Hangzhou has two rail stations, the main Hangzhou Central Station (tel: (571) 9500 117 788) near downtown, which is used by most inter-city trains, and the much smaller Hangzhou East (tel: (571) 5672 3456), which has trains to some regional cities.

Hourly trains run between Hangzhou Central Station and Shanghai South Railway Station (2 hours 15 minutes), with an additional, though currently limited, CRH (China Railways High-Speed) bullet train service (1 hour 30 minutes, five trains per day) due to be expanded in late 2007.

In 2010, a high-speed magnetic levitation (Maglev) line linking Hangzhou with Shanghai will begin construction. Once completed, it will cut the journey time to 30 minutes. In addition, Zhejiang Province will invest RMB150 billion (£10 billion) in new railway developments by 2011, including a high-speed railway between Hangzhou and Nanjing, capital of neighbouring Jiangsu Province.