China's railway passenger traffic up 12.1 pct in Oct.

China's railway passenger traffic in October, driven by a large number of vacationers, rose 12.1 percent year on year to hit 188.08 million riders, the state-owned China Railway Corporation (CRC) said Wednesday.

On Oct. 1, the first day of the week-long National Day Holiday, the total number of railway passengers hit 10.33 million, the first time the 10 million mark has been breached, the CRC said.

During the same period, railway cargo traffic reached 348.1 million tons, a year-on-year surge of 7.4 percent, led by robust coal transportation.

CRC is a spin-off of the former Ministry of Railways, which was dismantled after a cabinet restructuring plan earlier this year.