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

Two passenger trains rolled out the Wuhan Railway Station and Guangzhou North Railway Station at about 9:00 AM and were expected to reach the terminals at 12:00 AM, 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 December 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.

(Xinhua News Agency December 26, 2009)