Sydney Trains

Sydney Trains is the brand name and operator of suburban and intercity train services in and around Greater Sydney in New South Wales, Australia.

The metropolitan part of the network is a hybrid urban-suburban rail system with a central underground core. It covers 369 km (229 mi) of route length over 813 km (505 mi) of track, with 168 stations on nine lines.

The network has frequencies of 5–10 minutes at peak-time at most inner-city and major stations, and 15 minutes off-peak at most minor stations. During the weekday peak, train services are more frequent. Nearly the entire fleet consists of bilevel electric multiple unit trains.

The network is managed by Transport for NSW and is part of its Opal ticketing system. In 2024–25, 270 million passenger journeys were made on the suburban network, making it the most-used rail network in Australia.

In May 2012, the Minister for Transport announced a restructure of RailCorp, the organisation that owned and managed the metropolitan rail network and operated passenger services throughout New South Wales. Two new organisations were created to take over the operation of the services from July 2013. Sydney Trains acquired all suburban services in the Sydney metropolitan area bounded by Berowra, Emu Plains, Macarthur and Waterfall from RailCorp's CityRail division.

Intercity and Hunter Line services previously operated by CityRail were taken over by NSW Trains, branded as NSW TrainLink. RailCorp remained the owner of the network infrastructure. When first created as subsidiaries of RailCorp, Sydney Trains and NSW Trains were not controlled entities of RailCorp, but were instead controlled by Transport for NSW. In July, they ceased to be subsidiaries of RailCorp and became independent standalone agencies in July 2017.

In August 2023, it was announced that the majority of NSW TrainLink's intercity operations would be transferred to Sydney Trains, including rolling stock, maintenance, operations, stations, and staff. This would include the modifications, testing, and introduction of the New Intercity Fleet (NIF).

In 2023, a process of transferring intercity services from NSW TrainLink to Sydney Trains began. In July 2024, Intercity services were taken under the responsibility of Sydney Trains.