A fully-loaded freight train departs from Shenyang via Manzhouli, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and heads to Moscow on September, 19. [Photo by Fu Yifang/chinadaily.com.cn]

Customs procedures at the largest railway freight station and distribution center in Northeast China have been made more efficient to ensure freight trains operating between China and Europe do so more smoothly.

At the station in Shenyang customs officials cooperate with operator China Railway Shenyang Group to speed up customs clearance.

According to officials at Shenyang Customs, they've developed China's first information collection system that can be fitted to a crane and used while containers are being loaded, instead of before or after, which is a lengthier process.

In the past, containers would first be transported to a special yard for customs inspection, which took about 6 to 7 hours per container, according to Wang Huan, an official from Shenyang Customs.

"Now we have embedded the software on the crane, so when the crane lifts a container, its information will be collected and uploaded to customs. When the information has been verified, the train can be released. ... Now the operation time to inspect one container is about one hour," he said.

The first China-Europe freight train that departed from the Shenyang railway hub was in March. As of August, more than 230 such trains have run, carrying over 19,000 containers.

The railway hub can cater to more than 1,000 China-Europe freight trains every year. From January to August, 317 China-Europe freight trains were operated by China Railway Shenyang Group, the regional railway operator, a year-on-year increase of 5.6 percent.