(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-27 17:01

Prolonged snow, rain and cold weather has led to train delays in Central and South China and stranded tens of thousands of passengers, in addition to expressway closures, flight cancellations and relocations of people.

A total of 136 electric passenger trains came to a standstill on an artery railway in Hunan Province after the local power supply system was damaged by continuous snow and icy rain.

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Technicians and workers with the Guangzhou Railway Group Corp, the operating company, were using more than 100 diesel locomotives to pull the electric locomotives carrying tens of thousands of passengers from a section that suffered a sudden drop in power, a company spokesman said.

About 40,000 passengers were stranded at different stations along the trunk line linking Beijing and Guangzhou in South China, he said. Another 50,000 passengers were delayed at Guangzhou Railway Station.

"We will do our best to resume traffic as soon as possible," he said.

The company had dispatched more than 10,000 technical workers to repair the damaged power lines, and cancelled trains scheduled to depart from Guangzhou Railway Station, especially those bound for Hunan, he said.

It had also ordered the transfer of some trains to other lines and refunds to passengers reduce number of stranded people, he said.

Meanwhile, the company had dispatched workers with almost 10,000 kg of rice, vegetables, meat, edible oil, and 20,000 boxes of instant noodles and drinking water to serve passengers aboard the stranded trains, he said.

"It seems I will spend my Spring Festival holiday at this station," said a passenger from Chenzhou, Hunan Province, who had been delayed for several hours at Changsha Railway Station with 2,000 other people on Saturday.

"The coach service was suspended because the expressway had been shut down. I thought it would be easier to go home by railway, but I never thought the trains could be delayed by snow," he said.

Delays of up to at least nine hours in some stations were also reported in Kunming, Yunnan Province, and Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province.

In East China's Zhejiang Province, more than 10,000 coaches has been hampered, affecting some 1.2 million passengers. By Saturday afternoon, 50,000 passengers were stranded in four long-distance coach stations of Hangzhou, Zhejiang's capital.

In Shanghai, more than 550 coaches, most heading for Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Hebei and Hubei, were stopped by snow.

Due to the closure of the expressway linking Beijing and Zhuhai, Guangdong, about 9,900 vehicles have been stranded in a nearby highway in Guangdong's Ruyuan County and more than 20,000 vehicles with 60,000 people stranded near Hunan's Xiangtan City. Similar cases were also reported in southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

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