Small- world and the growing properties of the Chinese railway network

Abstract

By using the tools of statistical physics and recent investigations of the scaling properties of different complex networks, the structural and evolving properties of the Chinese railway network (CRN) is studied. It has been verified that the CRN has the same small-world properties of the Indian railway network (IRN). According to the class of small-world networks, we believe the CRN is a single scale. In addition, a novel result is obtained. Measurements on the CRN indicate that the rate at which nodes acquire links depends on the node s degree and follows a power law.