First Railways of the World· built byUuser-e8a0f3

First Railways of the World 116

• 1825 First railway in United Kingdom Stockton and Darlington Railway The first public railway in the world to carry passengers behind a steam locomotive. George Stephenson drove Locomotion No. 1 the 26 miles from Shildon to Stockton, preceded by a man on horseback carrying a flag.
• 1827 First railway in Czechia České Budějovice–Linz horse tramway The first section of continental Europe's first public railway, horse-drawn and built to carry salt. It reached Linz in Austria five years later.
• 1827 First railway in France Saint-Étienne–Andrézieux France's first railway, horse-drawn and built to move coal from the Loire basin to the river. Steam locomotives arrived on the line in 1832 and passengers in 1835.
• 1830 First railway in United States Baltimore and Ohio Railroad The first common-carrier railroad in the United States opened its initial 13 miles from Baltimore. In its first year the horse-drawn service famously raced Peter Cooper's locomotive Tom Thumb.
• 1832 First railway in Austria Linz–Budweis horse tramway completed The horse-drawn line from Bohemia reached Linz, completing the longest railway in the world at the time at 128 kilometres.
• 1834 First railway in Ireland Dublin and Kingstown Railway Ireland's first railway, and one of the world's first commuter lines, running six miles from Dublin to the harbour at Dún Laoghaire.
• 1835 First railway in Belgium Brussels–Mechelen The first steam railway on the European mainland, and the first anywhere built and owned by a state from the outset. Belgium, independent for only five years, used it to bypass Dutch control of the Scheldt.
• 1835 First railway in Germany Nuremberg–Fürth, the Ludwigsbahn Germany's first railway ran just six kilometres, hauled by the locomotive Adler with an English driver who was paid more than any German on the line.
• 1836 First railway in Canada Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad British North America's first railway, a portage line linking the St Lawrence to the Richelieu river and on to New York.
• 1837 First railway in Cuba Havana–Bejucal The first railway in Latin America and in the entire Spanish empire, opened eleven years before the first line in Spain itself. It was built to carry sugar to the port.
• 1837 First railway in Russia Tsarskoye Selo Railway Russia's first railway ran 27 kilometres from Saint Petersburg to the imperial residence at Tsarskoye Selo, built essentially as a demonstration for a sceptical court.
• 1839 First railway in Italy Naples–Portici Italy's first railway, opened by Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, ran less than eight kilometres to the royal palace at Portici.
• 1839 First railway in Netherlands Amsterdam–Haarlem The Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij opened the Netherlands' first line, built on an unusually wide gauge that had to be converted within twenty years.
• 1840 First railway in Slovakia Bratislava–Svätý Jur horse tramway A horse-drawn line built as the first stage of a route towards Trnava, later converted to steam.
• 1845 First railway in Jamaica Kingston–Angels The first railway in the Caribbean and the first anywhere in the tropics, opened only twenty years after Stockton and Darlington.
• 1845 First railway in Poland Warsaw–Grodzisk Mazowiecki The first section of the Warsaw–Vienna Railway, built in Russian-ruled Poland to the western European gauge rather than the Russian one.
• 1846 First railway in Hungary Pest–Vác Hungary's first steam railway, opened with the poet Sándor Petőfi among the passengers on the inaugural run.
• 1846 First railway in Slovenia Vienna–Celje section of the Southern Railway The Austrian Southern Railway reached Celje, bringing rails to what is now Slovenia on its way to Trieste.
• 1847 First railway in Denmark Copenhagen–Roskilde Denmark's first railway on Danish-speaking soil, three years after a line had opened in Danish-ruled Holstein.
• 1847 First railway in Switzerland Zürich–Baden, the Spanisch-Brötli-Bahn Named after a Baden pastry that Zürich's wealthy had previously sent servants to fetch on foot. Switzerland's mountains meant it came late and then built more densely than anyone.
• 1848 First railway in Guyana Georgetown–Plaisance The first railway in South America, built in a British colony on the northern coast and opened five years before any line in Brazil, Argentina or Chile.
