Transit
Door-ready adds half the gap between departures — the average wait if your cargo becomes ready at a random moment. On a 14-a-week service that is 0.3 days, and it is the figure a road-versus-rail comparison usually leaves out.
Legs and handovers
A single through leg — no gauge break and no operator handover en route.
- 1 Durban Bayhead → City DeepTransnet Freight Rail · Cape (1067 mm) · 700 km · 2 d
Track gauge and borders
The spacing between the rails — whether the wheels can run through, or the load has to change trains.
- Countries crossed
- ZA
- Gauge changes
- None — through running
- Origin gauge
- Cape (1067 mm)
- Destination gauge
- Cape (1067 mm)
Loading gauge clearance
The height and width of tunnels and bridges — whether the load fits through. A different constraint from track gauge above: this corridor can have no gauge break at all and still refuse a high-cube container.
Set by ZA, the narrowest network on the route. One restrictive tunnel anywhere caps the whole journey regardless of how generous the rest is. A tighter envelope than continental Europe, and tighter again than the track gauge alone suggests. Heavy-haul ore and coal lines are cleared further; a general freight path should be planned against this figure and confirmed route by route.
- 40ft standard (8'6") on a container flat
- Clears +219 mm
- High-cube (9'6") on a container flat
- Fouls 86 mm
- Swap body on a container flat
- Clears +140 mm
- P400 semi-trailer on a pocket wagon
- Fouls 305 mm
Profiles are the published maxima for each network's core freight routes. Individual lines differ in both directions, so a load within 50 mm of the limit needs the operator to confirm the specific path. Compare wagon deck heights →
Emissions
GLEC v3 planning estimate — not a regulatory declaration. Model your own payload with the transit calculator.
The Natal corridor between Africa's busiest port and its largest inland terminal, on 1067 mm Cape gauge.