Countries with the longest rail networks

Countries with the longest rail networks is a live ranking of the top 50 entries in world and society by Rail lines, built from public data published by World Bank Open Data. It was last refreshed on 2026-11-02. This is the first published snapshot; from the next refresh onwards the page will also show movers, new entries and a rank history chart.

United States currently holds #1 with 148.6k route-km. China is second with 109.8k route-km, which puts the leader 35% ahead. Russian Federation completes the top three with 85.5k route-km. Together the top three account for about 58% of the combined top-10 total, which gives a quick sense of how concentrated this ranking is.

How it is measured: Total length of rail line operated for passenger transport, goods transport, or both. World Bank indicator IS.RRS.TOTL.KM; most recent year available per country, regional and income aggregates excluded. Caveat: Countries report in different years; each shows its latest available figure. Source: World Bank Open Data (CC BY 4.0). The full top 50 is on this page, with positions 11 to 50 one click away, and each entry links to its own profile showing every ranking it appears in.

Use this page to check who is number one right now, compare any two entries head to head, or test yourself with the quiz, which asks you to name all ten in three minutes. Year-end archives are available for 2026, freezing the ranking as it stood at the close of each year. Top10Earth never estimates or edits a value: each number is fetched from its source, hashed, stored and ranked by software, then checked by a quality gate before it is published. If a refresh fails the gate, the previous snapshot stays live and the problem is reviewed by a person.