国内英语新闻:Train trips surge on final day of the National Day holiday

BEIJING, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- China saw a significant increase in train travel on Sunday as millions of people traveled back from their vacation destinations on the final day of the National Day holiday to return to work and school.

An estimated 14 million passengers are expected to make train journeys on Sunday, according to the China Railway Corporation (CRC).

Railway authorities put an extra 920 trains in service on Sunday to cope with the surging demand, said the CRC.

The Yangtze River Delta is expected to see 2.6 million train journeys on Sunday, while the Shanghai Railway Bureau planned 210 additional trains to ease the traffic pressure.

The Wuhan Railway Bureau handled 880,000 passengers in the day, about 40,000 more than the peak number in this year's Chinese Lunar New Year.

People across China had made about 105 million trips by railway since the holiday travel rush started on Sept. 28, the CRC said Saturday.

On Saturday, about 12.9 million trips were made, up 3.7 percent year on year, making it the eighth day in a row with more than 10 million railway trips, said the company.

Chinese railways set a new record in daily passenger traffic as more than 15 million trips were made on Oct. 1, or National Day, the first day of the eight-day holiday.

The Yangtze River Delta saw a record high of nearly 23 million train trips made during the holiday, 882,000 more than that in last year's holiday.

The Wuhan Railway Bureau handled 8.12 million trips during the same period, up 26 percent year on year, putting 559 additional trains in service.

The Wuhan railway station adopted 32 facial recognition machines which halved the time for passengers' entrance.

Guangzhou South Railway Station, the largest railway station in south China, handled an average of 250,000 trips a day during the holiday, 20 times the number in 2010 when the station opened.

The National Day holiday has been extended to eight days this year to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Cake Festival, which fell on Oct. 4.