The Vietnam Railway Transport Bureau is operated by the state-run railroad company Vietnam Railways operates a network of five main lines that link the north, central and south of Vietnam, connecting the capital city of Hanoi with the North-South Railway in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's largest city. The total length of Vietnam's railroad network is 3,147 kilometers, including 2,670 kilometers of railroad lines and 477 kilometers of railroad extensions.

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The Vietnam Railway was built in the 1880s during the French Indochina period, as the first railroad in Vietnam, the Saigon-Tibet tram was opened in 1881. In the early 20th century, Vietnam's railroad construction was strongly supported by the French Indochina Governor Paul Dumet, and the construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway and the North-South Railway started in this period, of which the construction of the North-South Railway took more than 30 years to 1936 before the entire line was opened to traffic.

After that, during the Second World War, the First Indochina War, and the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese railroad system was severely damaged by the war. Since the implementation of the "innovation and opening up" from the late 1980s, Vietnam's national economy has recovered rapidly and has been developing rapidly, but the transportation infrastructure is still at a relatively backward level, and the main problems that have plagued Vietnam's railroads for a long time include backward railroad equipment and technology, serious lack of capital investment, and inefficient management systems.

Since the 2000s, the Vietnamese government has promoted the reform of the management system of the railroad transportation system and has used government development assistance funds (ODA) provided by the international community to accelerate the modernization of Vietnam's railroad system. In addition, Vietnam is planning to build railroads connecting Laos and Cambodia from the center and south respectively, in response to the ASEAN's proposed Trans-Asian Railway construction plan.