The train of the Magic Kings

The longest train journey has just begun: 21 days and 13.052 kilometers across icy plains at -30ºC, deserts and hug mountain ranges where Marco Polo walked! From one of the extrems of China, across Russia, Poland, Germany, France,... definetly, up to eight different countries with one ojective: reach the Spain capital, Madrid (if all goes well, the train would arrive the 9 of November). In the picture you can see the route that the train will do, from China to Madrid and how exceeds the record of the TransSiberian Railway (that until now was the longest train journey made) by far. 

It's going to be many replacaents of enginers drivers and watchers. Acording with the calculations of an american journalist that reach the new for the The New York Times, only between Kazajistán and Polonia, more than 100 enginer drivers took the train control, what menas that there is a change every 800 km.

The initiative of this Yixin'Ou (the name of the train) starts in China when the chineses wanted to make the new Silk Road. In the last months, Xi Jimping, the precident the country, has been committed to invert 32.000 million of euros in rail infraestructures with the objective of be the center point of the economic belt of this 21st century Silk Road. 

The segurity is extremly for prevent thefts in lawless regions. The wagons are guarded by an armed guards the 24 hours of the day and all the wagons have the "GSM technology", a stamp that shoot an alarm if the wagon is manipulate. 

The train is formed by 82 blue wagons: 1.000 tones of weigh and with a dimensiones of 12 meters of lenght, 2,35 meters of with and 2,70 meters of height; in total, 30.560 cubic meters full of  "made in China" products.

In Spain, for the days that this train is going to enter in the country and for all the toys that bring in their blue wagons (8 wagons are reserved for the Spain marked), it's know as The Train of The Tree Magic Kings. 

The train have a lot of advantatges as a trasnport methood, is faster than a boat, cheaper than a plane and can arrive to places that don't have port (like Madrid) and also, it doesn't miss anything from the trip, on his return to China, is going to pick up merchandises from all the countries crossed.

I think that the only fantastic thing about this train, is the long trip that it's going to do because the quantity of wagons that carries it's nothing compared with the high number of wagons that a cargo ship can carry (that is more than 10.000 wagons!). Anyway, it's incredible how chinese people always come up with new ways of surprise the world.

(Original new: http://www.elmundo.es/cronica/2014/11/30/5479b71ce2704e591e8b4577.html)