Russia can earn more than a billion dollars by linking the Trans-Korean and Trans-Siberian railway lines

Russia hopes to earn more than a billion dollars by implementing the project of linking the Trans-Korean and Trans-Siberian railway lines.

Gennady Fadeyev, Russia's railways minister, said at a press conference Wednesday that it was important now to successfully implement this project. It will allow Russia to increase transit freight flow by 500,000 20-foot containers a year and earn more than a billion dollars in profit.

The minister noted that business circles in both Asia and Europe displayed a keen interest in the project to reanimate the Trans-Korean railway and to link it with the Trans-Siberian railway (TransSib). The thing is that TransSib is the world's shortest "Asia-Europe-Asia" transit container route. It takes cargo trains twelve days to run the distance from the Russian port of Nakhodka on the Pacific coast to the station of Brest on the Belarussian-Polish border. Meanwhile, it takes nearly a month for vessels from the South-Korean port of Pusan to reach Western Europe by a transoceanic route.

On Wednesday, festivities devoted to the completion of TransSib's electrification (the total length of TransSib is nearly 10,000 kilometres) were held at the station of Ruzhino (Maritime territory).

Shortly before the festivities, the electrification of the last 175 km-long section between the stations of Sviyagino and Ruzhino was completed on the Maritime territory's part of the Trans-Siberian railway.

Electric traction makes it possible to substantially increase the speed of trains and to double their weight - to 6,000 tons.