China's railways carried a record 3.32 billion passengers in the first eight months of 2026, up 3.9 percent year on year, according to data released by China State Railway Group on Saturday.
To meet surging demand for leisure travel, rail operators ran 2,501 dedicated tourist trains over the period, expanding routes for scenic sightseeing and cultural heritage trips.
The data showed that 1,387 of the services were special tourist trains and 1,114 were regularly scheduled tourist-route services.
At Chaka Salt Lake in northwest China's Qinghai Province, a four-hour, nonstop ride on the Y383 "Beautiful Heavenly Road" tourist train connects the provincial capital Xining and Chaka Town, allowing travelers to take in the salt lake by day and after dark.
"The scenery is absolutely beautiful and well worth the trip. The sunset is spectacular. I haven't seen anything like it elsewhere," said Zhang Guiling, a visitor from Henan Province.
The salt lake is often called the "Mirror of the Sky" for the reflections on its surface.
"When I saw the 'Mirror of the Sky,' I felt as though I had truly arrived in a fairyland," said Wang Caihong, a visitor from Gansu Province.
The Y383 service is one of several tourism routes developed by China Railway Qinghai-Xizang Group across the region.
"We have now developed six premium tourist routes, including Xining-Golmud-Dunhuang, a route from Xining into Xinjiang via the Golmud-Korla railway, and Xining-Qinghai Lake," said Ma Haisheng, head of the passenger and freight marketing section at the Passenger Transport Department of China Railway Qinghai-Xizang Group Co., Ltd.
Railway operators are increasingly turning train travel into tourism products, combining regional sightseeing trips with multi-day holidays to bring visitors to destinations beyond major transport hubs.
Beijing's "Starlight Yanzhao" operates sightseeing itineraries across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the country's north.
Meanwhile, two long-distance tourist train services -- a Panda Train departing Chengdu in Sichuan Province in the southwest and the "Yangtze River Delta Star" departing Shanghai in the east -- run multi-day tours through the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the country's northwest.
"Great Rivers of Henan," a tourist train brand from Henan Province in central China, offers changing cultural and long-distance itineraries rather than a fixed route.
Elsewhere, regularly scheduled tourist services link regional destinations. The "Qilu No. 1" connects Handan in Hebei Province in the north with Mount Tai in Shandong Province in the east.
In Yunnan Province in the southwest, a folk-culture train links Kunming, Lijiang and Dali. Another service connects Urumqi and Altay in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the northwest.
China's railways expand 'scenic routes' as tourism rail services hit new peak
