国内英语新闻:Over 300 trains added Wednesday to cope with Spring Festival travel demand

BEIJING, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- China's railway authorities said Wednesday that it would put 315 more trains into service on Wednesday to cope with Lunar New Year travel demand, compared with 159 on Tuesday.

About 3.7 million passengers hit the rails on Tuesday, up from 2.29 million on Monday, the Ministry of Railways said in a statement on its website.

The ministry expected a post-festival travel peak on Friday.

The country's trains carried a total of 83.46 million passengers from Jan. 8 to 22, up 7.9 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The 40-day Spring Festival travel season kicked off on Jan. 8 this year, with hundreds of millions of people, mainly migrant workers and college students, heading home for the most important festival in China.

A total of 3.16 billion passenger trips are expected during the year's travel rush, up 9.1 percent from a year earlier. Of those journeys, 235 million are likely to be made by train, up 6.1 percent year-on-year.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, falls on Jan. 23 this year.