• 1848 First railway in Spain Barcelona–Mataró Spain's first railway on the peninsula, opened eleven years after its own colony of Cuba got one. It was built to a broad gauge that isolated Spain from the French network for 150 years.
• 1850 First railway in Mexico Veracruz–El Molino A first short stretch out of Veracruz. It took another 23 years of war and instability before the line finally reached Mexico City.
• 1851 First railway in Chile Caldera–Copiapó Built by the American engineer William Wheelwright to carry silver ore from the Atacama to the coast.
• 1851 First railway in Peru Lima–Callao Peru's first railway linked the capital to its port, and began a national rail obsession that would later produce some of the highest lines in the world.
• 1853 First railway in India Bombay–Thane The Great Indian Peninsula Railway ran 34 kilometres with three locomotives named Sindh, Sultan and Sahib, watched by a public holiday crowd. India would go on to build the largest rail network in Asia.
• 1854 First railway in Australia Melbourne–Port Melbourne Australia's first steam railway, opened in gold-rush Victoria. The colonies each chose a different gauge, a decision that hampered the country for over a century.
• 1854 First railway in Brazil Mauá Railway Brazil's first railway, 14 kilometres from the shore of Guanabara Bay, financed by the Baron of Mauá and opened by Emperor Pedro II.
• 1854 First railway in Egypt Alexandria–Kafr el-Zayat The first railway in Africa and in the Ottoman Empire, engineered by Robert Stephenson and built fifteen years before the Suez Canal opened.
• 1854 First railway in Norway Christiania–Eidsvoll Norway's first railway, engineered under Robert Stephenson, carried timber down to the capital.
• 1854 First railway in Romania Oravița–Baziaș Built in the Banat, then under Austrian rule, to carry coal to the Danube. Passenger services followed two years later.
• 1855 First railway in Panama Panama Railroad The first railway to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, built across the isthmus at enormous cost in lives during the California Gold Rush.
• 1856 First railway in Portugal Lisbon–Carregado Portugal's first railway ran northeast from Lisbon along the Tagus, built to the same Iberian broad gauge as Spain.
• 1856 First railway in Sweden Malmö–Lund Sweden's first public railway, opened the same year as the state main line between Gothenburg and Jonsered.
• 1857 First railway in Argentina Ferrocarril Oeste, Buenos Aires Argentina's first railway ran ten kilometres west out of Buenos Aires behind a locomotive called La Porteña, bought second hand after service in the Crimean War.
• 1858 First railway in Turkey İzmir–Aydın, first section The first railway in Anatolia, built by British capital to bring cotton and figs down to the port at İzmir.
• 1859 First railway in Luxembourg Luxembourg–Thionville Luxembourg's first line opened as part of a network built by a French company across the young Grand Duchy.
• 1860 First railway in Croatia Pragersko–Čakovec The first railway on Croatian soil, part of a Hungarian route towards the Adriatic.
• 1860 First railway in Lithuania Saint Petersburg–Warsaw line through Vilnius The Russian main line to Warsaw reached Vilnius, bringing the first railway to Lithuania.
• 1860 First railway in South Africa Durban–Point The first railway in sub-Saharan Africa, a short line from Durban to its harbour, opened nine years before diamonds were found at Kimberley.
• 1861 First railway in Latvia Riga–Daugavpils Latvia's first railway, built to move goods from the Daugava basin to the ice-free port at Riga.
• 1861 First railway in Pakistan Karachi–Kotri The Scinde Railway ran 169 kilometres up the Indus valley, the first stage of a route intended to link Karachi to Lahore and Delhi.
• 1861 First railway in Paraguay Asunción–Trinidad One of the earliest railways in South America, built under Carlos Antonio López with British engineers and destroyed in large part during the war that followed.
• 1861 First railway in Ukraine Lviv–Peremyshl The first railway on Ukrainian territory, built by Austria from Kraków towards Lviv rather than from the Russian side.
