Rail transport in Burma

Burma (known as Myanmar since its independence in 1989) has a 3,991 km (2,480 mi) railway network that is run by Myanmar Railways, a state owned railway company under the Ministry of Railways.

In May 1877, the first train left Rangoon for Prome, a town on the Irrawaddy 163 miles (262 km) away and, particularly after the annexation of Upper Burma in 1886, lines toward the Chinese border were quickly constructed, partly so that the British could get easy access to the resource rich hinterland, and partly in the hopes of building a railway to the Yunnan province of China from the port city of Rangoon (most of South-East Asia was under French control and Rangoon, for a brief period of time, was viewed as a staging point for trade with China). The railway to China never materialized and, by the early 1900s, most of what exists in Burma today had already been constructed.

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