This is a list of the world's railway operating companies listed alphabetically by continent and country. This list includes companies operating both now and in the past.
Note also that in some countries, the railway operating bodies are not companies, but are government departments or authorities.
Particularly in Europe, with privatizations in the 1980s and the separation of the track ownership and management from running the trains, there are now many track-only companies and train-only companies.
See also: Rail transport by countryFamous quotes containing the words list of, list, railway and/or companies:
“A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Socialite women meet socialite men and mate and breed socialite children so that we can fund small opera companies and ballet troupes because there is no government subsidy.”
—Sugar Rautbord, U.S. socialite fund-raiser and self-described “trash” novelist. As quoted in The Great Divide, book 2, section 7, by Studs Terkel (1988)