Use for night terminating trains?
 

What is the use of trains that terminate at night?
I found 4 high speed trains Harbin-Beijing which terminate in Beijing at night:
G4722, originates 17:39, terminates Beijing South next day 1:36
G4724, originates 18:41, terminates Beijing South next day 1:52
D4608, originates 18:52, terminates Beijing next day 2:42
D4610, originates 19:22, terminates Beijing next day 3:05.

So, why? Does Beijing subway run to Beijing South and Beijing station at times of 1 to 4 at night?
With 7:11 to 7:57 travel time, it would make sense to have overnight trains, which depart Harbin at 23 or so and arrive in Beijing at 6...7, in order to travel by subway and show up at work somewhere in Beijing at 8.
It would also make sense to have overnight trains which travel direct from Harbin to Shanghai or Xian or Guangzhou, and drop off passengers when they pass Beijing at odd hours of night.
But why terminate services at night?

There is minimal road traffic at night in Beijing.

There is insufficient demand from Beijing to Shanghai/Xian/Guangzhou at 2a.

G trains are not suitable for overnight travel.

These trains are still useful for serving the intermediary stops in between. Plus, only major cities have facilities to store and maintain highspeed trains overnight so they will need to run all the way Beijing.

Subways aren't running at that time but there is night busses and taxis which arent expensive.

I'm quite OK with these sort of schedule options. The points above about intermediate stops and need to overnight/reposition the trains at Beijing are good ones. At any rate, not everybody has a schedule requiring them to be somewhere at 08:00. And the luxury of traffic-free streets and getting home fast in Beijing's wee hours can't be underestimated.

Taxis runs all night.

Interesting topic, seems I'll have the opportunity to travel from Beijing to Harbin and north of the latter city several times during the coming 12 months.

Night trains in either direction really do not exist?

This discussion was about some specific trains. Yes there are night trains and some good Z trains. Check the schedules on an agent's website such as china-diy-travel.com

On Beijing-Harbin direction, I find from http://www.travelchinaguide.com/chin...09%2F06%2F2015
2 overnight Z trains, depart 21:09 and 21:15, arrive at 7:26 and 7:13
T17, depart 21:24, arrive 8:39
T47, depart 18:57, arrive 6:16
There are also 3 trains arriving at Harbin at night. But these continue past Harbin and terminate in the morning:
K339 departs Beijing 11:00, arrives Harbin 1:50, terminates Jiamusi 9:34
T297 departs Beijing 12:00, arrives Harbin 1:58, terminates Mudanjiang 7:39
T39 departs Beijing 13:42, arrives Harbin 4:24, terminates Fulaerji 7:40

Thanks to both of you. Might be using those two weeks from now.