• 1862 First railway in Bangladesh Darshana–Jagati The Eastern Bengal Railway opened the first line in what is now Bangladesh, running north from the Ganges delta.
• 1862 First railway in Belarus Saint Petersburg–Warsaw line through Hrodna The Russian main line to Warsaw crossed what is now Belarus, bringing its first railway.
• 1862 First railway in Finland Helsinki–Hämeenlinna Finland's first railway, built while the country was an autonomous Grand Duchy of Russia, to the Russian broad gauge it still uses.
• 1863 First railway in New Zealand Christchurch–Ferrymead New Zealand's first public railway, built to broad gauge and abandoned within four years when the tunnel to Lyttelton opened.
• 1864 First railway in Sri Lanka Colombo–Ambepussa Ceylon's first railway, built to carry coffee, and later extended into the hill country on some of the steepest gradients in the world.
• 1866 First railway in Bulgaria Ruse–Varna Built under Ottoman rule by a British company to link the Danube with the Black Sea, twelve years before Bulgarian independence.
• 1867 First railway in Indonesia Semarang–Tanggung The Dutch East Indies' first railway, built in central Java to move sugar and coffee to the coast.
• 1869 First railway in Greece Athens–Piraeus Greece's first railway ran between the capital and its port, and still runs today as part of the Athens metro.
• 1869 First railway in Uruguay Montevideo–Las Piedras Uruguay's first railway, the beginning of a British-built network radiating from Montevideo.
• 1870 First railway in Estonia Paldiski–Tallinn–Narva The Baltic Railway gave Estonia its first line, connecting Tallinn to the Russian network and to an ice-free western port.
• 1871 First railway in Colombia Barranquilla–Salgar The Bolívar Railway linked the Magdalena river port of Barranquilla to the Caribbean coast.
• 1871 First railway in Moldova Tiraspol–Chișinău The Russian network reached Chișinău, part of a strategic push towards the Balkans.
• 1872 First railway in Georgia Poti–Tbilisi The Transcaucasus Railway linked the Black Sea port of Poti to Tbilisi, later extended to the Caspian at Baku.
• 1872 First railway in Japan Tokyo–Yokohama Opened by the Meiji Emperor five years into a state programme of industrialisation, with British engineers and locomotives. Passengers were expected to remove their shoes before boarding.
• 1872 First railway in Tunisia Tunis–La Goulette Tunisia's first railway ran from the capital to its port, built under a British concession shortly before the French protectorate.
• 1873 First railway in Bolivia Antofagasta–Salar del Carmen Built to carry nitrates from what was then Bolivian coastal territory, lost to Chile ten years later in the War of the Pacific.
• 1873 First railway in Ecuador Yaguachi–Milagro The first stage of what became the Guayaquil and Quito Railway, whose later climb over the Devil's Nose was called the most difficult railway in the world.
• 1873 First railway in North Macedonia Skopje–Thessaloniki Built under Ottoman rule as part of the network intended to connect Constantinople to central Europe.
• 1875 First railway in Sudan Wadi Halfa–Sarras Begun under Ismail Pasha as part of a scheme to push Egyptian rails up the Nile into Sudan.
• 1876 First railway in China Woosung Road Railway, Shanghai Built without permission by a British firm. Local officials bought it, closed it after a year and had the track torn up and shipped to Taiwan. China's railway age effectively restarted in 1881.
• 1876 First railway in Haiti Port-au-Prince–Croix-des-Bouquets An early Caribbean line, part of a network that was never completed and had largely vanished by the mid-20th century.
• 1876 First railway in Trinidad and Tobago Port of Spain–Arima The Trinidad Government Railway's first line, built to serve the island's cocoa and sugar estates.
• 1877 First railway in Myanmar Rangoon–Prome Burma's first railway ran 260 kilometres up the Irrawaddy valley, built by the British after the annexation of Lower Burma.
