As travelers queued up for tickets on China's new high-speed trains, which began running on Wednesday, a northeast China man was holding another piece of history -- the new timetable.

Zhan Hongge, of Shenyang, marveled at the small booklet and what it could tell him about the development of the country's railways with the launch of trains sprinting at up to 250 km per hour.

"Railways first appeared in China about 100 years ago and have evolved from several unconnected sections into a complex network that reaches out to the most remote parts of the country," said Zhan, a collector of train timetables.

Zhan, who shares his surname with the pioneer of China's railways, Zhan Tianyou (1861-1919), started collecting timetables in 1987.

"The first train timetable, published by the Qing Dynasty government about 100 years ago, was only one page. Now it is 329 pages," he said.

Zhan has about a hundred timetables, and plans to exhibit them. "Timetables are getting thicker and becoming more complicated. Added together, they tell us a lot about the changes."

The 1916 timetable shows the journey from Beijing to Shenyang, a distance of 800 kilometers, took more than 21 hours, compared to less than three hours on the new trains.

The 1949 edition had a steam-engine locomotive on the cover. In the 1979 edition, the cover featured happy-looking people waving to families and friends departing on a green train, he said.

The 2006 version of timetable was a 279-page brochure, featuring the Potala Palace, in reference to the new Qinghai-Tibet railway, he said.

China had just 21,800 kilometers of rail track before 1949, and only 10,000 kilometers were usable, but the network now totals more than 76,600 kilometers and has seen six speed upgrades since 1997.

Zhan said the latest timetable showed more than 140 new services.

"'Fast' may be the best word to describe China's trains now," he said, echoing the headlines in Wednesday's newspapers.

Editor: Donald