A railway company is a
company
A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
within the
rail industry
Rail or rails may refer to:
Rail transport
*Rail transport and related matters
* Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway
Arts and media Film
* ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini
* ''Rail'' ...
. It can be a
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
firm or an
operator. Some railway companies operate both the trains and the track, while, particularly in the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
, operation of the track is undertaken by
infrastructure operators and trains are run by different companies. Railway companies can be
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
or
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
.
Structure
Many countries have a national railway company that owns all track and operates all trains in the country, for instance the
Russian Railways
Russian Railways (russian: link=no, ОАО «Российские железные дороги» (ОАО «РЖД»), OAO Rossiyskie zheleznye dorogi (OAO RZhD)) is a Russian fully state-owned vertically integrated railway company, both manag ...
(the world's largest rail company by network size). Other countries have many different, sometimes competing, railway companies that operate each their own lines, particularly in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
. Countries may have both public and private railway companies, for instance the United States, where the publicly-owned
Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...
exists alongside numerous private operators.
In Europe, the EU requires its members to split the railway companies into a number of different companies. In many cases, one or more public owned companies own the track and many other public and private companies (sometimes owned by regional governments) own the
rolling stock
The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles can b ...
and operate service.
Public service obligations or
franchising
Franchising is based on a marketing concept which can be adopted by an organization as a strategy for business expansion. Where implemented, a franchisor licenses some or all of its know-how, procedures, intellectual property, use of its busine ...
are then used to determine the right to operate the line for a limited time period, with multiple private companies
bidding
Bidding is an offer (often competitive) to set a price tag by an individual or business for a product or service ''or'' a demand that something be done. Bidding is used to determine the cost or value of something.
Bidding can be performed by ...
for the privilege to operate. Other companies offer trackside and rolling stock maintenance.
See also
*
Train operating company
A train operating company (TOC) is a business operating Passenger Trains, passenger trains on the Rail transport in Great Britain, railway system of Great Britain under the collective National Rail brand. TOCs have existed since the Privatisation ...
*
List of railway companies
This is an incomplete 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.
In some countries, the railway operating bodies are not compani ...
*
List of countries by rail transport network size
This list of countries by rail transport network size based on International Union of Railways data ranks countries by length of rail lines worked at end of year updated with other reliable sources. These figures also include urban/suburban mass- ...
*
Rail transport by country
This page provides an index of articles on rail transport by country.
International railway organisations
* International Union of Railways (UIC)
* International Union of Public Transport (UITP)
* Association of American Railways (AAR)
Afri ...
References
{{Authority control
Railway companies
cs:Provozovatel drážní dopravy
pl:Przewoźnik kolejowy