HANGZHOU -- The sea-rail freight train from Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, arrived in the Ningbo Zhoushan Port in eastern China's Zhejiang Province on Thursday morning.

The train, carrying 116 standard containers of imported timber from Russia, set off on Monday afternoon from Xi'an International Trade and Logistics Park, according to sources with the Ningbo Zhoushan Port.

After arriving at Ningbo, the timber will be shipped by Ningbo Ocean Shipping Co., Ltd. via the branch of Yangtze River to the city of Taicang in neighboring Jiangsu Province.

The imported timber in Xi'an, a transportation hub linking eastern and western provinces of the country, was previously transported to eastern China's coastal provinces by trucks due to the higher cost of railway transportation.

Ningbo Zhoushan Port has started to develop a wider market in the inland provinces of China in recent years.

This new sea-rail route from Xi'an to Ningbo will effectively connect with the China-Europe freight trains starting from Xi'an, said the sources.

Ningbo Zhoushan Port, which lies at the meeting point of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, is the busiest port in China.

In 2018, the port opened nine new sea-rail transport routes and China's first double-deck container sea-rail cargo service.

The sea-rail transport services at the port handled more than 600,000 standard containers in 2018, a year-on-year increase of over 50 percent.