They came with cameras and binoculars and gathered on the mud banks of the railway lines. Less than one hundred metres away, nestled under the vast roof of Beijing South Station, they could already see the train.

“Oh my God, it's so beautiful,” whispered Ren Dongsheng, one of dozens of train enthusiasts and locals waiting to witness the inaugural journey of the fastest rail service on the planet.

Mr Ren, 64, said: “I have always loved trains, so for China to have the fastest trains in the world and for them to leave from the biggest train station in Asia ... it's incredible.” Indeed, for a nation that loves superlatives, today was a red letter day.

Trains on the new rail link between Beijing and the Olympic co-host city of Tianjin will travel at 350 kilometres per hour (220mph), easily beating France's TGV trains, which travel at 320 km/h, and making Japan's bullet trains look like plodding steam engines. Maglev trains do not count, the authorities say, because they do not run on rails.

There will be 47 daily services from the newly built Beijing South Station, a glittering glass and steel behemoth covering an area of almost 50 acres, and they will cover the 110 kilometres (70 miles) to Tianjin in 30 minutes, cuttingnearly an hour off the current travel time.

At 20 billion yuan (£1.48 billion), the project is one of the more expensive aspects of a Beijing Olympic facelift that includes state-of-the-art stadia, skyscrapers and subway lines and has cost the city more than £20 billion.

Lush flowerbeds have sprung up along six-lane ring roads, extensive directives have been issued to citizens on comportment, and brightly coloured banners have been unfurled from every lamp post going.

Beijing's huge fleet of taxi drivers have been taught rudimentary English and, from yesterday, kitted out in uniforms of yellow shirts and striped ties. More than half a million local volunteers have been recruited to help lost tourists.

Desperate measures to try to clear the perpetually yellow smog have seen a million cars have taken off the road and all construction work halted, the migrant workers sent home to their villages.

But as well as an Olympic showpiece, which will serve fans going to the 12 Olympic football matches being hosted in Tianjin this summer, the high-speed train service is good news for millions of commuters who have long struggled with a clogged expressway and overburdened train network between the cities.

Liu Zaowei, 26, an IT worker, said: “This will be very good for my business. Normally, my colleagues and I get the bus to Tianjin because the trains are too crowded, but now it will be very convenient.”

At 11.15am, a horn blared from within the station and the crowd went quiet. It was a false alarm. A battered green train streaked with dirt chugged slowly out.

Su Mingjun, 67, a local in a trilby hat and open shirt, grumbled: “I was excited when I arrived here this morning, but now I'm beginning to lose hope. The train was supposed to leave at 11am, but it's late and all I see are these old ones.”

But a few minutes later, the train finally glided out, smoothly and silently.

“It looked like an airplane taking off from a UFO,” one spectator said after the train's sleek, round nose had emerged from the space-age station and sped off into the horizon. “I barely had time to see it.”