Railway stations in south China's Guangdong Province reported a peak passenger flow of 490,000 travelers on Saturday as the week-long Spring Festival holiday came to the end.

Most of the passengers were people returning from home to work after the week-long holiday and students back to college, according to a railway station official.

The Guangzhou Railway Station alone, the largest in the provincial capital, received more than 18,000 travelers on Saturday.

"Our station received a train very three minutes today and we had to open more passenger exits than usual to deal with the huge passenger flow," said Zhang Xueke, head of the railway station.

"Another passenger flow peak will come around the Lantern Festival on March 4, which eventually marks the end of the Spring Festival," said Zhang.

The Ministry of Railways estimated that China's railways would transport an unprecedented 156 million passengers during the 40-day Spring Festival travel peak from Feb. 3 to March 14, up 4.3 percent year-on-year.

The Guangdong Railway Group has planned to send 168 extra trains to the provinces of Sichuan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui to take back migrant workers who returned home for the Spring Festival.

(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2007)