China's Ministry of Railways said on Saturday that 85,000 sets of temporary houses had been sent via rail transport to quake zone by 6 a.m. Friday.

Those houses were carried in 92 special trains to make sure the urgently-needed facilities would reach quake survivors at the soonest, the ministry said.

It said 5,000 container trains along with 13,000 containers had been put into use.

The ministry had arranged trains waiting at stations near manufacturing factories to deliver the goods at any time, while manpower and large machines were also summoned up to unload the shipments as quickly as possible.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said 26,730 temporary houses had been set up in Sichuan and other areas by Wednesday.

It said workers were erecting another 14,353 makeshift shelters in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces and altogether, 68,448 were scheduled to go up for those left homeless in the May 12 quake.

Railways had also carried 365,000 tents, 6.27 million cases of bottled water, 2.96 million boxes of instant noodles, 1.6 million tons of power coal, 660,000 tons of grain, 750,000 tons of petroleum as well as medicine and cotton-padded clothes to quake areas by Friday morning, as railways in the country are the most suitable for such transport of large freight.

(Xinhua News Agency June 7, 2008)