CHINA: World's fastest rail journey starts operation

Xinhua

The Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed railway with the world’s fastest train journey with a 350 km-per-hour average speed, started operation on Saturday.

Two passenger trains rolled out the Wuhan Railway Station and Guangzhou North Railway Station, cutting the 1,068.6 km journey to three hours from the previous 10 and a half hours.

The service between Wuhan, a metropolis in central China, and Guangzhou City, a business hub in the southern Guangdong Province, was put into trial operation on Dec. 9, reaching a maximum speed of 394.2 km per hour.

In 2004, China hailed the completion of the rail line from Guangzhou to Shenzhen, both in Guangdong Province, with a speed of 160 km per hour. Now the speed more than doubled within five years, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge of designing the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed line. The average of high-speed rail ways is 243 km per hour in Japan, 232 km per hour in Germany and 277 km per hour in France, he said