Railway network

🚆 Railway network

Every railway line in Spain and how many passenger trains run on it each day. Adif, which manages the state network, does not publish the traffic on each section, so here it is calculated from the timetables of Renfe, FGC, Euskotren and FGV for a working day: each train is drawn on the tracks it uses to go from one stop to the next.

The network

Routes from OpenStreetMap. High speed: standard gauge (1,435 mm) for 200 km/h or more. Iberian gauge (1,668 mm) is that of the conventional network; narrow gauge (1,000 mm) is that of the former FEVE along the Cantabrian coast and of FGC, Euskotren, FGV or the Sóller train. Sidings, yards and branches to industries or ports are excluded.

Km of corridor measured on the map: a double-track line counts once. The total (18,444 km) is somewhat higher than Eurostat's (16,257 km) because it includes the regional networks and the track bundles of the large stations.

How many trains run on each section

Passenger trains scheduled on 21/10/2026 (a Wednesday), adding up both directions. Thicker = more trains. Iryo and Ouigo trains are missing, as they do not publish their timetables openly, and so are all freight trains, so the high-speed corridors (Madrid-Barcelona, Madrid-Valencia, Madrid-Seville) and the freight lines carry more traffic than shown. FGV's underground metro sections and some of FGC and Euskotren do not appear.

Which stations have the most trains between them

Trains between two consecutive stops, in both directions. A non-stop train counts between its two stops even if it passes other stations without stopping.

Stations

By province

Km of corridor running through each province, measured on the OpenStreetMap map. Large, sparsely populated provinces crossed by several lines (Palencia, Zamora, Soria) have more track per inhabitant.

Compared with Europe

Spain has the longest high-speed network in the EU, but its inhabitants travel fewer km by train than those of France, Germany or Austria, and far less freight runs on its tracks: freight transport in Spain goes almost entirely by road. Eurostat data, latest year published for each country.

Sources and notes

• Network: OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL licence), railway and narrow-gauge tracks downloaded with the Overpass API. The two tracks of a double-track line are merged into one (a grid of about 100 m) to measure km of corridor and avoid splitting trains between them.
• Trains: open timetables (GTFS) from Renfe (high speed, long and medium distance, and Cercanías and Rodalies; CC BY 4.0), FGC, Euskotren and FGV (these three via Mobility Database). Trains on a working Wednesday are counted and each pair of stops is routed along the shortest path on the network, respecting each service's track gauge. There is no open data for Iryo, Ouigo or freight trains, nor for passengers per section.
• Eurostat: length of lines (rail_if_line_sp, rail_if_line_ga), passenger-km (rail_pa_total) and tonne-km (rail_go_total); per inhabitant with Eurostat population.

Data updated 7 minutes ago