Ancient Greece The
Diolkos was a paved trackway near
Corinth in
Ancient Greece which enabled boats to be moved overland across the
Isthmus of Corinth. The shortcut allowed ancient vessels to avoid the dangerous circumnavigation of the
Peloponnese peninsula. It is regarded by the British historian of science M.J.T. Lewis, author of
Early Wooden Railways, as the first railway (as defined as a track to direct vehicles so they may not leave the track) to ever be constructed.
The beginnings (1868–1919) Greek independence in 1832 coincided with the start of the railway era. By 1835 plans were being put to the Greek state to construct a railway line from
Athens to the port of
Piraeus. Twenty-two years later, in 1857, a contract for its construction was signed and the work commenced. It took four different companies a further twelve years to lay the of track, the work being completed in 1869. Greece towards the end of the 19th century was a collection of small agricultural towns acting as marketplaces and economic centres for the villages that surrounded them. Greece had very little industry and few roads, which made the government think about the development of a railway system that would go towards addressing the lack of internal and external communication that existed. In 1881 the Prime Minister,
Alexandros Koumoundouros signed four contracts for the laying of lines, with the intention of making Greece a pivotal point on the journey between Europe, India and Asia. In the following year, 1882, Koumoundouros was replaced by
Charilaos Trikoupis as Prime Minister, who cancelled the contracts, replacing them with four of his own. He had a different political vision for the railways, seeing them as a way of stimulating the internal growth of Greece and proposed a narrow-gauge () system encircling the northern
Peloponnese, with a separate system in
Thessaly; linking the port of
Volos with the town of
Kalambaka on the other side of the
Thessalian plain. There was also a line of to be laid from Athens to
Lavrio, on the peninsula of Eastern
Attica. Trikoupis preferred
narrow gauge over
standard gauge due to cheaper initial construction costs, although the line linking Athens to
Larissa, which was planned to eventually join with the European system, was constructed to . The network took 25 years to complete, 20 years longer than the 5 anticipated by Trikoupis. Railway companies that arose during this era include: SPAP (Piraeus – Athens – Peloponnese Railways), which operated the system in the Peloponnese, the Thessaly Railways, which operated the lines in Thessaly, the Attica Railways, which operated the railways in Attica and the Railways of Northwest Greece, which operated the railways in Aetolia-Acarnania. By 1909, of track had been laid, including the main standard-gauge line to the then Greek-Turkish border at
Papapouli, past the
Tempi valley (400 km north of Athens). The first trains to run the full 506 kilometres from Athens to Thessaloniki on standard-gauge track marked the completion of the line in 1918, which by then was running entirely on Greek territory.
Integration of networks (1920–1970) During the 1920s the Greek railway network was split between a number of companies – private and public – with the most important being the
SPAP (Athens – Piraeus – Peloponnese Railways) and the
SEK (Hellenic State Railways). Eventually the SPAP integrated most railways Southern Greece and the SEK those in Northern Greece. Due to the immense financial and social pressure during the interwar period not much railway construction happened. Important construction projects in the 1920s and 1930s include the expansion of the Piraeus-Thissio Railway towards the centre of Athens via a long tunnel, the attempted extension of the Palaiofarsalos – Kalampaka Railway towards
Grevena and
Kozani and the construction of the Leukothea – Amphipolis railway line. Much of the railway infrastructure was destroyed during the
Second World War and the subsequent
Civil War resulting in much of the post-war era being devoted into rebuilding it. The only noteworthy expansion between 1940 and 1971 was the building of a
new railway line connecting Larissa to Volos and the extension of the
Thessaloniki – Florina railway line to
Ptolemaida and Kozani. Also significant was the extension of EIS private company towards
Kifisia by absorbing a former Attica Railway line.
Modern era (1971–present) The
Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) was founded in 1971, taking over from the
Hellenic State Railways. Many services were cut in the 1980s, in particular the metre gauge network, only to be reinstaured during the 1990s but then to be cut again in 2011 with the debt crisis. Since then, the network of Greece's standard railways has been extensively modernised and most of them have been electrified, notably between the cities of
Athens and
Thessaloniki, between Athens and Kiato and in the vicinity of Athens. In 2016 the state-owned passenger and freight train operator,
TrainOSE, was privatized. It was sold to the Italian
FSI (Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane) group, owned by the Government of Italy and train operator in the country, for 50 million euros. Moreover two new freight train operators, PEARL and Rail Cargo Logistics Goldair, have begun operations with the goal of transporting cargo between Piraeus and Central Europe. In August 2025, the
Greek Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport confirmed the creation of a new body,
Greek Railways () to assume responsibility for rail infrastructure, planning, modernisation projects, and rolling stock across
Greece. Previously, these functions were divided among several state-owned entities:
OSE, which managed infrastructure;
ERGOSÉ, responsible for modernisation projects; and
GAIAOSÉ, which owned stations, buildings, and rolling stock. OSE had overseen both infrastructure and operations until its vertical separation in 2005. Rail safety has been identified as a key priority. The merger follows the July approval of a Parliamentary Bill to restructure the national railway system, a direct response to the
Tempi accident of February 2023, in which 43 people died after a head-on collision.
Old Urban railways of Athens Piraeus–Monastiraki–Iraklio–Lavrio–Kifissia The first railway line that operated in Greece was the one connecting Athens and its port Piraeus, which opened in 1869. It ran for a distance of 8 km from the port of Piraeus to Thissio in center of Athens. It was later extended to Omonoia Square in 1895 and electrified in 1904, with the 600 V DC third rail system. From 1911 it was also possible to run through freight trains on the Piraeus Harbour Tramway using dual system electric locomotives. Another company,
Attica Railways in 1885, ran a
metre-gauge suburban line from Lavrio Square to the north of Omonoia Square and to Iraklio (a northern suburb). It involved a section of street running, along the present 3 September Street, from Lavrio Square to Attiki Square, beyond which it ran on a dedicated trackbed. At Iraklio, the line forked to form two suburban branches. One went further north via Maroussi to Kifissia and Strofyli, with a freight only extension to Dionyssos marble quarries. The other branch ran eastwards to Vrilissia (at a point very near to the present Plakentias station) and then southwards to the villages Peania, Koropi, Marcopoulo, Kalyvia, Keratea, Kamariza and its terminus at the mining town of Lavrio. In 1926, the Hellenic Electric Railways S.A. (EIS) (Ελληνικοί Ηλεκτρικοί Σίδηρόδρομοι, ΕΗΣ), a new company, created by the co-operation of Attica Railways S.A. and the English "Power Group", took over operation of the two lines Piraeus-Athens and Omonia and Attiki-Kifissia-Strofyli. In 1929 SPAP (
Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railways) took over the Iraklio – Lavrio branch line. The Athens terminal for Lavrio was moved from Lavrio Square to Athens Peloponnese Station. The line from Attiki Square to Kifissia operated as a steam locomotive hauled railway with numerous level crossings until 1938. The line was subsequently rebuilt in electrified dual track standard gauge without level crossings, connected to the electrified Athens-Piraeus (EIS) line at Omonoia, and reopened to Kifissia in 1957. The extension to Strofyli was abandoned. ==Industrial railways==