Thousands stand in line in front of Beijing West Railway Station to buy tickets on Feb 6, the fourth day of 2007 Spring Festival travel rush. [Photo/IC]

 Hints for tickets booking

1. Tickets can be bought 30 days before the date of departure if travelling after Dec 30, 2016.

2. Time to book tickets online and on app every day is from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm.

3. Each passenger can only buy a maximum of 5 tickets to curb scalping.

4. Tickets booked through telephone should be collected within 12 hours.

5. Tickets due for Jan 25, 2017, or three days before Spring Festival, are predicted to be the most difficult ones to buy. The second hardest will be Jan 21, 2017. So the two pre-sale dates Dec 23 and Dec 27 will cause biggest headaches.

6. Daily start time to sell tickets varies at different railway stations, which can be found on 12306.cn.

About three billion trips are expected to be made during the Spring Festival travel rush in 2017, and 356 million are expected to travel by rail, according to the Ministry of Transport.

Good luck and bon voyage, if you are one of the 356 million.