• 1877 First railway in Venezuela Tucacas–Aroa Built by a British company to bring copper down from the Aroa mines, which had once belonged to Simón Bolívar's family.
• 1880 First railway in Azerbaijan Baku–Sabunchu Built to serve the Baku oil fields, then producing about half the world's oil.
• 1880 First railway in Puerto Rico First section of the island circuit line The beginning of a Spanish-planned railway meant to ring the island, completed only in part.
• 1880 First railway in Turkmenistan Trans-Caspian Railway from Krasnovodsk A Russian military railway pushed east across the Karakum desert, laid at times at over a kilometre a day.
• 1882 First railway in El Salvador Acajutla–Sonsonate A short line from the Pacific coast inland, built to move coffee to the port.
• 1882 First railway in Nicaragua Corinto–Chinandega The start of a Pacific-side network built to carry coffee, later nationalised and eventually dismantled in the 1990s.
• 1883 First railway in Malta Valletta–Mdina A single line across a small island, closed in 1931 once buses had taken its traffic.
• 1884 First railway in Serbia Belgrade–Niš Serbia's first railway, built as its section of the route that would carry the Orient Express from Vienna to Constantinople.
• 1885 First railway in Malaysia Taiping–Port Weld Malaya's first railway, built to carry tin from the Larut mines to the coast.
• 1885 First railway in Senegal Dakar–Saint-Louis The first railway in West Africa, built by France between its two main coastal towns.
• 1885 First railway in Vietnam Saigon–Mỹ Tho French Indochina's first railway ran 70 kilometres through the Mekong delta.
• 1887 First railway in Dominican Republic Sánchez–La Vega Built to bring cacao and tobacco down from the Cibao valley to the coast.
• 1887 First railway in Mozambique Lourenço Marques–Ressano Garcia Built by Portugal towards the Transvaal border, giving the Boer republic a route to the sea that bypassed British ports.
• 1888 First railway in Angola Luanda–Ambaca Portugal's first railway in Angola, pushed inland from the capital towards the coffee districts.
• 1888 First railway in Iran Tehran–Shah Abdol Azim A short line to a shrine south of the capital, nicknamed the machine dudi or smoky machine. Iran had no national network until the 1930s.
• 1888 First railway in Uzbekistan Trans-Caspian Railway reaches Samarkand The Russian desert railway arrived at Samarkand, ending the isolation of the Central Asian khanates.
• 1891 First railway in Taiwan Keelung–Taipei Built under Qing governor Liu Mingchuan using rails from the dismantled Shanghai line, and rebuilt entirely once Japan took the island in 1895.
• 1892 First railway in Israel Jaffa–Jerusalem Built under Ottoman rule by a French company, climbing from the coast to Jerusalem through the Judean hills.
• 1892 First railway in Philippines Manila–Dagupan The first railway in the Philippines, built under a Spanish concession by a British company across the Luzon plain.
• 1893 First railway in Tanzania Tanga–Muheza German East Africa's first railway, pushed inland from the coast towards Kilimanjaro.
• 1893 First railway in Thailand Bangkok–Pak Nam Siam's first railway, opened by King Chulalongkorn. Building a national network was part of a deliberate strategy to stay independent of the European powers on either side.
• 1894 First railway in Kazakhstan Pokrovsk–Uralsk The Russian network reached the Ural river, the first railway on Kazakh territory.
• 1896 First railway in Kenya Uganda Railway, from Mombasa Begun at Mombasa and nicknamed the Lunatic Express, its construction lost dozens of workers to two man-eating lions at Tsavo. Nairobi exists because the railway put a depot there.
• 1897 First railway in Zimbabwe Vryburg–Bulawayo The line north from the Cape reached Bulawayo, part of Cecil Rhodes's ambition for a railway from Cairo to the Cape.
• 1898 First railway in Nigeria Lagos–Ibadan, first section Britain began pushing rails inland from Lagos, the start of a network that would define Nigeria's internal geography.
