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As of April 18, Shanghai Railway Bureau will provide free food in its soft-sleeper trains between Shanghai and Beijing, said Liu Lianqing, director with the bureau yesterday, the Jiefang Daily reported today.

"We will invite a famous Swiss food enterprise to cooperate with us to offer meals which can meet the international standard," Liu said, adding that the original dining vehicles will still be available so that passengers can drink wine or coffee as usual there.

However, ticket prices of such soft-sleeper trains will not increase, Liu pointed out.

To date, the round-trip soft-sleeper ticket prices are cheaper than the one-way airfares of economic class between Beijing and Shanghai.

The Shanghai Railway Bureau also opened ticket sales outlets specifically for selling soft-sleeper tickets, and passengers can buy round-trip tickets more than ten days in advance.

Among the eight trains shuttling between Beijing and Shanghai every day, seven of them are new-type luxurious and comfortable trains, with a highest speed of 160 kilometers per hour, and four are Bombardier soft-sleeper trains, Liu pointed out, adding that the seven trains will arrive in the destination in 12 hours, two hours shorter than currently, with the train frequencies reaching as short as seven minutes.

"Up to 3,000 soft-sleeper tickets will be available after we raise the train speed between Beijing and Shanghai, while currently, only 400 tickets are available," he said.

The Shanghai Railway Bureau has invested 1.5 billion yuan (US$180 million) in infrastructure construction for the train speed-up, upgrading bridges and security equipments, with only one driver instead of two operating the coach.

Passengers can set their heart at ease when taking speed-up trains, Liu stressed.