Travellers still keen to be going nowhere fast

They meander through high mountains and remote border regions, stopping at far-flung stations where peasants haul sacks of peanuts on to carriages and farmers usher pigs aboard.

China’s slowest trains, which were introduced under Mao Zedong and are limited to 70kmh, are at least cheap to ride, at the equivalent of 21 cents (NZ) for a ticket.

As the government expands the world’s largest network of high-speed railways, Chinese are growing nostalgic for a return to the slow trains, some of which first ran 60 years ago. State subsidies have been raised on 81 routes that operate the muchloved green carriages, to cater for demand among urbanites eager to revisit bygone days.

‘‘I hope the train will keep running, because many people in the mountains still need it,’’ said Liu Wei, a conductor on the 5633/5634 route that runs between Puxiong and Panzhihua in China’s mountainous southwest, where prices have not changed in more than three decades, at just over a penny per kilometre.

The slow trains transport more than two million people a year.

GETTY IMAGES People prepare to board a ‘‘slow train’’ in Bagou, Sichuan Province, southern China. The trains are a lifeline for many isolated villages.