Before the manifestation of COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020, traditional "Z-class" border-crossing services via the whole or part of the Guangshen Railway, serving Hong Kong and mainland destinations including Changping, Guangzhou East, Foshan and Zhaoqing, as well as to Beijing West and Shanghai, were available.

The idea of constructing a railway linking Canton (now Guangzhou) and Kowloon in Hong Kong, a British crown colony germinated in the late Qing dynasty.

In 1907, Qing government and Britain formally signed an agreement in Peking on issuing a £100-million bond as part of loan for the construction of the Chinese section of the Kowloon–Canton railway.

Under the loan contract, China needed to employ the British engineers for the construction of Chinese section, but China still employed famous Chinese railway engineer, Zhan Tianyou, as a consultant.

On 8 October 1911, the Chinese section of KCR with total length of 142.77 km (88.71 mi) was opened [3] together with the commencement of through train service between Kowloon and Guangzhou which was started to operate at the same time.

The northern end of railway at that time was located in Dashatou (大沙頭), Guangzhou, which was demolished in 1951[citation needed].

Guangshen railway is the first place in China to carry out successfully speed-up on the existing railroad.

At 28 December 1991, the construction of the third line of Guangshen railway, and the speed-up improvement works of original double tracks started.

Construction of the fourth track was commenced at 31 December 2005, and was finished at 18 April 2007 in time for the Sixth Speed-Up Campaign.

8-car CRH1A highspeed EMUs have been introduced since year 2007 for the intercity train service between Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

The fastest journey time was 52 minutes between Guangzhou East and Shenzhen with no stop in-between.

Implementation of "stop-at-all-stations" operating model started since 1 May 2009 [6]: p.12  at which intermediate stations includes Dongguan (located in Changping at that time), Shilong and Zhangmutou.

In addition to CRH EMUs running temporally added intercity trips typically numbered C9xxx, it is possible that CR200J "Fuxing" trains are deployed to the temporally added trips (with prefix "D" or "C") since the allocation of 4 sets[20]: p.14  of such type of "Fuxing" train to Guangshen Railway Company Limited (GSRC) at the time of year 2019[20]: p.14  and thereafter.

The emergence of "D-class" trip using CR200J trains in Shenzhen railway station begins in December 2019 serving regular long-distance D727, D728 trains[21] for Beijing West[20]: p.14  while this service actually runs mainly along the Beijing-Kowloon railway[Note 3] which starts its multiplexes with Guangshen line in Dongguan City, meaning that the initial manifestation of CR200J trains along Guangshen line was just confined within a limited distance.

For the use of CR200J trains travelling longer distance of GuangShen line for demand-relief purpose, one noteworthy example is, to start with, an internet media reported that a temporally added service was available on 29 and 30 September and 2, 3, 5, and 6 October 2023,[22] mentioning a pair of train service numbered D7495, D7496 [22] although that was a cross-line traffic between Changsha railway station and Shenzhen East railway station for demand relief.

For the example in relation to the above-mentioned D7496 [22] service in year 2023, to start with, Guangzhou Railway Group maintains several Sina Weibo accounts officially where latest information about status of available tickets up-to-date, in particular for the days within peak demand period, may be posted.

During the holiday week of October 2024, there exists a pair of trains serving between Guangzhou East railway station and Shenzhen railway station, using train set composed by both second class seat coaches and sleeper berth configuration coaches,[24][25] with train numbers C99 [24] for southbound and C100 [25] for northbound services of peak demand days of October 2024 according to the timetable as shown at the China Railway's official 12306 website.

[38] Starting 15 June 2024,[39] service between Shantou railway station and Shenzhen railway station, near the Luohu border with Hong Kong, become available; and these C-prefix train number trips[39] or D-prefix train number trips[40] are operating daily in a regular basis.