The First Freight Train Traveling from China to Europe via Turkey

On November 6, 2019, the Chang’an freight train of the China Railway Express Company (CRE), an important tool of the Belt and Road Initiative, reached the destination in Europe using Istanbul’s Marmaray subsea tunnel. The CRE freight train departed from Xi’an, China, traveling through the territory of Kazakhstan with ferry transfers across the Caspian sea and then to Turkey via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway line.