The sales of train tickets for the 2019 Spring Festival have started today and passengers can buy the tickets through various means including telephone, website and also smartphone app.

The 2019 travel rush, or Chunyun in Chinese, which is called "world's largest migration" will last from January 21 to March 1, reports the Chinanews.com.

Aerial photo shows the waiting hall of the Beijing West Railway Station during the 2017 Spring Festival travel rush. [File photo: Chinanews.com]

It is estimated that 410 million passengers will be travelling by trains during the 40-day-period.

To improve the ticket purchasing experience of passengers, a new function will be added to the official train ticket booking website www.12306.cn and 12306 app during the travel rush.

Passengers queue to buy train tickets through vending machines. [File photo: Chinanews.com]

The new function will automatically allocate canceled train tickets to other buyers who have paid in advance when tickets have sold out. It will save passengers the trouble of refreshing the website repeatedly to wait for canceled tickets.