The forecast for railway goods traffic volume forms an important basis for the development of railway services and construction. Scientific method for forecast is the subject which has been studied by railway scientists for many years. This paper systematically sums up the experiences in this respect since the founding of the People's Republic of China. The paper lays special emphasis, firstly, on forecast of the national and the regional goods traffic volumes on our railways on the analytical basis of the historical development and the future trend of the increasing railway traffic volume related to the industrial and agricultural production and the consumption of daily necessities in the light of the actual situations of the socialist commodity economy developing in a planned way in China, proposing many methods of production-consumption balance, production-traffic ratio, correlated ratio, proportion of goods group volumes, regression equations, and also the scientific method of synthetical analysis with many forecast media; secondly, on the preparation methods of the regional goods interflow on railways, the transfer volume at divisional stations and traffic density on trunk lines, on the basis of the analysis of the goods traffic patterns. This paper may be used as reference for study and forecast of railway goods traffic volume in other countries.
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