Relief for lucky Chinese boarding few trains moving

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Lucky is how Zhou Hongguo said he felt, rolling his suitcase down the platform to a northbound train that was about to head out of Guangzhou.

For days, tens of thousands of people have besieged the train depot in this city in southern China, trying desperately to get on trains that will take them to their home towns ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins on Wednesday.

With many trains canceled or delayed due to disruptions from the worst winter storms to hit parts of China in a half century, to finally be moving was something special.

In the late afternoon and evening on Thursday, trains were departing at a rate of roughly four per hour after days of delays due to heavy snows in provinces up the tracks.

Police were tightly controlling the entrance to the station. Even so, at least once, crowds shoved their way past cordons or vaulted fences to get inside.

Unlike many others who have been waiting for days in intermittent rain as temperatures hovered above freezing, Zhou came to the station for the first time earlier that day.

"People just pushed their way into the station, and I happened to be there. I saw several people knocked down," said Zhou, who works at a motorcycle engine plant in the factory-studded Pearl River Delta region.

As he talked, other travelers lugging buckets, babies and luggage ran by to secure seats in cars further down the platform. One man banged on a window, hoping it would slide open so he could climb in to sit by his friends.

Yang Jiajun, a factory worker-turned-waiter who also made it in during the crush, was ecstatic about finally being on the platform after three days on the outside -- even if he didn't know which train would take him home to Henan province for the first time in three years.

"It's just great," said the shaggy-headed man who lives in Shenzhen. "The past few days we've been freezing out there."

A youthful shoe factory worker named Li Qiuming was in the same boat.

"I will wait here until I hear of a train going that way," she said, leaning against a pillar.

Another shoe factory worker and his friend, a quality inspector at a bicycle factory, said they paid a station official 300 yuan to get into the station.

With the crowd of travelers swelling before the Lunar New Year, train officials were working frantically to see off as many trains as possible with as many people on board as would fit.

Inside the trains, windows were foggy, but people looked genuinely pleased.

Weather forecasts have been calling for more snow and cold in the coming days.

A conductor shepherding passengers onto a train bound for the southeastern city of Chongqing shook his head and declined to venture a guess at how long the journey would take.

"Normally, we'd reach Chongqing within a day, but with conditions the way they have been, who knows?" he said.

The chaos was taking its toll, and he admitted he couldn't even identify the number of the train he was working because the tracks were so backed up.

"This is the 1-0-something-something, I don't even know," he said before its horn sounded and it rolled away.