Beijing: China today unveiled a home-made bullet train, which it said was capable of reaching 350 kilometres an hour and would begin services out of Beijing before the Olympics, state media said.

Three of the trains will start running on a new 120-kilometre route between the capital and the northern port city of Tianjin by the end of June, Xinhua news agency said, citing the locomotives manufacturers.

A total of 57 bullet trains, among the fastest in the world, are expected to be put in commercial operation by the end of 2009,the report said.

The eight-carriage train, with its streamlined body made of light aluminium alloy, is based on technology from Germany's Siemens and can seat 557 passengers, it added.

China in December unveiled the first domestically-developed bullet train that could reach 300 kilometres an hour, becoming the fourth country after France, Germany and Japan to have made such high-speed locomotives.

Now the world's fourth-largest economy, China is keen to show off the new bullet trains as evidence that it can develop its own technology in key sectors.

But the trains are still mainly built abroad based on technology-transfer agreements with industry heavy-hitters such as Siemens, Japan's Mitsubishi-Kawasaki, Canada s Bombardier and France s Alstom.

Currently only 6,000 kilometres of China s track can accommodate the high-speed trains, with most restricted to speeds of 160 kilometres an hour on 14,000 kilometres of sub-standard track.

Source : PTI