On 20 January, the first international container train from Beijing to Hamburg arrived in Brest. The forwarder across the territories of Mongolia, Russia, and Belarus was the Russian company TransContainer, a subsidiary of JSC Russian Railways. This same company also provided its own flat wagons for carrying the containers on 1520 mm gauge.

The Beijing to Hamburg container train departed from Beijing's Dahongmen Station on 9 January and is expected to arrive in Hamburg on 24 January. Thus, the total transit time will be 15 days with a total route length of 9780 km.

The train will deliver to Germany 20 40-foot and 58 20-foot containers (totalling 98 TEU) with various types of goods. In addition to JSC TransContainer, this project involves JSC Russian Railways, railway administrations of China, Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland, and Germany, and Russian customs authorities.

"This time, the train is making a demonstration run, whose purpose is to show our potential customers the possibilities of the resources and technologies at our disposal and to demonstrate the efficiency and coordination of all project participants, including foreign railway administrations and Russian authorities," said TransContainer's General Director Peter Baskakov at the ceremony to welcome the train.

He also said that this run was organized with the use of advanced transport technologies. "Particular mention should be made of providing preliminary information to customs authorities on the nature of goods. For example, electronic copies of the documents required for customs clearance of goods in Russia had been submitted to the Naushki Customs even before the goods entered the territory of Mongolia. It should be noted that the customs authorities have also given us support and worked as quickly as possible, for which we express our deep gratitude," stressed Peter Baskakov.

"This technology is already widely used in organizing container train runs from Kotka, Finland, to St. Petersburg," he added.