During the recent National Day break, all transport and logistics services got into brisk holiday gear, but the Yiwu railway port was especially busy, as a major group of containers were shifted by gantry crane onto the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train awaiting shipment.

Huang Wei, the chief engineer of the Yiwu West Railway Station, diligently checks out a diesel locomotive. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]

On hand was Huang Wei, 47, chief engineer at the Yiwu West Railway Station in Yiwu – a county-level city administered by Jinhua, in East China's Zhejiang province. He carefully checked out the diesel locomotive, which is a key part of the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train. 

Huang's daily work involves loading empty rail cars onto gantry cranes and also loading containers onto the China-Europe freight trains. Later on, he drove the diesel locomotive, marshalling scattered rail cargo cars in the freight yard and towing them back to the station.

After the freight train was parked at its designated position, Huang organized for the train to be picked up by its dedicated train driver. 

The goods imported from Europe arrive at Yiwu West Railway Station via the China-Europe freight train – and are then sent to customs for unloading. 

During the current year the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight service has reportedly continued to flourish, with 998 trains running from January to September and 82,000 twenty-foot equivalent units or TEU containers shipped, up 58.5 percent year-on-year.

On Oct 1, Yiwu dispatched its 1,000th Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe freight train. In the year to date, Yiwu has operated more than 3,000 trains and delivered some 350,000 TEUs of containers.