BEIJING — China’s railways saw heavy New Year’s Day holiday traffic, carrying people to tourist attractions or back home for family reunions before returning to work and school.

The country’s railway network is expected to haul about 11 million passengers on Jan 1, the final day of the three-day New Year’s Day holiday, data from the China Railway Corporation showed.

To cope with the holiday demand, the railway system added 261 temporary trains on Jan 1, the company said.

On Dec 31, 8.732 million passengers traveled by train, 17.3 percent higher year on year, the company said.

The company forecast that from Dec 29 to Jan 1, the number of passengers traveling by train would total 37 million, up 7 percent year on year.

The record for the most daily railway passengers, however, was set on Oct 1, 2017, when 15.03 million people traveled by train around the country.