular by customers with time-sensitive commodities, such as special promotional clothing items, and capital-intensive goods, such as automotive parts and electronics."