Transcontinental railroad

Africa

East-west

• There are several ways to cross Africa transcontinentally via connecting east–west railways. One is the Benguela railway, completed in 1929. It starts in Lobito, Angola, and connects through Katanga to the Zambia Railways system. From Zambia several ports are accessible on the Indian Ocean: Dar es Salaam in Tanzania through the TAZARA, and, through Zimbabwe, Beira and Maputo in Mozambique. Following the end of the Angolan Civil War, a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction led by Chinese firms fully restored the line to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2014. Another west–east corridor leads from the Atlantic harbours in Namibia, either Walvis Bay or Luderitz to the South African rail system that, in turn, links to ports on the Indian Ocean.
• A 1015 km gap in the east–west line between Kinshasa and Ilebo is filled by riverboats. It could be plugged if a new railway were to be built, as was discussed in 2009.
• Development of these corridors remains hampered by the lack of rail gauge standardization and complex border-crossing customs procedures across differing legal regimes.
• There are two active proposals for a line from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Guinea, including TransAfricaRail.
• In 2010, a proposal sought to link Dakar to Port Sudan. Thirteen countries would be on the main route; another six would be served by branches.

  North-south

• A north-south transcontinental railway had been proposed by Cecil Rhodes, who termed it the Cape-Cairo railway. This system would act as a direct route from the northernmost British possession in Africa, Egypt, to the southernmost one, the Cape Colony. The project was never completed. During its development, a competing French colonial project for a competing line from Algiers or Dakar to Abidjan was abandoned after the Fashoda incident. This line would have had four gauge islands in three gauges.
• An extension of Namibian Railways is being built in 2006 with the possible connection to Angolan Railways.
• Libya has proposed a Trans-Saharan Railway connecting possibly to Nigeria which would connect with the proposed AfricaRail network.

  African Union of Railways

• The African Union of Railways has plans to connect the various railways of Africa including the Dakar-Port Sudan Railway.

  Australia

East-west

• Australia's east–west transcontinental rail corridor, consisting of lines built to three different track gauges, was completed in 1917, when the Trans-Australian Railway was opened between Port Augusta, South Australia and Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. This line, built by the federal government as a federation commitment, filled the last gap in the lines between the mainland state capitals of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Passengers and freight alike suffered from time-consuming breaks of gauge: a Perth–Brisbane journey at that time involved two standard gauge 1435 mm lines, a broad gauge 1600 mm line, and three of 1067 mm gauge.
• In the 1940s and 1960s, steps were taken to progressively reduce the huge inefficiencies caused by the numerous historically imposed breaks of gauge by linking the mainland capital cities with lines all of standard gauge.
• In 1970, the route across the continent was completed to standard gauge and a new, all-through passenger train, the Indian Pacific was inaugurated.
• An east–west transcontinental line across northern Australia from the Pilbara to the east coast – more than 1000 km north of the Sydney-Perth rail corridor – was proposed in 2006 by Project Iron Boomerang to connect iron ore mining in the Pilbara and coal mining in the Bowen Basin in Queensland, with steel manufacturing plants at both ends.

  North–south

• Australia's north–south transcontinental rail corridor was built in stages during the 20th century, leaving a gap to be finished after the Tarcoola to Alice Springs section was completed in 1980. That final section, from Alice Springs to Darwin, was opened in 2004. The total length of the corridor, from Adelaide to Darwin, is. Completion of the corridor ended 126 years of freight and passengers alike having to be transferred between trains on tracks of different gauges: the corridor is now entirely 1435 mm standard gauge. The corridor is an important route for freight. An upmarket experiential tourism passenger train, The Ghan, operated by Journey Beyond, makes the journey once a week in each direction from Adelaide to Darwin, and the company's east–west Indian Pacific runs on the southernmost before heading west to Perth. There is no intermediate passenger traffic on the line.
• In 2018, the Australian Rail Track Corporation started building a standard gauge fast-freight railway from Melbourne to Brisbane, known as the Inland Railway., completion was anticipated in 2027.

  Eurasia

Europe

• The first transcontinental railroad in Europe, that connected the North Sea or the English Channel with the Mediterranean Sea, was a series of lines that included the Paris–Marseille railway, in service 1856. Multiple railways north of Paris were in operation at that time, such as Paris–Lille railway and Paris–Le Havre railway.
• The second connection between the seas of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, was a series of lines finalized in 1857 with the Austrian Southern Railway, Vienna–Trieste. There were before that railroad connections Hamburg–Berlin–Wrocław–Vienna. The Baltic Sea was also connected through the Lübeck–Lüneburg railway.

  Trans-Eurasia

• The Trans-Siberian Railway, completed in 1905, was the first network of railways connecting Europe and Asia. It connects Western Russia to the Russian Far East, and is the longest railway line in the world, with a length of over. The railway starts from Russia's capital Moscow, which is the largest city in Europe, and ends at Vladivostok, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Expansion of the railway system continues, with connecting rails going into Asia, namely Mongolia, China and North Korea. There are also plans to connect Tokyo, the capital of Japan, to the railway.
• A second rail line connects Istanbul in Turkey with China via Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. This route imposes a break of gauge at the Iranian border with Turkmenistan and at the Chinese border. En route there is a train ferry in eastern Turkey across Lake Van. The European and Asian parts of Istanbul was linked 2019 linked by the Marmaray undersea tunnel, before that by train ferry. There is no through service of passenger trains on the entire line. A uniform gauge connection was proposed in 2006, commencing with new construction in Kazakhstan. A decision to make the internal railways of Afghanistan gauge potentially opens up a new standard gauge route to China, since China abuts this country.
• The Trans-Asian Railway is a project to link Singapore to Istanbul and is to a large degree complete with missing pieces primarily in Myanmar. The project has also linking corridors to China, the central Asian states, and Russia. This transcontinental line unfortunately uses a number of different gauges,,, and, though this problem may be lessened with the use of variable gauge axle systems such as the SUW 2000.
• The Kunming-Singapore Railway is a network of railways connecting China with mainland Southeast Asia, with the routes culminating in Bangkok, Thailand before continuing on in a single line to Malaysia and Singapore. The opening of the Boten-Vientiane railway in Laos in 2021 has completed an almost-seamless railway passage, though a major break-of-gauge exists betwen Laos and Thailand.
• The TransKazakhstan Trunk Railways project by Kazakhstan Temir Zholy will connect China and Europe with standard gauge. Construction is set to start in 2006. Initially the line will go to western Kazakhstan, south through Turkmenistan to Iran, then to Turkey and Europe. A shorter to-be-constructed link from Kazakhstan is considered going through Russia and either Belarus or Ukraine.
• The Baghdad Railway connects Istanbul with Baghdad and finally Basra, a sea port at the Persian Gulf. When its construction started in the 1880s it was in those times a Transcontinental Railroad.
• Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, The Trans-Caspian Railway is a railway that follows the path of the Silk Road through much of western Central Asia, connecting Asia to Europe via South Caucasus and Turkey.

  North America

United States