The stuff that works in the CONUS are petroleum based cargos. In Europe there are other incentives to use water based transport including the tolling of arterial roads.
Many European ports have an historic footprint and can’t be extended to handle the container vessels now in transoceanic trade necessitating feeder vessels often transiting the Baltic,North Sea and the English Channel to hub ports.
Most of the cargo moving on the Danube and the Rhine was bulk cargo such as petroleum products and aggregate but there was some very modern vessels carrying about 280 teu.
I have loaded railway line directly from a inland vessel secured alongside at Rotterdam.
Apparently the railway line had been loaded on the vessel at a wharf at the steel works.
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