• 1899 First railway in South Korea Seoul–Incheon Korea's first railway, started by an American concession and finished by Japanese interests six years before the protectorate was imposed.
• 1900 First railway in Benin Cotonou–Ouidah The first stage of the French colonial line north from the coast of Dahomey.
• 1900 First railway in Djibouti Djibouti–Dire Dawa, first section The start of the Franco-Ethiopian railway, the only rail link to the sea for landlocked Ethiopia.
• 1901 First railway in Ghana Sekondi–Tarkwa The Gold Coast's first railway, built to reach the gold fields at Tarkwa.
• 1902 First railway in Ethiopia Djibouti–Dire Dawa completed The French-built line reached Dire Dawa, a town that exists because of it. It took another fifteen years to arrive at Addis Ababa.
• 1902 First railway in Namibia Swakopmund–Windhoek Built by Germany across the Namib desert, using a narrow gauge and light rails that were repeatedly buried by sand.
• 1904 First railway in Guinea Conakry–Kankan, first section The start of a French line pushed inland from the Atlantic towards the upper Niger.
• 1904 First railway in Ivory Coast Abidjan–Agboville The first stretch of the French line north towards Upper Volta.
• 1904 First railway in Jordan Hejaz Railway through Ma'an The Ottoman pilgrimage railway to Medina crossed what is now Jordan, funded by donations from Muslims across the world. T. E. Lawrence's raids on it in 1917 made it famous.
• 1904 First railway in Mali Kayes–Bamako Part of the French scheme to link the Senegal river to the Niger, and for decades landlocked Mali's main link to the sea.
• 1905 First railway in Cyprus Cyprus Government Railway A narrow-gauge line across the island under British administration, closed in 1951 after never turning a profit.
• 1905 First railway in Suriname Lawa Railway A Dutch colonial line built into the interior towards the gold fields, most of it later abandoned to the forest.
• 1905 First railway in Togo Lomé–Aného German Togoland's first railway, running east along the coast from Lomé.
• 1908 First railway in Montenegro Bar–Virpazar A narrow-gauge line from the Adriatic coast to Lake Skadar, built by an Italian company.
• 1908 First railway in Saudi Arabia Hejaz Railway reaches Medina The Ottoman pilgrimage line arrived at Medina, cutting a journey of forty days by camel to under four by train. It was abandoned after the First World War.
• 1911 First railway in Morocco Military line to Casablanca France laid a narrow-gauge military railway during the occupation. A proper standard-gauge network followed in the 1920s.
• 1912 First railway in Uganda Jinja–Namasagali The first railway inside Uganda itself, sixteen years after the railway named for the country was begun in Kenya.
• 1914 First railway in Iraq Baghdad–Samarra A section of the German-backed Berlin to Baghdad railway, whose slow progress and strategic implications helped poison relations between the powers before the First World War.
• 1927 First railway in Nepal Nepal Government Railway, Raxaul–Amlekhganj A narrow-gauge line from the Indian border into the Terai, closed in the 1960s. Nepal has had almost no railway since.
• 1934 First railway in Burkina Faso Abidjan–Ouagadougou line reaches Bobo-Dioulasso The French line from the Ivorian coast pushed into Upper Volta, reaching Ouagadougou in 1954.
• 1938 First railway in Mongolia Nalaikh–Ulaanbaatar A narrow-gauge line built to bring coal to the capital, with the Trans-Mongolian main line following after the Second World War.
• 1947 First railway in Albania Durrës–Peqin The last country in Europe to build a railway, constructed under Enver Hoxha largely by volunteer youth brigades. Private cars were banned, so trains carried everyone.
• 2009 First railway in Laos Thanaleng–Nong Khai A three-kilometre spur across the Mekong from Thailand, for decades the entire railway network of Laos. The Chinese-built line to the border followed in 2021.
• 2011 First railway in Afghanistan Hairatan–Mazar-i-Sharif Afghanistan's first true railway, 75 kilometres from the Uzbek border, built more than 180 years after Stockton and Darlington.