China's railways carried a record of 6.93 million people nationwide on the past National Day on Thursday, according to statistics from the Ministry of Railways.

Travellers line up in the ticket hall at Shangsha Railway Station, in Shangsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Thursday October 1, 2009. [Xinhua]

The previous record was set on October 5 in 2008 when China's railways carried 6.48 million passengers.

This year, China's National Day holidays and the Mid-Autumn Festival, a key festival in China for family re-union, overlapped. More people working far away from home chose to go back for family re-union in the eight-day holidays.

Railway passenger traffic topped 118,000 in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, up by 47 percent from the same period last year. More people are willing to travel after they have been recovering from pains brought by the earthquake that hit Sichuan last year.

Railway passenger traffic soared in most cities on October 1. Many cities reported more than 10 percent of growth in railway passenger volume, according to the ministry.

(Xinhua News Agency October 3, 2009)