The history of rail transport began before the beginning of the common era. It can be divided into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of track material and motive power used.

The Post Track, a prehistoric causeway in the valley of the River Brue in the Somerset Levels, England, is one of the oldest known constructed trackways and dates from around 3838 BCE, making it some 30 years older than the Sweet Track from the same area. Various sections have been designated as scheduled monuments.

Evidence indicates that there was a 6-to-8.5-kilometre-long (3.7 to 5.3 mi) Diolkos paved trackway, which transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece from around 600 BCE. Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route. The Diolkos was in use for over 650 years, until at least the 1st century CE. Paved trackways were also later built in Roman Egypt.

In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel. The line still exists and remains operational, although in updated form. It may be the oldest operational railway.

Wagonways (or tramways), with wooden rails and horse-drawn traffic, are known to have been used in the 1550s to facilitate transportation of ore tubs to and from mines. They soon became popular in Europe and an example of their operation was illustrated by Georgius Agricola (see image) in his 1556 work De re metallica. This line used "Hund" carts with unflanged wheels running on wooden planks and a vertical pin on the truck fitting into the gap between the planks to keep it going the right way. The miners called the wagons Hunde (meaning "dogs") from the noise they made on the tracks. There are many references to wagonways in central Europe in the 16th century.

A wagonway was introduced to England by German miners at Caldbeck, Cumbria, possibly in the 1560s. This underground wagonway is the earliest known evidence for the use of tracked transport in the Britain. A wagonway was built at Prescot, near Liverpool, sometime around 1600, possibly as early as 1594. Owned by Philip Layton, the line carried coal from a pit near Prescot Hall to a terminus about half a mile away. The Wollaton Wagonway, completed in 1604 by Huntingdon Beaumont, was the earliest British railway, excluding systems using a guided pin. It ran from Strelley to Wollaton near Nottingham. Several funicular railways were set up at Broseley in Shropshire from October 1605. Another line, constructed in April 1606, carried coal for James Clifford from his mines down to the river Severn to be loaded onto barges and carried to riverside towns.

The Middleton Railway in Leeds, which was built in 1758, later became the world's oldest operational railway (other than funiculars), albeit now in an upgraded form. In 1764, the first railway in America was built in Lewiston, New York.

The introduction of steam engines for powering blast air to blast furnaces led to a large increase in British iron production after the mid-1750s.