High-speed trains deliver shopping festival orders

The railway sector has opened more stations to handle high-speed train freight services and offered various logistics options to facilitate the annual November shopping spree, aiming to meet the demand for delivery, according to national railway operator China State Railway Group.

A total of 31 railway stations have newly developed high-speed railway express delivery services for this year's online shopping festival, adding to the tally of 280 stations capable of such services across the country.

On a daily basis, the company has arranged for 34 high-speed inspection trains without passengers to carry express packages. In regular times, those inspection trains are designed to examine the route before the first service each day.

Fast freight train services with a top speed of 160 kilometers per hour have been arranged along several busy lines, including the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway, Beijing-Shanghai Railway and Beijing-Shenzhen Railway.

Various options for express services will be provided, covering areas from cold chain and different delivery speed demands. Customers can choose to have their products delivered in one, two or three days.

More services will be provided to cater to cold chain express delivery, offering eight types of boxes in different sizes. Various temperature settings are also available to store different types of products.

The services will last from Nov 1 to 20, the peak delivery period for the popular shopping festival, also known as "Double 11".

It is the seventh year that the railway sector has offered special services to facilitate the movement of goods during the shopping festival.

On Monday morning, when a fast freight train from Guangzhou, Guangdong province entered a freight yard in Beijing, staff members hurried to unload parcels from the train, placed each one on conveyor belts for disinfection and distribution, and then the parcels were loaded onto trucks and taken to distribution centers.

Yan Chenyang, a manager of the yard at the Beijing railway freight center, said the train, carrying about 60,000 parcels, took 24 hours to arrive in Beijing from Guangzhou.

"We usually communicate with clients in advance and arrange sufficient personnel for unloading and reloading, as well as distribution cars. It is to boost efficiency and to make sure we can handle the cargo as soon as the train arrives," he said, adding that it takes about 2 hours to complete the unloading and reloading of such a train.

"Parcels, which arrive in the morning at the yard, will be sent to distribution centers in the afternoon and delivered to customers in the evening," he said.

During last year's "Double 11", the country handled some 6.3 billion parcels from Nov 1 to 16, up 16.2 percent year-on-year.

Xinhua contributed to this story.