China on Thursday restored the maximum speed of bullet trains on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway line to 350 kilometres per hour, making it the fastest commercially run train, six years after it reduced the speed due to a fatal accident.

The speed was reduced to 300 kilometres per hour following the deadly accident in July 2011 that killed 40 people.

A Fuxing bullet train departed from Beijing South Railway Station at 9:00 a.m. for Shanghai. The speed hike will cut the 1,318 km journey to 4 hours 28 minutes, cutting the train time by nearly an hour.

China started to run its first 350-kilometres per hour high speed train between Beijing and Tianjin in August 2008 and opened at least three more such high-speed lines nationwide in the following years.

But it has reduced the speed to 250 kilometres per hour to 300 kilometres per hour after the accident in July 2011. Forty people were killed and over 190 injured when two high-speed trains travelling on the Yongtaiwen railway line collided on a viaduct in the suburbs of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province.

The Fuxing trains were unveiled in June and are capable of top speeds of 400 kilometres per hour, state-run Xinhua news agency reported earlier.

On July 27, the Fuxing trains were tested for safety and reliability at maximum speed.