China News Service, Guangzhou, October 18 (Guo Jun, Fang Jie, Jing Chong) As the morning dawned, goods flowed endlessly on the thousands-mile railway line. At the Changsha North Goods Yard, high-quality white goods trains loaded with home appliances and daily necessities are ready for departure; at Guangzhou Gaolan Port Station, coal trains are smoothly leaving; at Guangzhou International Port, containers are stacked on top of each other, and cross-border trains build a logistics bridge between the inside and outside of China Unicom. The bustling scenes at each station connect the freight development trend of the Guangzhou Bureau of China Railway over the past five years to stabilize bulk cargo, expand white goods, and strengthen intermodal transportation.
The State Railway Guangzhou Bureau introduced on the 17th that in the past five years, the Bureau has promoted the freight business to bid farewell to the traditional production-oriented transportation model and move towards modern service-oriented logistics. The overall cargo delivery volume exceeded 600 million tons, an increase of 26% over the previous five years, and the number of loadings exceeded 8,000 vehicles 20 times in a single day. Many core indicators have successively set historical records.
Data map: In February 2026, more than 2,000 "Hunan-Guangdong-Africa" rail-sea intermodal international trains were launched. Photo courtesy of Guangzhou Bureau of China Railway
Over the past five years, the State Railway Guangzhou Bureau has continued to iterate its intermodal transport products, steadily expanded the scale of rail-sea, rail-water, rail-air, and rail-road intermodal transport, and its multimodal transport territory has continued to expand. The Huangpu Freight Yard Omar Refrigerator sea-rail intermodal transport project attracted overseas businessmen to make a special on-site inspection; the "railway + air express" rail-air intermodal transport made up for the shortcomings of the industry; coastal and inland river ports comprehensively promoted the "one-way" service, and successively launched multimodal "one-way" trains from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and the Pearl River Delta to the Yangtze River ports; it was the first customized train after the Hainan Free Trade Port closed the customs.
Relying on the China Multimodal Transport Development Alliance, the Guangzhou Regional Rail-Water Intermodal Transport Working Group coordinates the resources of the Pan-Pearl River Delta, Central China, and Southwest China to promote the implementation of Hunan Province’s first rail-water intermodal transport “one-unit system” project. The China-Europe, Central Asia, and China-Laos international trains continue to expand in capacity and improve quality, creating a high-quality line for China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan rail-road combined transport with full logistics general contracting. In the past five years, the Guangzhou Bureau of China Railway has operated a total of 56,000 freight trains, including more than 6,500 international trains, an increase of three times compared with the previous five years.
"Today, relying on 10 major international train corridors such as the eastern, central and western lines, the rich products of the three provinces of Guangdong, Hunan and Qiong can reach more than 20 Eurasian countries and more than 40 cities." The relevant person in charge of the Logistics Division of the Guangzhou Bureau of the State Railway said that China-Europe trains have grown from 889 trains in 2021 to 1,298 trains in 2025, an increase of 46%, and the peak day operation frequency is 9 trains.
While the channel is extending, the hardware base is simultaneously compacted. The Guangzhou Bureau of the State Railway has deepened its cooperation with key ports such as Guangzhou Port and Shenzhen Port to explore the integrated operation model of "container port terminal + railway station", and the relevant experience has been selected as a national container multimodal station sharing typical case; it has innovated the "port and station integration" operation of road ports, and Guangzhou Port unifiedly operates the Nansha Port South Station cargo yard to achieve "getting on the train as soon as you get off the ship, and boarding the ship as soon as you get off the ship", and was selected into the first batch of national typical cases for reducing logistics costs for the whole society. The modern logistics network continues to improve, with eight thousand-acre logistics bases including Guangzhou International Port and Pinghunan and a number of supporting dedicated lines built. The railway access rate in important port areas has increased from 64% to 82%. The land and sea are connected, and the internal and external transportation corridors connect Guangdong, Hunan and Qiong more closely with the country and even the world.
Over the past five years, the State Railway Guangzhou Bureau has closely focused on the urgent needs of the national economy and people's livelihood, and has regularly operated "point-to-point" direct trains for bulk cargo to ensure the smooth supply of key supply channels such as coal transportation from north to south; it has focused on cultivating high-quality white goods, photovoltaic, and cold chain trains to accurately serve the development of new productivity.
Relying on the first logistics general contracting project on the entire railway, the Guangzhou Bureau of China Railway took the lead in exploring a new path for the transformation of railway logistics, creating exclusive logistics general contracting projects for well-known enterprises such as Xu Fuji and Baisui Mountain, stably operating integrated warehouse and dry distribution services, and upgrading single transportation services to full-process managed supply chain solutions. For the transportation of bulk raw materials, we will implement "one enterprise, one policy" and innovate the "railway + port contract" model; we will create the first passenger train operation model on the entire road, launch China-Europe trains with a full timetable, and use public transportation, punctuality, and standardized services to make up for the shortcomings of traditional freight timeliness.
Currently, demonstration trains from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to Beijing, Shanghai and other directions are running on a regular basis, implementing the passenger car operation model of "collecting every box and driving every car". Focusing on the logistics pain points of different industries, we have created customized solutions such as the "Heyuan Power Plant" full electric and coal logistics general contracting and the "Hainan-Changsha" full cold chain special train, operated Changsha North intelligent high-standard warehouse, and extended the railway service chain to the modern warehousing field. (over)
