Wuhan, in Central China's Hubei province, launched a high-speed rail (HSR) freight train service for e-commerce transportation on Nov 1 - the first of its kind in the province, according to local media reports.

Between Nov 1 and Dec 28, a pair of HSR freight trains will operate daily from Wuhan to Beijing, with the whole journey taking five hours and 10 minutes.

This is the latest measure launched by the railway department to fully exploit the advantages of the HSR network operation in meeting the dramatically increased demand for logistics services in the face of the upcoming Nov 11 shopping spree.

The railway department has organized the Nov 11 e-commerce golden week transportation for four consecutive years, since 2016.

In order to meet the needs of the logistics market, this year's Nov 11 e-commerce golden week transportation will continue until Nov 20, and the transportation period will be extended from 10 days in previous years to 20 days, in response to the growing freight volume in this year.

To date, the Wuhan railway department has fully released the potential of HSR freight services, opening 36 lines of operation, covering 21 large and medium-sized cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang and Xi'an.

Also, new products such as food and pharmaceutical cold chains are being launched to meet the transportation needs of characteristic fresh agricultural products and pharmaceutical reagents.